"It hurts me that they didn't even try to attempt to see what is happening here, they didn't care."
Shirley Sherrod -- on her forced resignation from the USDA within hours airing of a heavily edited video of Sherrod speaking at an NAACP event by right wing media, in an attempt to portray her and the NAACP as racist. The full video of Sherrod's speech showed otherwise.
Mr. President,
With all due respect, it's time to man up. It is time, way past time for you to grow into the job you were elected to do, and promised to do. It is time to stand up and be the man we hoped we elected. It is time to justify that hope, and the trust that was placed in you. It is time to pick up the mantle of history that has been entrusted to you and prove yourself worthy of carrying it forward.
Too much is at stake now. Too many people are beginning to think their faith in you was misplaced. What's worse is you are proving them right.
Strike one was Van Jones.
Strike two was ACORN.
And now Shirley Sherrod had become strike three.
Yours has become an administration that remains loyal to people who are and have been part of the problem (Any problem we're currently facing. Pick one.)
It's an administration in which a Ben Bernanke can keep a job, but a Van Jones can't.
It's an administration in which a Larry Summers can keep a job, but a Shirley Sherrod can't.
It's an administration in which a Tim Geithner can keep a job, but an Elizabeth Warren may not be able to get one.
It's an administration that quickly leaves twisting in the wind good people who are trying to be a part of the solution, but have the misfortune of being targeted by smear campaigns from a political right-wing you clearly fear more than you respect the concerns of not just progressives who worked hard to put you into office, but the very people Sherrod spoke of in her unedited speech. (The speech is excerpted below, but the full transcript is available at the link.)
But where am I going with this? You know, I couldn't say 45 years ago -- I couldn't stand here and say what I'm saying -- what I will say to you tonight. Like I told you, God helped me to see that it's not just about black people -- it's about poor people. And I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate, you know. As my mother has said to so many, "If we had tried to live with hate in our hearts, we'd probably be dead now."
But I've come to realize that we have to work together and -- you know, it's sad that we don't have a room full of white and blacks here tonight, 'cause we have to overcome the divisions that we have. We have to get to the point where, as Tony Morrison said, "Race exists but it doesn't matter." We have to work just as hard. I know it's -- you know, that division is still here, but our communities are not going to thrive -- you know, our children won't have the -- the communities that they need to be able to stay in and live in and -- and have a good life if we can't figure this out, you all. White people, black people, Hispanic people, we all have to do our part to make our communities a safe place, a healthy place, a good environment.
...That's when it was revealed to me that, ya'll, it's about poor versus those who have, and not so much about white -- it is about white and black, but it's not -- you know, it opened my eyes, 'cause I took him to one of his own and I put him in his hand, and felt okay, I've done my job. But, during that time we would have these injunctions against the Department of Agriculture and -- so, they couldn't foreclose on him. And I want you to know that the county supervisor had done something to him that I have not seen yet that they've done to any other farmer, black or white. And what they did to him caused him to not be able to file Chapter 12 bankruptcy.
...Well, working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who don't, you know. And they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people -- those who don't have access the way others have.
All week long, we've listened to a debate about racism within the Tea Party. Most of it has consisted of hot air and little else. But Shirley Sherrod's speech contains much that could be a positive addition to the debate over racism. There's much wisdom there, actually. And Sherrod isn't the only person who possess it. The irony is that Sherrod is an example of someone who was changed by her experience, and learned to move past her own racism to see someone in need of help and try to give it to him.
If anything, she should have been cited as an example of what we need more people to do. The sad irony is that she was thrown under the bus instead, and a valuable "teachable moment" along with her.
I don't know Shirley Sherrod personally, but I feel I know something about her, because I grew up around women like her much of my life -- who have seen an experienced enough grinding poverty and injustice to last them a lifetime, and who work in their own ways to challenge injustice and fight poverty in their families and communities. As Jill Tubman pointed out, there are millions of black women like Shirley Sherrod, "who run our schools, hospitals, churches and um...voting precincts," and her treatment sends a clear message to them.
You see, like Sherrod, I'm from Georgia. My parents raised us in a North Georgia suburb, but they grew up in South Georgia. Their parents were sharecroppers, as were their grandparents and great grandparents before them, going all the way back to slavery. Like generations before them, my parents grew up picking cotton, until the military draft and marriage took them far beyond the fields they grew up in. (While conducting some genealogical research in college, I traced one branch of my family back to a slave ancestor. I found the location of the plantation on which he was born and which he left after emancipation. I even found the slaveowner whose surname my ancestor retained even after emancipation, that was passed down the generations, and that I bear today.)
I don't know how old Sherrod is, but she seems to be roughly from the same generation as my parents. She's seen much of the same things they've seen. She saw her father murdered by a white man who went unpunished -- something so common at that time in the south, that many African American families have similar stories to tell, or were touched by similar events.
