Do Black Activists Want a Black President?

July 10, 2008— -- Everyone, even the Rev. Jesse Jackson himself, agrees that his comments about Sen. Barack Obama that an open microphone picked up were inappropriate.

Why he said them at all, however, is cause for debate.

Of the 20 words whispered in the moments before a Fox News interview, Jackson's castration threat got the most attention. But in that same utterance, Jackson also criticized the senator for the way he speaks to the black community and on one of his major political polices -- faith-based reform.

"See Barack Obama been, um, talking down to back people on his faith-based -- want to cut his nuts off," Jackson said in a video that aired Wednesday on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor."

Only Jackson can explain what drove him to say what he did. While the majority of Americans just heard the part about castration, African-Americans heard the echoes of an ongoing debate in the black community between the activists of Jackson's generation and the moderates of Obama's generation.

Much like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- another controversial minister with whom Obama split over incendiary remarks -- Jackson is a black activist of the old school. A civil rights leader who marched with Martin Luther King, Jackson believes that Obama's post-racial, consensus-building politics ignore the still troubling problems that face the black community, said Eric Easter, head of ebonyjet.com.

"With Obama's nomination there is a sense that a change is coming," Easter said. "Some activists are worried about what that change really means. If there is broad acceptance of a black candidate, does that mean they can no longer argue that racism is a problem?"

The irony for civil rights era activists is that if Obama, a black man, gets elected, it makes it much more difficult for them to argue for funding and focused attention on helping the victims of racism, Easter said. If Obama continues to chide the black community to fix its own problems rather than offering political solutions, activists will have an even harder time convincing white America that African-American communities need aid.