Story highlights Ben Jealous: Democratic Party has opportunity to change its rules to be more inclusive

Outdated system of superdelegates has always been at least in part about race, he says

Ben Jealous is the former president and CEO of the NAACP. He is a partner at Kapor Capital and the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor and Visiting Lecturer in Public and Intellectual Affairs and Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He endorsed Bernie Sanders. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his and do not reflect the opinions of any institution with which he is affiliated.

(CNN) This weekend, the Democratic Party finds itself at a crossroads. Before the start of its national convention, the Democratic rules committee will meet in Philadelphia and make a choice: Keep the current superdelegate system or not.

Some will argue this debate is arcane. However, nothing could be further from the truth. On the one hand, we can return to our earlier tradition of being a party where the only factor that decides who wins our nomination is who wins the most delegates in the primaries. Or we can continue to give this privileged group of superdelegates -- fewer than 1,000 people who are disproportionately old, white and male -- more influence than the combined weight of Democratic voters in 24 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia.

Ben Jealous

Anyone still struggling to understand why this is no esoteric matter or to decide which decision our party should make about the future of superdelegates should consider how we got superdelegates in the first place. Superdelegates were created in 1980 at a time when young voters and voters of color were rapidly gaining influence in selecting the Democratic nominee for president.

During the two decades prior, the party had become strikingly more inclusive. It started with the reforms pushed by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. It accelerated with the nomination of student civil rights leader Julian Bond for vice president at the 1968 DNC. (He was then too young to accept.) Momentum built with Shirley Chisholm becoming the first black American and woman to participate on stage in the Democratic Party Primary debates in 1972. Moreover, the power of the Democratic Party's "new majority" became undeniable when progressive outsiders succeeded in becoming its official nominees for president in 1968 and again in 1976.

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This history was still palpable when the Rev. Jesse Jackson became the first progressive candidate to confront the negative influence of superdelegates in 1984. He called their impact on the process "inequitable,'' ''demonstrably unfair'' and ''distorted by rules that favor insider politics.'' I spoke with Jackson this week and he still feels the same way.