The Jesse Jackson Phenomon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics

"Because discussion of Afro-American affairs is so often dominated by a patronizing, exceptionalist bias that suspends norms of critical reflection and judgment, intrinsically absurd claims frequently attain currency" (29).

Adolph Reed's 1986 publication on the 1984 Jesse Jackson campaign, The Jesse Jackson Phenomon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics, retains its relevance to the state of black politics today. We still face the exceptionalist bias and essentialist reasoning that has kept brokerage politics alive for decades. Focusing on the 1984 campaign of Jackson reveals a persistent assumption of uniform black "racial interest," the conflict between the protest elite and the elected official elites vying for racial organic legitimation while mainly fighting for gains that disproportionately benefit upper income blacks. 

I also found Reed's contention with claims of black clergy as political leaders and the 'divine' rhetoric of the Jackson campaign persuasive, particularly as it is built on an exaggeration of black clergy and churches as leadership and political in nature, despite evidence for secular forces and leaders causing black churches to adopt more political stances. Nevertheless, Jackson exploited the claim of clerical political authority to assert his mass 'base' while never offering any concrete policy proposals or agenda beyond a seat at the table at the convention. In short, Jackson's campaign represented a thrust by the protest elite to reassert itself, while avoiding any fundamental break from racial authenticity appeals or the rise of neoliberalism among elected officials and protest elites. 

I fear some subsets of identitarians are wedded to the race management system of brokerage and emphasis on the upper income strata, as long as the protest elites and elected officials feature more women and LGBT individuals. What I wonder about now is how the 21st century iteration of this protest elite/elected elite dynamic plays out now in the midst of Black Lives Matter, calls for black leadership that are horizontal or privilege queer black women, and some resurgence of left social democratic or anti-austerity protests? Is Black Lives Matter, Campaign Zero, and other iterations another example of a nascent protest elite which, as Jackson did in the 1980s, legitimizes itself based on a "racial agenda" without any accountability as its links with foundations and neoliberal elected elites, black and white? Is it fair to refer to the transition of this newer, 'diverse' crop of black protest elites as wedging its role into black politics as brokerage and neoliberalism? I suppose it's hard to say in light of the decentralized nature of Black Lives Matter and its varying approach to electoral politics, albeit one in which incorporation into the Democratic 2016 apparatus appears almost complete.