Think former South African President Nelson Mandela defeated apartheid? The Rev. Jesse Jackson doesn’t think so, stating that the system of racial oppression “remains” in the United States.
Jackson was a panelist on NBC‘s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, discussing the life and legacy of Mandela, who passed away on Thursday. The reverend drew comparisons between Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., and their respective civil rights struggles.
Jackson was quick to point out that while King defeated apartheid based on skin color, other types of discrimination still exist.
“Even today — while we won the apartheid battle against skin apartheid, the surface level and political right to vote, the apartheid remains — the apartheid gaps in poverty and health care and education,” he told host David Gregory. “We’re in the middle of the end of the apartheid struggle even now.”
Jackson said that when blacks were given the right to vote in the U.S., they used that power to help combat the injustices that Mandela and South Africans were facing. He added that no matter what word people use to describe it that both countries were combating the same system.
“We called it segregation; they called it apartheid,” he told the other panelists. “It’s the same system and the same political and military and diplomatic players.”
(h/t The Blaze)
