Taylor Schlitz: Jesse Jackson’s words are still relevant to Gen Z

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When news broke of the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, I followed the tributes and retrospectives. Nearly 10 hours later, a different kind of remembrance appeared on my screen. A clip from a 1989 episode of the TV show “A Different World” had begun circulating on TikTok.

In it, Jackson stands before students at Hillman College, a fictional historically Black university, and addresses a young man who feels insignificant, powerless and convinced that as one person he cannot make a difference.

Jackson disagrees.

He reminds the students that change in America did not begin in the White House or on Wall Street. It began with individuals who believed they counted. Rosa Parks refused to move. Nine students walked into Little Rock Central High. Young people marched, organized and, in some cases, died for the right to vote. One person can make a difference, he tells them. History shifts when someone decides to stand up.

I watched that clip more than once. Then I called my parents.

For mine, it feels different.

Gen Z has developed a well-documented nostalgia for the 1990s, a decade most of us never lived through. We scroll through old sitcoms and other media searching for something steadier than the present. But the longing is not really about fashion or theme songs. It is about the illusion of less complexity — a world that felt more legible than the one we are navigating now.

The late 1980s and 1990s were hardly tranquil. Yet there was visible forward motion. Apartheid collapsed. The Cold War ended. A serious Black presidential campaign was no longer unimaginable. The Voting Rights Act still felt durable.

That TV clip from 1989 feels like it belongs to that era of confidence.

But if you listen closely, Jackson was not speaking from comfort. He was speaking into doubt.

That is the part that lands differently now.

Gen Z does not lack awareness. We are hyper aware. We follow court rulings in real time. We debate policy in group chats. We show up to protests. We register to vote. And yet many of us know Dwayne’s specific frustration, the feeling of trying to name what matters while it seems so many others can simply scroll past it.

When urgency meets indifference, discouragement sets in. The temptation is not only to lose faith in institutions, it is to lose faith in people. To conclude that engagement is for the few and distraction is the default.

Jackson’s response was not sentimental. In one scene, Dwayne goes to apologize after a supporter posts a campaign poster that pairs him with Jackson. Dwayne is embarrassed, his campaign is struggling, and he tells Jackson he is ready to drop out. Jackson does not indulge the retreat. He tells him, “You got to stand up. You can’t surrender. A man can’t be heard if he stops talking. Stand up.”

That is the part that feels written for this moment.

Jackson offers the opposite. He argues that dignity requires presence, and that participation is not only for the confident. It is also for the discouraged. His message to Dwayne is not that the system will be gentle, but that quitting guarantees you will never be heard.

That tension is not theoretical here.

In Minnesota, immigration enforcement actions and the public response have sharpened debates about safety, belonging and accountability. Protests have formed. Students have organized. The emotions are real.

Beneath the debate is a more fundamental question: Who counts?

Jackson’s public life returned repeatedly to that point. We must turn to each other, not on each other. Coalition, not fragmentation. Participation, not withdrawal.

Jackson did not promise instant transformation. He offered a framework. Dignity first. Participation second. Hope as discipline. “Keep hope alive” was never casual optimism. It was a demand to remain engaged even when outcomes lag behind effort.

He was born into segregation and lived long enough to see a Black man elected president. He also lived long enough to see backlash, retrenchment and renewed fights over voting rights and immigration. Progress did not move in a straight line. It surged and it stalled. It expanded and it met resistance.

Many in my generation were children during the two terms of President Barack Obama, absorbing the language of possibility. We came of age during intense polarization and the rise and return of President Donald Trump, watching institutions strain under pressure. It can be tempting to interpret setback as futility.

Jackson’s life suggests something else. Backlash is not proof that participation failed. It is evidence that participation mattered.

After I hung up with my parents, I watched the clip again. In 1989, Jackson stood before fictional students and told them that their votes mattered, that their presence mattered, that history bends when young people decide to move it.

Gen Z was not expecting to relitigate so many of the fights that defined earlier decades. We were told the arc bent forward. Instead, we find ourselves guarding gains and questioning durability.

The question Jackson answered still lingers.

One person can make a difference. Not alone. Not instantly. But cumulatively.

In this different world, the challenge is not whether we can critique the system. It is whether we will participate in shaping it.

The clip resonates because it names something my generation recognizes: the temptation to feel small.

Nearly 40 years later, that refusal may be his most relevant gift.

In a different world, he told students they counted.