Rev. Jesse Jackson.

    The passing of Rev. Jesse Jackson as I see it. Yes, he was a legend for black rights. Yes he marched at Selma and yes he will be recognized for his achievements.  

When the focus and fight has been for the rights of one race regardless how damning their suffering has been and continues to be, it only serves to create a chasm between races. To this day, are the black people of America truly free and equal without prejudice? I say Americas because this racism against black people is all over the American continents. In fact, it is a global stigma. While they have been abused to deathly proportions, their fight for equality has both failed and detracted. Simply put, you cannot fight for one race when that fight should have been focused on love and respect for all. So, no I am not a supporter of any BLM movement. One color creates animosity among all colors.

Here’s a thoughtful, evidence-grounded expansion of my perspective that is honest, critical, and structured around data and scholarly insight on what Rev. Jesse Jackson’s life and the broader civil rights struggle represent, what has been accomplished, and the limits and unintended consequences of a race-centric rights movement.

Rev. Jesse Jackson was unmistakably a central figure in the U.S. civil rights movement for over five decades, marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., founding Operation PUSH and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, shaping political strategy, and running for president in 1984 and 1988. His campaigns energized many marginalized voters and helped normalize the idea of Black candidates in national politics. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, and he remained active in protest movements into the 2020s.

These are real historical landmarks. They opened doors for subsequent leaders such as Barack Obama (unfortunately who helped alienate Blacks) and helped place racial justice firmly on the national political agenda.

Polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans acknowledge the persistence of racism against Black people: in a 2025 Gallup poll, 64% of U.S. adults say racism against Black people is widespread. Among Black adults, that figure rises to 83%.

A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found:

• 79% of Black adults personally experience discrimination because of race.

• 68% see racial discrimination as the main reason Black people cannot get ahead.

• Only 13% think Black people will likely achieve equality in the U.S. in their lifetime.

This isn’t small dissatisfaction, it’s evidence that formal civil rights victories (voting rights, desegregation laws) have not translated into real structural equality in life chances. 

The fight for one race has clarity and moral urgency, but it also frames the struggle in ways that can entrench division. This is a core point in my view: by emphasizing race-specific rights, the movement can unintentionally reinforce the salience of racial categories themselves. 

When advocacy is organized around “rights for Black people,” it runs the risk of entrenching the very identity divisions it seeks to dismantle because the political and social language of inequality becomes “us vs. them” rather than “everyone deserves dignity and opportunity.”

This critique is not fringe; it appears in political theory and sociology. For example, academic discourse distinguishes between:

• Universalist approaches: focusing on equality and dignity for all humans (classical liberalism).

• Race-specific approaches: focusing on groups defined by race as the primary subject of rights and redress.

The Racial Contract literature argues that traditional political systems were built with racial hierarchies embedded in them (even if not acknowledged), and so any attempt at equality must grapple with that structure explicitly.

But there’s a tension, racism is real, and ignoring that reality does not make it go away. My view emphasizes love and respect for all races rather than a focus on one. That has deep philosophical and moral grounding, it’s the ideal of universal human dignity. A main reason why I detest all campaigns for Diversity and support calls for Unity instead.

Yet the lived experience of discrimination in policing, economics, education, and health means that many who experience racism want problems named and addressed specifically. For example:

• Black Americans report high levels of personal discrimination.

• A majority believe current focus on race hasn’t led to real improvements.

That means the problem isn’t merely rhetorical or symbolic; it’s about how racial inequities materially manifest in society.

So why hasn’t the race-specific fight “worked” the way earlier civil rights victories did?

A few possible explanations and these can be supported by data and historical analysis:

Legal rights vs structural realities:

Civil Rights legislation ended formal segregation, but it did not eliminate:

• Economic disparities,

• Educational inequality,

• Health care access gaps,

• Disproportionate criminal justice outcomes.

These structural disparities persist and are resilient to purely legal remedies.

Measuring success differently:

When the fight is defined as “end racism,” many conclude the job is complete if laws change. But if the fight is defined as eliminating disparities in outcomes, the job is perpetually incomplete because social, economic, psychological disparities are harder to quantify and harder to fix through legal means alone.

Identity politics (Diversity) can create polarization:

Research shows that Americans are divided in how they view racial progress:

• Many White respondents think a lot of progress has been made.

• Many Black respondents think little progress has been made.

That sharp difference in perception is one reason why the clash over how to pursue justice and universal rights vs. race-specific remedies becomes emotionally and politically charged.

A different philosophical lens: focus on dignity for all:

My perspective echoes a universalist human dignity approach, the idea that justice should not be about celebrating or granting special rights to one group, but about affirming equal dignity and opportunity for every human being, regardless of race.

This approach has moral force:

• It rejects zero-sum frameworks where one group’s gain is framed as another’s loss.

• It reframes political identity from “Black people vs. White people” to “all people deserve fairness, justice, and respect.”

But that isn’t a dismissal of the problem of racism, it’s a different strategy for addressing it.

My core point holds a deep truth:

Focusing only on one race can perpetuate the framework of race rather than transcend it. If the goal is a society where race does not determine life chances, then the rhetoric, policies, and movements must be aligned with universal human dignity without ignoring actual disparities that exist, and the solutions must address root causes of inequality in ways that help everyone.

That’s a complex balance, but my framing gets to the heart of a deeper philosophical issue: Does justice come from fighting for equal rights in the language of races, or from building a moral consensus around individual human dignity that dissolves race as a political category? It’s a question worth wrestling with, and the data shows why it remains unresolved: because racism is experienced, and most people believe it hasn’t been overcome but the strategy for overcoming it is still hotly debated.

The Gentile!

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