Jason Riley

Jackson transformed this.

into racial preferences, special treatment, not equal treatment, special treatment.

And in doing so, Black civil rights leaders lost a lot of allies that they previously had.

Jewish organizations among them had been side by side, marching with King and so forth.

But when the shift moved to special treatment instead of equal treatment,

A lot of these former allies said, we can no longer stand with you on this.

And Jackson was part of that generation that led that shift in emphasis.

And it's unfortunate because what Jackson and others thought was necessary was more black political power per se, particularly after the Voting Rights Act passed.

They thought that all of these racial gaps in this country would be closed

if we could just get more of our own people in office, more Black elected officials.

That was part of his presidential run.

That was also part of Obama's presidential run later.

And we found out today, we know from experience, that the problems that ail the Black community are not necessarily going to be solved by a Black president or by more Black elected officials.

We've had Black people running large cities with large Black populations for decades.

But if you look at, you know, Marion Barry's Washington, D.C., or Coleman Young's Detroit, or Sharp James' Newark, or David Dinkins' New York, and on and on and on, what you see in many cases is the Black poor becoming more impoverished on the watch of these Black mayors and governors and senators and congressmen and so forth.

So that is not necessarily what is going to fix what ails the Black community.

I've long said that Black people need much more

a black man in the home than they do a black man in the White House.

And I think Obama's presidency proved that to be the case.

But what really got that ball running, I think, was Jesse Jackson's runs for president back in the 1980s, where he put out there this idea that what black people really need is more black political power in this country, and that will solve these problems.