I grew up listening to both my parents -- my mother and my late father -- tell stories of those days. And I'm willing to bet that if I picked up the phone and called my mom right now, she'd have the same insight that Sherrod offered -- that poor whites and poor blacks have been living cheek by jowl in the south long enough for some of them to figure out that there's only about a dimes worth of difference between poor blacks and poor whites, and it's far outweighed by what they have in common -- not having, as I heard my mom say often, "a pot to piss in or a a window to throw it out of."
Sherrod is unsure whether she would return to the USDA if offered her job back.
The woman at the center of a racially tinged firestorm involving the Obama administration and the NAACP said Wednesday she doesn't know if she'd return to her job at the Agriculture Department, even if asked.
"I am just not sure how I would be treated there," Shirley Sherrod said in a nationally broadcast interview. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday he would reconsider the department's decision to oust Sherrod over her comments that she didn't give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago.
She said later in a broadcast interview that she might consider returning if she had the chance, saying she's received encouraging calls, including one from the NAACP.
The White House called the Agriculture Department Tuesday night after more information about Sherrod's remarks emerged, a White House official said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the call, said the White House and the department agreed that the case should be reviewed based on the new evidence.
I can't say that I blame her. Your administration, and in fact your party, has amply demonstrated that when good people who are "reviled and persecuted," and "all manner of evil" is said against them falsely, will be left to twist in the wind, a phrased defined as:
Be abandoned to a bad situation, especially be left to incur blame, as in The governor denied knowing it was illegal and left his aide to twist in the wind. It is also put as leave twisting in the wind, meaning "abandon or strand in a difficult situation," as in Sensing a public relations disaster, the President left the Vice-President twisting in the wind. This expression, at first applied to a President's nominees who faced opposition and were abandoned by the President, alludes to the corpse of a hanged man left dangling and twisting in the open air. [Slang; early 1970s] Also see out on a limb.
Being a black male from the south, the phrase holds special meaning for me, and it's an apt description of what has happened to Shirley Sherrod while your administration saw fit to stand aside, and seek as much distance as possible.
What's perhaps most disappointing is that you -- a president cited as an example of the fulfillment of Martin Luther King's dream -- and your administration abandoned to the tender mercies of right wing media a woman whose work exemplifies the work King himself turned to near the end of his life. His work on race and discrimination led him to address the very issue Sherrod cited in her speech -- "It's not just about black people -- it's about poor people... That's when it was revealed to me that, ya'll, it's about poor versus those who have, and not so much about white -- it is about white and black, but it's not -- you know, it opened my eyes."
King's eyes had been similarly opened.
In his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, King argued that the United States must change its attitude and approach toward the treatment of its poor citizens. He reasoned that since poverty knew no racial boundaries, he couldn't limit his call for congressional action to assist only black Americans.
"In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out," King wrote in 1967. "There are twice as many white poor as [black] poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and [black] alike."
This was a radical--and unpopular--change for the preacher who is best-known for pushing voting, employment, housing and other civil rights for black Americans. At this point in his career, during what would become the final months of his life, he was widening his field of vision to seek an end to poverty among all Americans.
What Sherrod spoke of was truly a "road to Damascus" moment when the "scales fell from her eyes" and she saw that person in front of her was not a "white farmer" but a human being needing help in the midst of a struggle, and took him to one of his "own kind" only to find that he was essentially "just a nigger" to them because, like many of her "own people," he had nothing.
Less than six months before he was killed King launched what he called the Poor People's Campaign. It's focuses were issues that are still crying out to be addressed today: Jobs, income, and housing.
Jobs, income and housing were the main goals of the Poor People's Campaign. The campaign would help the poor by dramatizing their needs, uniting all races under the commonality of hardship and presenting a plan to start to a solution [3]. Under the "economic bill of rights," the Poor People's Campaign asked for the federal government to prioritize helping the poor with a $30 billion anti-poverty package that included a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income measure and more low-income housing [4]. The Poor People's Campaign was part of the second phase of the civil rights movement. While the first phase had exposed the problems of segregation, King hoped to address the "limitations to our achievements" with a second, broader phase [2].
After King's assassination, the campaign ended unsuccessfully, and the economic bill of rights was never passed. Today, King's economic dream remains deferred.
...If anything, the recent economic meltdown and recession have made the injustice of poverty even more profound, especially in a society where the top percentile enjoys undreamed-of prosperity.
Unemployment among African-Americans is nearly double that of whites, according to the National Urban League's latest State of Black America report. Black men and women in this country make 62 cents on the dollar earned by whites. Less than half of black and Hispanic families own homes and they are three times more likely to live below the poverty line.
The nonpartisan group United for a Fair Economy has issued a report that features Martin Luther King Jr. on the cover with the title, "State of the Dream 2010: Drained." Dr. King's dream is in jeopardy, the report's authors write, "The Great Recession has pulled the plug on communities of color, draining jobs and homes at alarming rates while exacerbating persistent inequalities of wealth and income."
