There he was, at a recent rally for Trayvon Martin in Miami, standing only yards from Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s mother. His face is the last one that should have been there. I’m talking about none other than the Revvum Jesse Jackson.
Martin, 17, was killed in a Sanford, Fla., gated community on Feb. 26. George Zimmerman, 28, a neighborhood watch captain, contends he shot Martin in self-defense.
The controversy surround the Martin shooting went national, then global. Soon all the usual suspects were flocking to Florida, offering support to Fulton and Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin’s father.
Al Sharpton showed up. Some bona fide nut jobs from the New Black Panther Party put out a $10,000 “reward” for Zimmerman’s “arrest.” Charges of racial profiling abounded.
Martin was black; Zimmerman was described as half white, half Hispanic. (There are white Hispanics, so I’m not even sure what that term means.) Those who protest Martin’s slaying contend that Zimmerman racially profiled the youth.
Zimmerman’s family contends he isn’t a racist, but he did do certain things the night of Feb. 26 to bolster the racial profiling claim. He saw a black kid in a hoodie and immediately decided he was “up to no good.”
According to since-released police tapes, Zimmerman had concluded Martin was guilty of a number of things even though he didn’t see the youth commit anything that could be remotely described as a crime.
Martin looked like he was on drugs, Zimmerman told police.
Martin was one of “these assholes [who] always get away,” Zimmerman said at one point on the tape.
So while Zimmerman might not be a racist, he did draw several conclusions about Martin the night of Feb. 26 that were probably based on race.
That’s exactly why Jackson’s face should have been the last one seen at the Miami rally for Trayvon Martin. Didn’t Jackson racially profile black youth years ago?
You may or may not remember the incident. Jackson admitted in a 1993 speech that if he heard footsteps behind him, and started nervously “thinking about robbery,” he would “look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
That’s worse than the racial profiling Zimmerman did. Jackson said outright that black youth are a menace, sight unseen.
How did Jackson get away with showing his kisser at a Trayvon Martin rally with that comment on his resume of boo-boos? Why is this guy still taken seriously?
It’s because people have short memories.
Jackson got nailed for referring to Jews as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown” during the 1984 presidential race. Such bigotry would have killed anybody else’s career, but not Jackson’s.
Remember when the revvum, supposedly a man of God, got caught muttering into an open mic what he’d like to do to President Obama’s genitalia? The comment wasn’t very God-like, which I why I call Jackson “revvum,” not Reverend.
Perhaps the worst of Jackson’s outrages was his attempt to depict the racial attack on Reginald Denny, a white truck driver, during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, as an act of rebellion.
That happened several years ago. Jackson gave a speech at Johns Hopkins Hospital — whose officials had apparently forgiven that Hymietown thing — in which he called the cops involved in the Rodney King beating racist.
Jackson held a press conference for the media after his speech. Being the dickens I am, I figured I’d press him on that racist cops business.
“Would you call the black men who beat Reginald Denny racist?” I asked him.
“They were reacting to being victims of racism,” Jackson answered. “To be a racist you have to have power. One cannot equate black fugitives from slavery fighting their masters as racist.”
I suspect Jackson would have had a different view of those black rioters if they were walking behind him.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
