Blog: why he said it

Across the Pond: Why Jackson's attack will help Obama

The Reverend Jesse Jackson has issued an apology for disparaging and crude remarks in which he claimed Barack Obama was "speaking down to black people" by telling them they need to take responsibility for their own lives.

His comments were intended to be private but were picked up by a Fox News microphone on Sunday which, he believed, was switched off. During his remarks, made in a casual conversation with another guest after finishing an interview, Mr Jackson said that Mr Obama had been talking down to black people, adding: “I want to cut his nuts out.”

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Mr Jackson, who himself stood for the Democratic presidential nomination in both 1984 and 1988, said he felt "very distressed" over his remarks because he had long since been a supporter of Mr Obama. His Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is based in Mr Obama home town of Chicago and his son, Jesse Jackson Jnr, is a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign.

His apology was issued just hours before the cable TV channel confirmed it planned to broadcast the words.

"This is a sound bite in a broader conversation about urban policy and racial disparities," said Mr Jackson. "I said he comes down as speaking down to black people. The moral message must be a much broader message. What we need really is racial justice and urban policy and jobs and health care. That's a range of issues on the menu. Then I said something I regret was crude. It was very private."

Repeating his apology on the CNN news channel, he added: “I was in a conversation with a fellow guest at Fox on Sunday. He asked about Barack’s speeches lately at the black churches. I said it can come off as speaking down to black people.

“And then I said something I felt regret for - it was crude. It was very private, and very much a sound bite - and a live mike. I find no comfort in it, I find no joy in it.

“So I immediately called the senator’s campaign to send my statement of apology to repair the harm or hurt that this may have caused his campaign, because I support it unequivocally.”

Mr Jackson had been angered over a speech Mr Obama made on Father's Day in Chicago that pointed out that more than half of all black children live in single parent households where they were five times more likely to be poor and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. Too many black men, he said, "have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it."

Mr Jackson said yesterday: “My appeal was for the moral content of his message to not only deal with the personal and moral responsibility of black males, but to deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility.”

Bill Burton, Mr Obama's spokesman issued a statement saying: “As someone who grew up without a father in the home, Senator Obama has spoken and written for many years about the issue of parental responsibility, including the importance of fathers participating in their children’s lives. He also discusses our responsibility as a society to provide jobs, justice, and opportunity for all. He will continue to speak out about our responsibilities to ourselves and each other, and he of course accepts Reverend Jackson’s apology.”

For all his declared support of the Democratic nominee, Mr Jackson is part of a generation of black leaders who rose to prominence in the Civil Rights era and may be marginalised by the rise of Mr Obama and other younger politicians such as Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick or Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Mr Obama has a broader appeal to the white community than Mr Jackson and he has not sought to spare blacks from tough messages, telling students as recently as this week that they must stop dreaming of becoming rap stars or basketball players - and stay in school. He has also severed his links with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, whose racially-charged sermons were, he said, relics of an earlier era when progress for blacks was not possible.

Mr Jackson said yesterday that lecturing the black community did not take enough account of unemployment, home foreclosures and violence, which he said were "some real serious issues - not just moral issues".

It is not the first time he has criticised Mr Obama. Last autumn he said the presidential candidate had reacted too slowly and cautiously to the attempted murder charges filed against six black students who beat up a white boy in Jena, Louisiana, where nooses reminiscent of lynchings had been hung from a tree at their school.

Mr Jackson accused Mr Obama of "acting like he's white," according to a South Carolina newspaper. "If I were a candidate, I'd be all over Jena," he said. "Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma [Alabama] was a defining moment."

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