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Jesse Jackson Returns to Stanford
by Travis Menk
News Staff

One-time Presidential candidate Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke at Dinkelspiel Auditorium. The talk recalled Rainbow Coalition efforts of years past in Jackson's call to expand affirmative action and to speak out against the recent conflict in Iraq.

Mr. Jackson began his lecture by stating that it was extremely important "to meet in this time of tremendous crisis and confusion." His visit to Stanford was part of a week-long tour of the Bay Area in an effort to build stronger chapters of his organization of the Rainbow/Push Coalition. The purpose of this organization is to promote racial reconciliation and to focus people on the realization that people of all races are linked by "common values."

Mr. Jackson said that there are "mean and decisive winds blowing through our country" and that we are living in a "season of hostility." At the same time he emphasized that we "must not give up hope and healing." He directed the audience to look to such "models" C´sar Chávez, who has been honored on the campus this past month.

He told the audience, "We must lift up all the bolts stuck down at the bottom. We do not measure those by what they have but by what they shall have by lifting those who have their backs against the wall." Mr. Jackson said that we must aid the poor and disadvantaged "not because it is right but because it is morally efficient."

He used as an example the work Rainbow/Push Coalition and he have been doing this past week in San Jose for the employees at the Clarion Hotel. He emphasized that they can't buy milk and hope that bread will one day will be cheaper, claiming it unfair that these men and women and their kids "suffer" for our country.

Mr. Jackson spent a large portion of his speech emphasizing the existence of a racial divide in the United States. He demanded that the audience look closely at the military, which is 35% black and 15% Latino. He argued that the withdrawal from Iraq of the Marines, who have a higher white percentage, suggests racism on the part of this nation's military commanders, as the Army, which has a higher percentage of blacks than the Marines, would have remain in Iraq. He argued that the US builds itself up on the backs of "the black, the brown, and the poor."

Mr. Jackson then turned to a segment of affirmative action, arguing that it "continues" to open up closed doors. He suggested to the audience an irony of the acceptability of including legacy, athletic skill, and money in admissions decisions in contrast with the apparent inacceptability of including race. Mr. Jackson received a burst of applause when he stated, "We didn't know how good baseball could be until we could play." He also questioned, "Why is it on the ballfield that we can rise above skin color and focus on uniform color?"

He mentioned that sports is the one area where blacks do not have to run 12 yards for a first down to prove themselves whereas whites only have to run eight for a first down.

After looking at affirmative action, Mr. Jackson itemized the discrepancies in jailing practices between the races. He asked the audience if they knew that there are 900,000 black men in jail. He told people to look at the statistics. In South Carolina, 30% of the population is black yet 80% of inmates are black whereas in Illinois, 13% percent of the population is black yet 65% of those jailed are black. Mr. Jackson said that this was due to racial profiling, bigoted prosecutors, jails desiring to profit, and mean-spirited judges.

Mr. Jackson was very critical of President Bush for not having met with organized labor leadership in the past 30 months while attempting to promote democracy abroad. He stated, "We fight for democracy abroad but the U.S. has the right to spy on what books you check out at the library, arrest people without reason, and people are guilty until proven innocent in many cases."

With regard to the war in Iraq, Mr. Jackson emphasized that it may have been a short war, but that "it is going to be a long battle." He asserted his disdain for "fighting a war against weapons of mass destruction with weapons of mass destruction.' He also emphasized that we need to remember that "God does not belong to America, America belongs to God just as well as Iraq belongs to God. God is here to embrace all children."

He carried on by asking the audience, "How do you measure character?" Mr. Jackson told the audience that they should march with the workers of San Jose on Thursday because "even the poorest must have a dream." He argued the need for every American to "challenge himself to lift up the poor, feed the malnourished, and liberate those in jail." He stressed the jail statistics further by focusing on the fact that there are 500,000 more people in American penitentiaries than in all of China's prisons. He also mentioned that, despite the U.S. only having 5% of the world's population, we have 25% of the world's incarcerated population.

"Lest you think all white people are prejudiced," said Mr. Jackson, we only need to look at George Halliday, who videotaped the Rodney King beating. Mr. Jackson emphasized that Halliday had chosen to because it was the right thing to do.

Mr. Jackson's focus on racial and cultural divide was nothing new for him or Stanford. He has been a regular speaker at Stanford since the 1980s. Indeed, veteran readers of the Review will recall Jackson's crusades at Stanford with the Rainbow Coalition as a key motivation for the founding of this paper. One of his more notable performances was his campus visit of 1988. Spearheading multi-culturalists' crusade against Stanford's Western Civ core curriculum for freshmen, Mr. Jackson led protestors in a march across campus chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!"

Mr. Jackson and his supporters had argued that the required reading from the Bible, Marx, and Greek philosophers was too biased in favor of western culture. They eventually managed to have Western Civilization replaced with the Cultures, Ideas, and Values (CIV) program. After much controversy and negative publicity concerning the change, Stanford eventually replaced CIV with the current IHUM program.

Page last modified on Thursday, 02-Mar-2006 00:23:20 MST.