Word: afro
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Though Afro-American politics is presently only at the formative stage of this kind of political maturation--compared, say, to Jewish-American politics--the importance of Jesse Jackson's bid for a presidential candidacy is its potential for generating political benefits infinitely superior to those produced by Black leadership heretofore. And no one is more aware of this than Jesse Jackson himself: "My running," Jackson remarks, "will stimulate thousands to run [for elected office]: it would make millions register. If you can get your share of legislators, mayors, sheriffs, school-board members, tax assessors and dog-catchers, you can live...
...impact of a Jackson candidacy upon the voting behavior of Blacks--especially working-class and lower-class Blacks who make up a disproportionate share of the "party of non-voters," to use Walter Dean Burnham's apt phrase. Nationally, some 41 percent of 17.6 million voting-age Afro-Americans are not registered (compared to 34 percent of voting-age whites) and in the South (whose electoral votes will be crucial in 1984) the situation is worse still. Voter apathy among Blacks is tantamount to political suicide in today's neo-conservative era, as seen in Alabama in 1980 where Reagan...
Owing to Jesse Jackson's unique charismatic capacity for populist around among lower-starts Afro-Americans, a Jackson presidential candidacy is capable of smashing Black voter apathy and, thereby, affecting the outcome of Reagan's bid for a second term even if Reagan gained his 1980 percentage of white votes...
Thus a spur to more Black candidacies for elected office and an assist to the death knell of Black voter apathy constitute important spinoffs from a Jesse Jackson presidential candidacy, thoroughly justifying it. These benefits over-shadow the concern of Jackson's detractors among Afro-American leaders like Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP and the National Urban League's John Jacob, among others, that, in Jacob's words--"the Black [presidential] candidate could very well turn out to be a spoiler--allowing... less desirable candidates to win primaries and perhaps even the nomination...
...total of 3933 delegates. But so what! Victory for a Jackson candidacy is not measured in this conventional manner. Jackson, a master visionary like his great mentor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seeks with his candidacy to nurture new notions of the politically possible among Afro-Americans. Old-guard Democrats--assured in the past of Black votes due to Republican neglect of the Black community--can no longer be allowed to pander to the anti-Black features of some neo-conservative white voters without paying a price. New-guard right-wing Republicans can no longer be allowed to reverse federal...