Opinion: ‘Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama’

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A Wall Street Journal opinion piece, provocatively headlined ‘Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama,’ argues that Jackson pursued equality through the manipulation of white guilt.

The reason that Obama bothers Jackson so much, contends author Shelby Steele, is that the Illinois senator takes another tack to promoting civil rights.

Steele, of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, portrayed Obama’s approach as ‘give up moral leverage over whites, refuse to shame them with America’s racist past, and the gratitude they show you will constitute a new form of black power. They will love you for the faith you show in them.’

But Frank James, writing for our colleagues at The Swamp, says that Steele is missing an obvious motive: jealousy.

‘Black America has seen this movie before. There was the rivalry between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois at the start of the 20th Century. That contest was based partly on ideology as to the best way for African Americans to advance in a racist nation. But it was also personal,’ James writes.

--Stuart Silverstein