“Acting like he’s white”

"I was your one and only, until I read the news. Now I'm sad and lonely, since I put down the Jews." - Jesse Jackson

I wasn't even aware of this until last night, when I was over at my parents' house having a beer and watching the Real World, but today there's a big-ass protest down in Louisiana over the railroading of the Jena Six.

I guess this is what Mos Def was talking about on Bill Maher the other day when he said he was going to get a shiteload of people to go down there. I know he sent out a call to Jay-Z and other such industry heavyweights to join him, but I guess Jay-Z felt the best way he could contribute is to highjack the day's media with the announcement of Kingdom Come 2, or whatever it's called.

Nah, to his credit, Jay-Z probably just didn't know. Like I said, I didn't even know myself until last night, and you guys know I spend my every waking hour combing the Internets for contentious race issues (or is it just that I'm that good?).

According to a story on the front page of today's Post-Dispatch, the key to knowing you were supposed to wear black and/or head down to Jena, LA today was to listen to a radio station that plays the Michael Baisden program, and why would anyone who's into hip-hop be listening to the Michael Baisden program? I know this shit was hardly mentioned on either of the two hip-hop stations here in the STL (I know...), so there might also be a lesson in this about the ridonkulous generation gap in the black community.

Speaking of which, the cracka-ass cracka political blogosphere is abuzz today with some shit Jesse Jackson said about Barack Obama. I believe it was reported in a newspaper down in South Carolina, a key primary state, that Jesse Jackson said Barack Obama was acting like he's white, because he hasn't done enough to draw attention to the situation down in Jena.

But now Brother Jesse is claiming he doesn't recall having said that, which suggests to me that a) he's growing senile in his old age (which could be comedy gold in the coming years), or b) this could be a situation like back in the '80s, when he referred to the Jews as "hymies" in a conversation with a black guy from the Moonie newspaper that he thought was off the record. And it probably was, but how are you going to trust a black guy from the Moonie newspaper?

At any rate, many cracka-ass cracka pundits, who can't stand Jesse Jackson, are suggesting that this may signal some sort of shift in the black community away from traditional, Jesse Jackson-stlye ambulance chaser politics. As if Barack Obama purposely decided to keep his mouth shut on this Jena thing so as to distance himself from the likes of Jackson and Sharpton, or perhaps to purposely throw them under the bus the way Bill Clinton did Sista Souljah.

Hmm...

To his credit, I should note that Obama's campaign did release a statement re: the Jena Six. For the record, Barack Obama is against things that are bad, like racism, and for things that are good, like equality... and ice cream. And for what it's worth, I'm not aware that any of the other candidates on either side of the aisle are headed down there, though presumably they're all against racism as well.

You wonder though if Barack Obama may have tripped not going down to Jena with the rest of his would-be cousins. As I recall, there was a moment on that episode of Real Time when Mos Def mentioned that he hadn't heard much from Obama re: the situation in Jena. It looked like Cornel West was about to launch some horse shit excuse in his defense, but then he didn't - likely because he couldn't come up with one.

Personally, I'm pretty much at a loss here. You fruits know I've never been much of a supporter of ambulance chasers like Jackson and Sharpton. But at the same time, I can't help but think that Brother Jesse might have a point. If Barack Obama expects black people to vote for them, he should speak to the issues that most concern them, regardless of how silly they may be. You get the idea that Obama may be betting that black people will vote for him regardless, because he is, after all, black (-ish).

How many of you 'bags are gonna prove him right?