OPINION | Jesse Jackson’s rainbow coalition: ‘We must come together’

FILE – Jesse Jackson, with his wife Jacqueline, concedes defeat in the Illinois Democratic primary on March 16, 1988, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Lisa Genesen, File)

In the 1980s, I had lived through the first iteration of affirmative action. I was a second generation son of a Filipino immigrant of the 1920s. I still hadn’t processed that fully.

My politics were still evolving. I was in capitalist America, so I should just join in, right?

And then I saw Jesse Jackson speak in his  run for president in 1984.

I remember the sound first.

Not applause – not yet.

It was the hum before the electricity. The room at the Moscone Center felt like history stretching its legs. The 1984 Democratic National Convention wasn’t supposed to be about me. I wasn’t Black. I wasn’t Southern. I wasn’t even sure where Filipino Americans fit on the political map back then.

Sure, I did have a pre-Bruno Mars perm.  That was vanity.

And then Jesse Jackson walked to the podium. And my perm was more than a look.

Jackson didn’t just speak to the Black community. He spoke through it –  like a signal strong enough to reach anyone who ever felt outside the room.

”Our flag is red white and blue, but our nation is Rainbow, red, yellow, brown, black and white,” Jackson said. “We’re all precious in God’s sight.”

And then the applause and cheers went on for a full 15 seconds.

He called America a quilt. Not a single cloth, not one color, not one texture. A quilt – stitched together from differences that somehow are held by “a common thread.”

And then Jackson laid it out for everyone to imagine a new America: “The  White, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the business person, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt.”

And suddenly, there I was, a Filipino Asian American journalist trying to understand where I belonged, hearing a Black preacher explain that the question wasn’t where do you fit? but how do we hold together?

That’s the moment the bridge appeared.

Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition 

Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition message wasn’t theoretical. It was radical inclusion. His campaign talked about all the people who didn’t usually see themselves centered on a convention stage.

I remember thinking: Did he just say us too?

Because Asian Americans in the ’80s were still learning political visibility. In 1984, some saw civil rights as just Black and White. Asians were but a footnote. And Filipinos were mixed in there somewhere.

We were hardworking, quiet, grateful. The model minority myth was a polite way of saying “stay in your lane.”

But Jackson’s speech didn’t ask the powers that be for permission. And for the rest of us who may not have realized we were in the fight for recognition, he demanded solidarity.

That night I felt connected to the Black freedom struggle not as an observer but as a participant in the same unfinished project. The lesson hit me hard: if the Black community could force America to confront its moral contradictions, maybe the rest of us had room to step forward too.

We are one — not because our experiences are identical, but because injustice is contagious. And so is courage.

Why it hit different in San Francisco

San Francisco was the right stage in 1984. The city had been a crossroads of movements — antiwar protests, LGBTQ activism, labor organizing, immigrant communities building new identities. The convention itself was messy, contentious, emotional.

Perfect conditions for truth.

Jackson stood there as the first Black presidential candidate to speak from a major party convention podium.

You could feel the weight of that moment — like the country briefly paused to imagine a wider definition of “American.”

As a Filipino American, I thought about my parents’ immigrant journey. How we were always included in laws that were anti-Black. Those anti-miscegenation laws that prevented mix marriage between Black and White, those laws impacted Filipinos from mixing too.

The main message for Filipinos was simply to work hard and stay invisible. And now here was this preacher saying visibility wasn’t vanity – it was survival.

He wasn’t asking people to shrink their identities. He was asking them to bring them forward.

The connection wasn’t symbolic – it was personal

For me, that speech rewired more than my perm.

Black history had always felt like a parallel story — important, but separate. After Jackson, it felt inseparable from my own.

The civil rights movement opened doors all minorities walk through now. The language of coalition, justice, and dignity wasn’t just Black political rhetoric; it was a framework that allowed Asian Americans, including Filipinos, to speak up without apologizing for being here.

I didn’t realize then how much of my journalism would be shaped by that moment — writing across communities, connecting stories instead of isolating them.

When Jackson said America wasn’t a blanket but a quilt, he handed us all a needle and thread.

Unity in an age of division

Today the phrase sounds almost naïve. Politics thrives on fracture. Social media rewards outrage. Everyone’s algorithm says your group is under attack.

But that’s exactly why the memory of Jackson matters.

Jackson’s genius wasn’t pretending we were the same. He acknowledged pain, exclusion, and anger — then argued that progress required coalition anyway. He said we could survive without each other, but we couldn’t win without each other.

That’s a political reality that hits harder now.

Because as a Filipino Asian American who has seen anti-Asian violence rise, and as someone who watches Black communities still fighting for basic justice, I know division only serves power.

Solidarity isn’t sentimental. It’s strategic.

The night I understood the assignment

I walked out of that convention in 1984 lighter and heavier at the same time.

Lighter because someone finally articulated that belonging didn’t require assimilation.

Heavier because once you hear a call for coalition, you can’t un-hear it. You carry it into every story you tell.

That night connected me to the Black community not through guilt or politics but through shared aspiration — the belief that the American story expands when more people claim it.

And maybe that’s why, decades later, I still hear Jackson’s voice  in my head when the country feels like it’s splitting apart:

We see different colors.

We speak different languages.

We pray differently.

But the thread is the same.

As Jackson concluded, “We must come together.”

Relevant still

The night Jesse Jackson spoke in San Francisco, I didn’t just hear a Black leader. I heard permission — to belong loudly, to stand in coalition, and to understand that freedom isn’t a solo act—to this very day.

I feel privileged to have been in the room back then. But for those who weren’t alive back then, know this: the news of Jackson’s passing remains the proper counter balance to the acts of the current president. On the news of Jackson’s death, Trump is actually using old photographs of him and Jackson to deny the white racist bent of MAGA. Trump has black friends other than Clarence Thomas!

This is the administration that has made diversity, equity and inclusion a dirty word. The one that essentially has banned affirmative action, that has tried to erase Black and ethnic history as too negative about the great American experience.

Don’t be fooled by the fake truth Trump peddles.

The rainbow truth that Jackson stood for still holds. Jackson’s truth imagined America as a living, breathing quilt, a symbol of unity in the shape of our democracy.

No matter how Trump and MAGA attack it, Jackson’s truth holds and continues to keep hope alive.

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, news analyst, comic stage performer and former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He writes for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel. He has written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American, race and social justice issues for more than 30 years. Find him on YouTube, patreon and substack. 

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