This part made me think about the recent speculation about Appalachian voters and Obama:

Jackson likes to recount a story from 1989, about a visit to Camp Solidarity in Virginia, where miners were in the midst of the historic Pittston strike. They were, for the most part, large men, white, partial to camouflage, 10,000 strong. Jackson thought they looked pretty fierce. Rich Trumka, then president of the United Mine Workers, told them, "Y'all probably wondering why Jesse Jackson is here. Last year we were told to be scared of him. And this year the folks we gave our money to are nowhere to be seen. So I want you to ask yourselves, Which would you rather have, a black friend or a white enemy?"

It was a question other Southern white trade unionists had raised during the campaigns with their memberships, many of them Reagan Democrats. As elsewhere, the miners listened and responded enthusiastically. Jackson always maintained that a progressive candidate could reach such Democrats with straight talk, empathy, class-angled economics and an appeal to common human values--what veteran activist Anne Braden, who'd organized Rainbow rallies in Appalachia that drew thousands of poor white nonvoters or registered Republicans, called "appealing to the best instincts of Southern whites as opposed to the worst, which is what Bill Clinton played to."

The Pittston story provokes a question now. After all the energy, vision, galvanizing presence and new voters Jackson brought to the scene, can it be said that the party and established progressive institutions answered in the same way as the plain people? Or did they, perhaps, prefer the white enemy to the black friend?

But they both have a number of very loyal black friends, people who are certainly in a position to recognize and disown a racist. These things are not incompatible.

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

Exactly. I've been shocked to learn that some people believe that because they aren't members of Stormfront, the Klan or committed a hate crime they aren't racist!

Stunning.