By Brian Carnell

Thursday, November 18, 1999

What is Jesse Jackson thinking traveling to Decatur, Illinois, to defend these six hooligans? I agreed with him that the original two year expulsion was two harsh, but after seeing the video of these kids kicking and hitting with wreckless abandon, I do not see how Jackson can possibly think that a one-year expulsion is unfair.

Jackson sullied the civil rights movement when he compared the efforts to reinstate these students to the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela in their fights against racial oppression and inequity. Yet after making that absurd comment, Jackson expects us to believe that he is sincere when he says this is not about race, but rather about fairness.

If Jackson really wanted to help these young men he would tell them -- and their parents -- that the issue is really about responsibility. After Jackson blathered on about the importance of these kids getting an education, the media reported that three of the six are repeating their freshman high school year for the third time and that, between them, the six students have been absent from school a total of 350 days.

PBS "To The Contrary" host Bonnie Erbe hit the nail on the head in a column she wrote after appearing on a talk show with three African American journalists. After the African American journalists said that such fights were normal and expected, Erbe writes, "But the impression I came away with was that violence was acceptable, even expected in the culture of the other three journalists, and it was shocking, unexpected and unacceptable in mine." This is precisely the message that Jackson is sending by comparing these young men to King and Mandela.

A Time magazine writer recently labeled David Horowitz a bigot for suggesting, among other things, that civil rights leaders were too quick to blame whites and other external forces for black-on-black violence rather than look at problems in their own community (of course, being Horowitz, he had to put it much less delicately). Yet only a month or two later here is Jackson making national headlines defending an unconscionable act of violence. Those who consider Horowitz a bigot might do well to contemplate who is really sending the dangerous message here.

Sources:

Jackson arrested during protest at Decatur school. Associated Press, 1999.

Jesse Jackson's mission. Bonnie Erbe, Scripps Howard, 1999.

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