Long before 2008 there was another candidate for the presidency whose siren call resound with me. His name was Jesse Jackson. I contributed to his rainbow coalition. I cried when I listened to his convention speech. I voted for him in the primary. I watched him in the galleries when Barack Obama was inaugurated. I cried a bit with him.
But I am 58 years old now. I'm no longer 30. And I have wondered lately what would have happened back then if Jackson somehow pulled the primary off and actually won.
I would have celebrated, to be sure. But what would the legacy have been?
What will Obama's legacy be?
What is the future political landscape for Black aspirants to the Oval Office?
I think, in retrospect, that Obama has paved a path forward for another Black president that Jackson, most probably, would have precluded. At least for a much longer time.
There are two political speeches that have electrified me in my time. One was the speech by the late Governor Mario Cuomo at the 84 convention. It seems like its been since 1984 that a democrat actually speaks like a democrat. The other speech that electrified me was Jesse Jackson's convention speech from the same year.
I guess you can say it's been 30 years since I've been electrified.
In 1984 I was a white male, with a college education, working retail. My girlfriend was Black, and that fact alone had caused a rift between me and many of my high school friends that I had grown up with. To put that in context I grew up in Los Angeles, not Mobile Alabama. Everyone likes to think of racism as a southern thing. It's a white suburban thing.
And I'm not over it yet.
I grew up with extremely racist parents, who grew up with extremely racist parents as well. We come from a long line of racists who immigrated northward from the south but held onto our stereotypes.
When I was dating my Black girlfriend, I couldn't tell my grandmother. I loved my grandmother, But I couldn't tell her. She would not have approved, and I didn't know at the time how to address her disapproval. So I kept it secret.
Rhoda...my girlfriend at the time...was so much like my grandmother that it seems light centuries beyond irony.
But I digress. What if Jackson had won?
I think there are two possibilities.
One, obviously, is that he would have been too "Black" of a president. And that is certainly a possibility. I think Jackson would have undertaken the job differently than Obama did. I think from day one he would have known that he was a Black president.
And I think that probably would have deferred the next Black American from attaining the oval office for about 50 years.
Obama has played it safe. I don't think Jackson would have had the self constraint that Obama has.
I think Obama opens the path for future Black candidates. I also think Jackson was one of the last democrats who spoke to me personally.
And I fear for our party's future.
There is nobody who speaks to the things that either Jesse or Mario spoke to so eloquently back in 1984.
Nobody.