Jesse Jackson mesmerized America for decades. He championed civil rights in the 1960s. His Operation PUSH rode the waves of black empowerment and employment in the \u201970s. He challenged young Americans \u201cto put hope in their brains and not dope in their veins.\u201d It was in the \u201980s, however, that Jackson, who died Tuesday at 84, made history. While rebranding America as a \u201crainbow\u201d nation, he proved that African-Americans\u2014a term he popularized\u2014could be presidential candidates.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Jackson\u2019s impact stemmed from never becoming president\u2014and not participating in what many deemed a defining confrontation in America\u2019s culture wars.<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s 1984 campaign tapped Democrats\u2019 growing reliance on minorities. In his convention concession speech, he recalled his impoverished South Carolina childhood, repudiated Ronald Reagan\u2014whom he had long accused of committing \u201ceconomic genocide\u201d\u2014and heralded America\u2019s multicultural future. \u201cOur flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Many resisted. A January 1985 Harris poll found that two-thirds of Americans wanted their fellow citizens to see themselves as Reagan did: \u201cpatriots,\u201d not \u201cfirst and foremost as part of a racial or religious minority.\u201d Four years later, Jackson became the first black candidate to capture a majority of Democratic primary voters under 30. While running, Jackson shaped four decades of campus wars and culture wars. In January 1987, he marched with 500 Stanford students as they chanted \u201cHey hey, ho ho, Western culture\u2019s got to go.\u201d One editorial snapped: \u201cWe\u2019re tired of reading books by dead white guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Battle of Stanford yielded an enduring\u2014and false\u2014notion. Many imagined that Jackson\u2019s march and Education Secretary William Bennett\u2019s Stanford speech the following year epitomized America\u2019s culture wars.<\/p>\n
True, Bennett said: \u201cThe West is the culture in which we live. It has set the moral, political, economic and social standards for the rest of the world.\u201d Bennett argued presciently that by kowtowing to radicals, \u201ca great university was brought low by the very forces which modern universities came into being to oppose: ignorance, irrationality and intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet Bennett and Jackson never clashed in Palo Alto. Bennett visited in April 1988, 15 months after Jackson. Still, Jackson\u2019s march advanced academia\u2019s shift toward wokeness and away from Western values, patriotism and traditional liberalism.<\/p>\n
Inevitably, the rush for post-civil-rights spoils, the War on the West, and DEI regimes judging people by race and sex, not, as Martin Luther King wanted, \u201cthe content of their character,\u201d overreached. One form of bigotry replaced another. Jackson was caught in 1984 indulging in antisemitism, calling New York \u201cHymietown.\u201d He often favored certain colors of his rainbow coalition.<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s death comes amid a backlash moderating this illiberal essentialism. Still, the transformations he fostered were remarkable. He personified America as the empire of \u201chope\u201d\u2014a favorite Jackson word.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the Promised Land,\u201d he said in his 1984 convention address. \u201cLeadership can lift the boats stuck at the bottom.\u201d That formula for progress still resonates.<\/p>\n