Ta-Nehisi Coates has an interesting post outlining the longstanding criticisms that Jesse Jackson's message that insufficient social services and government spending are the main cause of problems for African-Americans. Jackson's approach, says Coates, had an "implicit message...that if white people don't help you, you're fucked," and was always in tension with the parallel message that focused more tightly on self-empowerment. Jackson's conflict with Obama, in other words, isn't some new thing, but rather the latest iteration of a fairly old thing.
