Manhood and M3

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a great post up (boy is that ever redundant) on the long simmering discontent many young Blacks have felt for the Jesse Jackson model of civil rights advocacy. He notes that many Whites have been surprised to see this view coming out of the Black community. And I think he gets at the reason why (albeit obliquely). The center-to-right critique of Jesse Jackson is that it is "whiny"; that it is too demanding of Whites and not focused enough on what Blacks can do for themselves. And wouldn't you know it, but the main Black alternative to that style of politics makes that very same pitch: it also indicts Black leaders whose focus on appealing to Whites is emasculating and, as Coates puts it, "another form of shuffling."

The problem is the folks making that claim are people like Louis Farrakhan. Which explains the popularity of the Million Man March -- but it also explains why White people couldn't really process it as a true alternative to Jackson. Simply put, White people couldn't handle the fact that they wanted African-Americans to become Black Muslims. So they just told themselves that the Million Man March was another instance of Black whiny pleading, missing the point entirely, and carried on as if nothing had happened.