Jesse Jackson jumped the shark years ago, so it's not as if I, or anyone, has reason to be taking his latest diatribe seriously. The man has become a parody of himself, which renders his indignation laughable. Jackson is the ideological equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping. There was a time, I suppose, when he was a force to be reckoned with, when his ideas and indignation stood for something other than his own self-aggrandizement.
Having cried "wolf" so often in the past, it is virtually impossible to take his rants seriously. Taking up the case for reparations is certainly not going to enhance his credibility. I've ranted about reparations myself, and you're likely not going to want to hear me spew forth on the subject all over again. Let me instead give you the short version: I'll support reparations for African-Americans when I get reparations for the suffering my Irish-American relatives endured after emigrating to the US. Fair enough? I thought so.
As for affirmative action, it would appear that the foundation for this argument is that discrimination is acceptable as long as the discriminating is done by African-Americans. That's rubbish. Discrimination is wrong, no matter who is responsible for it. You are not going to correct past injustices by revisiting those injustices upon the distant relatives of those who originally perpetrated them.
There has got to be a better way to deal with racial injustice. I don't pretend to have the answer, but I'm damn certain that Jesse Jackson doesn't, either.
