there is a hell of a difference in degree of acceptance, and not just among black-african-americans, in ones skin tone, diction, accent, and degree of political moderation, or at least sounding that way by virtue of class background and speech patterns...
sharpton is nowhere near the stature of jesse jackson, but no less reviled for some of the same reasons, among corps members of big whitey's mind management concern - and that firm includes some of the lighter skinned "halfies" who, back in the day, were called "the light and brights" at howard u. and some of the other schools filled with the sons and daughters of what was once called the black bourgeoisie...
sharpton, like jesse, makes no concession to white speech patterns or inflections, nor does he hide the fact that very often, he (they) are addressing black people who didn't go to college, and may even be - gasp - urban, while more often making pointed criticisms of the system itself, and not simply dealing with personalities...
this was especially true of jesse in '84, but even his '88 campaign was often pretty left-wing, and always more social democratic than any other democrat in many of the position papers and speeches...and that won't do, for a white guy, but is definitely not acceptable from a black, especially one who does not sound "african american", which means nice, clear, precise, good school, comfortable with white reality, style and content...
what many people seem to respond to in obama is that he does not sound, and barely looks, like one of "them", which makes him far more palatable to (no quotes) them...
that's not to say that the guy isn't, or may not be, progressive , or representative of a new breed of black politicians...nevertheless, i have to agree that whether he's half, a third or a quarter, his degree of white skin tone, speech tone, and background tone, have much to do with his new found star quality...and those tones have much to do with the fact that sharpton, and especially jesse, were not and aren't likely to ever be accepted and smiled upon in this fashion, by big whitey...
fs