Many are asking questions about the silence from civil right “leaders” such as Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton about the recent beating of a white student by three black classmates on a Florida school bus, given their role in turning the Trayvon Martin case into a national civil rights controversy. I caught up with Rev. Jackson at Chicago’s annual Bud Billiken Back-to-School Parade on Saturday.
Here was Jackson’s full, unedited response:
Breitbart News: Rev. Jackson, can you comment on the recent beating that happened between three black kids that beat up the kid on a school bus? Does black leadership have a responsibility to say something about that kind of violence?
Jackson: People who care should speak to it. I was in Africa until yesterday, I heard about it. We are trying to make contact with the family of the kid because we should discourage people attacking people, whether it’s black, white, white, black, black, that people should stop attacking people. We must learn to live together respectfully in a civilized way. And it becomes white, black, black white, it just makes matters worse, it does not make matters better.
Breitbart News: The question is based on the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman case. That case was brought into the national arena as a very racially divisive case, as a white on black crime.
Jackson: It’s hard to make a comparison, in one case a man was unarmed, killed by another man, last year a hundred and thirty five blacks were killed, black men, unarmed, killed by vigilantes, police, killed by security guards, so whether it’s the case of Oakland, California, or the case in New York, it’s just too much of it. Wherever it occurs, it must always be discouraged; there must be a deterrent from it occurring. We must urge people to live in civilized ways.
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