Jesse Jackson Compares UK to Taliban over ‘White Male Supremacy’

Rev. Jesse Jackson has compared the UK to the Taliban over the presence of ‘white male supremacy’ within the country.

Left-wing activist Reverend Jesse Jackson has compared the UK to the Taliban over elements of “white male supremacy” within the country.

Jackson had previously referred to Britain as the “mother of racism” after a government report found that the country was not “deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”.

“Women and people of colour are still facing the shadow of white male supremacy both here and in the US,” Jackson, who was visiting the United Kingdom, told The Guardian on Monday.

“We complain about the Taliban but we do it ourselves in a nicer, gentler way,” he added.

Jackson also criticised the lack of so-called “affirmative action” within the UK.

“There must be some form of affirmative action after years of negative action,” the civil rights leader said.

The measures, which aim to increase the number of people from minority backgrounds in various parts of society, are often not possible in the UK, falling foul of British anti-discrimination law.

Despite this, diversity quotas have been used by public institutions such as the state-owned BBC to increase the number of people employed from minority backgrounds.

Jackson also heaped praise on the controversial Black Lives Matter movement, saying that it was “consciousness-raising”, and that it was “a new name for an old process”, following in the footsteps of the black power movement in the US.

This is not the first time Jackson has criticised the United Kingdom.

After a report by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government concluded that Britain was in fact not “deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”, Jackson contested the findings, saying that Britain was the “mother of racism”.

“I’ve travelled across Britain and clearly there’s a pattern of racism,” Jackson said, going on to emphasise that Britain played a major role in enslaving Africans.

This is despite the fact that Britain was one of the first major powers to abolish the practice in 1807, going so far as to put the Royal Navy to work freeing slaves and chasing slavers from both domestic and international ships.

Jackson however claimed that because of Britain’s influence in the historical slave trade, the nation “owns racism and people know it”.