The two have long been criticized as publicity junkies, but they have loomed so large for so long that it had become hard to imagine a black America without them as the de facto spokesmen. That is, until the ascendancy of Barack Obama (a man whom King, were he alive today, would recognize as precarious progress incarnate). Obama has made himself the first viable black presidential candidate in large part by selling a vision of the future in which our nation’s racial wounds can be healed by cooperation rather than opposition.
A major component of Obama’s strategy has been to distance himself from prominent black leaders while being careful not to minimize their contributions. He has successfully navigated the tightrope walk. Obama has gained the support of Jackson, Sharpton and the Revs. Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright—all of whom Obama has kept at arm’s length or publicly rebuked. Obama hasn’t lost any of his support among the black community as a result. This suggests that if a general-election campaign succeeds, his presidency could have a changing effect on the leadership of black America not seen since King’s death.
Sharpton acknowledges that an Obama presidency would change certain equations, but dismisses the notion it would damage his own relevance. “Obama is not running for the president of black America, he’s running for president of America,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “He wouldn’t be in a position to mobilize people in response to racial injustice.” Jackson agrees: “We currently have an African-American secretary of State, but that hasn’t impacted our foreign policy. Having someone in the White House who is sensitive to these issues is helpful, but you still have to raise them.”
Their positions on the issue are, of course, biased in the interest of self-preservation. But it’s true that an Obama presidency would not mitigate the need for racial-justice advocacy. It would, however, raise new questions about whether Jackson and Sharpton are the men to do it. As long as people crave today’s fresh ideas over yesterday’s leftovers, the leadership of social movements will tend to fall to the young. Obama’s youth has influenced his ability to inspire enthusiasm as much as his race has. Because of the impact King had, it’s easy to forget that he was only 39 when he was killed. Jackson, meanwhile, is 66. Sharpton is 53. Farrakhan and Wright, now both retired, are 74 and 66, respectively. Rather than taking the tools of the civil-rights movement—stirring rhetoric, symbolic unity, nonviolent resistance—and arming a new generation with them, Jackson and Sharpton have never let go.
As they advance in age, the men will have to cede the spotlight to someone else—a new, ground-level leader. Like them, that person will have to be able to lobby for racial equality in ways elected officials cannot. But proximity to Jackson or Sharpton won’t confer those responsibilities on anyone. Or will they? Jackson seems unsure. “Most doors open because you know the name of a certain person,” he tells NEWSWEEK, suggesting he might be the one to eventually groom his successor. But then he suggests the opposite: “You can’t just name a guy. When doors open, all kinds of guys come through.” If the Obama experiment proves a success, if Americans can bridge their separations through dialogue, it becomes less likely that the person who walks through that door will hew to a bombastic style.
It’s possible that the black leader of the future looks like James Rucker and Van Jones of the Web-based grass-roots organization Color of Change. Started in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Color of Change uses the Internet as a tool to mobilize support for issues affecting black Americans. (Last year it raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a Jena Six legal fund.) The approach is not dramatically different than the civil-rights-era model, just more tech-savvy and less grandiloquent. Rucker is far from the charismatic-preacher archetype. A Stanford University graduate with a background in the software industry, he served as director of grass-roots mobilization for MoveOn.org prior to starting his own similar organization to focus specifically on the concerns of black Americans. His cofounder, Jones, is president of Green for All, an organization dedicated to helping get people out of poverty with green-collar jobs.
Despite having formed only in 2005, Color of Change boasts a membership of 400,000, roughly the same number of members as in the almost century-old NAACP. The group has capitalized on the same enthusiasm Obama has harnessed, and has created a network of citizens whose interest in racial justice is active, not passive. “We’re taking more ownership over our role in politics,” says the group’s executive director, Andre Banks. “It’s not about following an iconic leader, it’s about people finding their own reasons to act on the issues and values important to them.” This could be the new model of black leadership, in which the message and the messenger aren’t jockeying for attention.
An Obama presidency wouldn’t be likely to immediately shove black leaders like Jackson and Sharpton out of the dialogue—nor should they be shoved out. But it would have a transformative effect on how black Americans see themselves. Polls have consistently shown blacks as pessimistic about the country’s level of racial progress. Whites are more likely to think the country is ready for a black president than are blacks, and black support for Obama coalesced only after his victory in the Iowa caucuses. But there’s still a willingness among African-Americans to suspend disbelief and try it his way, to see if black America’s concerns can be addressed better by cooperators than by agitators. The resilience of Jackson and Sharpton has been fueled by black America’s desire to hold onto King’s memory. If Obama shows that his new model can work, blacks may finally be ready to let go of King’s ghost.
