by FOXNews.com
Jesse Jackson speaks to reporters at a press conference Wednesday in Chicago, where he apologized for comments he made about Barack Obama. (AP Photo)
The Rev. Jesse Jackson has vocally championed black causes since the days of “say it loud” and “say it proud” — but this time the outspoken civil rights activist courted controversy with a whisper.
His claim, caught on camera Sunday by FOX News, that Barack Obama is “talking down to black people” not only triggered a media firestorm and a procession of public apologies from Jackson. It also prompted scrutiny of a divide in the black community — between leaders like Jackson who emphasize what they see as the failure of government to fund programs that would help black families, and leaders like Obama who urge black Americans to take more personal responsibility.
What stoked Jackson’s ire specifically was Obama’s Father’s Day address in Chicago, where the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee talked about the obligations of fatherhood in the black community.
“Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father,” Obama said in June. “It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
Comedian Bill Cosby famously weighed in with a call for black self-sufficiency similar to Obama’s, before the Illinois senator even hit the campaign trail.
“You can blame anybody you want but it is a simple feat to claim your child,” Cosby said in August 2006. “You could recognize the fact that it is your child, and you walked out on your child and you left a young human being to try to figure out what it ever did to a mysterious person; and where is that person and what does he look like and why hasn’t he called and talked?”
The two perspectives in the black community offer starkly different prescriptions for the same troubling set of symptoms.
Roughly seven in 10 black children are born out of wedlock, according to government statistics. About 35 percent of blacks under 18 years old live below the poverty line, and 24 percent of blacks over 65 die below the poverty line.
The question of why such conditions have persisted through decades of social spending is the subject of vast academic research and is the veritable third rail of social debate.
It is what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in 1965, termed a “tangle of pathologies.”
John McWhorter, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and author of “All About the Beat: Why Hip Hop Can’t Save Black America,” believes most black audiences connect with the message of figures like Obama and Cosby.
McWhorter, who is among those prominent black leaders who emphasize individual responsibility, told FOX News that the era when racism drove debate in black communities is over.
“Mainstream black thought no longer listens to something like Obama’s Father’s Day speech and cringes. … The criticisms now are from the sidelines,” he said.
“Any culture has its problems. The ones that are in black culture, just like the ones that are in any other culture, are not necessarily due to what white people are doing, or what society is doing,” he said. “Sometimes we just need to talk among ourselves about some bad habits that we, like all human beings in the world, may have fallen into.”
But a different emphasis comes from those with experience dating back to the civil rights movement, when activists sought parity by pressuring the federal government to take belated action against the South’s discriminatory Jim Crow laws.
Jackson said Sunday, during what he thought was a private conversation between him and a fellow FOX News guest, that “Barack … he’s talking down to black people.” He also crudely threatened to castrate Obama.
Jackson apologized, and Obama’s campaign said the apology was accepted.
But Jackson explained — in a written statement, a press conference and several media appearances — that while he is devoted to Obama’s candidacy the Illinois senator’s moral message should also “deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy.”
Rev. Al Sharpton told FOX News Thursday morning that government still shares the burden.
“If you still have double unemployment, if you still have problems in terms of education equity and health care equity, and the disparity by race, you still have to close that gap,” Sharpton said.
FOX News’ James Rosen contributed to this report.
Jesse Jackson in 1983.
On Wednesday evening, Jesse Jackson went on television to say that he had apologized to Barack Obama for remarks made about the presidential candidate on the previous Sunday.

On Sunday, July 6, Jackson, a United States civil rights proponent, minister, and former presidential candidate, was in a television studio for a live interview. While the broadcast went off-air for a commercial, Jackson leaned toward a fellow panelist and uttered a few comments. Though not broadcast live, the cameras were still recording.

The video footage shows Jackson saying that he felt that presidential candidate and presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama, is "talking down to black people."

In the recording, Jackson then added "I want to cut his nuts out," and reiterated "Barack ... he's talking down to black people."

In Jackson's follow-up statement on Wednesday he said he had called the Obama campaign to apologize "for any harm or hurt that this hot mic private conversation may have caused."

"My support for Senator Obama's campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal," Jackson said.

Bill Burton, a spokesperson for Obama, said that Barack Obama would "continue to speak out about our responsibilities to ourselves and each other, and he of course accepts Reverend Jackson's apology."

"His comments were a combination of personal ego and ideological dispute," said Clarence Page of the ''Chicago Tribune'', who has covered Jackson for many years.

Many, including Page, have suggested that Jackson's comment was in response to a speech delivered by Obama on Father's Day. "Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father," Obama said on June 15. "It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father."