Nor will a recovery ameliorate the crisis. "A rising tide does not lift all boats," United for a Fair Economy's report goes on to say, "because the public policies, economic structures and unwritten rules of racism form mountains and ridgelines, and hills and valleys that shape our economic landscape. As a result, a rising economic tide fills the rivers and reservoirs of some, while leaving others dry and parched."
This is a perilous moment. The individualist, greed-driven free-market ideology that both our major parties have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really care about. Popular support for either party has struck bottom, as more and more agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics has corrupted our system, and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help because the free market has failed to generate shared prosperity - its famous unseen hand has become a closed fist.
In very real ways (just ask the millions of Americans who have waited 44+ days for Congress to extend their unemployment benefits, so that they may stave off utter destitution) we are stilled ruled by that closed fist. That's because we still don't hear King.
It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."
The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years -- his last years -- are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.
...Why?
It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.
In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.
But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" -- including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.
Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.
"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
And we choose not to hear people who are carrying on the unfinished work of King's dream, people like Sherrod, whose work -- if done on a larger scale, could go a long way to addressing the economic conditions that catalyze anger, anxiety, and frustration into movements much like the Tea Party.
Without a doubt, King understood that the civil rights movement and the efforts to end segregation were not just about African Americans. The brutality that segregation, lynching, Jim Crow, and slavery visited upon African Americans is well documented. But the man who said "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly," understood that systems of brutality are a two way street. He saw that the system of segregation brutalized the bodies, minds and spirits of both blacks and whites, and was therefore harmful to both.
As progressives, we are working to change -- to heal, actually -- the disastrous results of 30 years of conservative failure and its consequences for everything from our economy to infrastructure to health care. In doing so, we can't afford to ignore that these consequences have been particularly devastating for the very states which have come the strongest and most strident objections to health care reform, the stimulus and other progressive attempts to alleviate those consequences.
...We know the numbers. We've read the reports, and used the statistics -- with a dash or two of snark -- to point out the paradox of people supporting policies against their own interests, and opposing policies that would improve their lot.
But the man who dreamed that "sons of slaves and sons of slaveowners" would someday sit down together dreamed it for both the sons of slaves and the sons of slaveowners -- even if the latter rejected that dream as passionately as the former desired it. He wanted to free both, when he said "If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."
If progressives hope to achieve health care for all, an economy that works for all, a safe and secure world for all, decent jobs, livable wages -- or any of our other goals -- we have to want all of this for the red-faced man yelling about immigrants on the National Mall, and the woman standing up in a townhall meeting, waving a birth certificate in a ziplock bag and shouting "I want my country back!"
Instead we choose the closed fist. We respond to the threat of the closed fist more immediately than we respond to the very issues Sherrod addressed in her speech and in her work.
It took less time for your administration to respond to Andrew Breitbart's deceptively edited video than it took for you to stand and fight for health care reform.
It took less time than it has to break the Senate filibuster on extending unemployment benefits.
It took less time than it has thus far to pass legislation that will create jobs, or extend aid to states that could potentially save 900,000 jobs, or keep hundreds of thousand of teachers on the job.
In all of the above, the shadow of the closed fist has loomed -- both in the form of threats of filibuster and obstruction, and threats of violence -- and fear of it has stalled the work that we -- the coalition of black and white and latino, young and old, poor, working class, and middle class, etc. -- elected you and trusted you to do.
That trust has been abused, and must now be earned back.
But you have some catching up to do. Already Glenn Beck (in an irony your administrations panic made possible) and former Tea Party leader Mark Williams (booted from the Tea Party for his actual blatant racism) are out in front of you, defending Sherrod while you're administration is reviewing a situation that even my seven-year-old son would recognize and summarize by saying "It's not fair"
You may start by reinstating Shirley Sherrod. Though she would be utterly justified in rejecting such an offer, she deserves that much. You may go further by admitting, as the NAACP has (to its credit), that you were "snookered."
But, beyond this event, you have another job to do: prove to those of us who voted for you, and the change you promised and claimed to represent, not just that you still are that guy but that you ever were.
It's not an impossible task. Despite all of the above, some of us still hope our trust was justified, and will meet you somewhere between here and the middle -- if you decide to move in our direction and be the kind of leader we hoped and believe you would be, the kind of leader that Shirley Sherrod has been in her community. If you truly want to be the change you said you wanted, and that we desperately want to see in the world, show us, and give us reason to join you, again.
But the first move must be yours.
It's time to man up. It is time to stand up.
Follow Terrance Heath on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TerranceDC
Bob Cesca: Fooled Again by Breitbart and the Wingnut Right
Andrew Breitbart has done it again. This time, he's flimflammed the White House, the NAACP and the traditional news media. I wonder who will be fired and disgraced next.
White House apologizes to Shirley Sherrod
Shirley Sherrod an innocent bystander on never-ending race highway
No beer summit for Sherrod, White House aide says
White House Apologizes to Ousted USDA Official Shirley Sherrod
Willie Nelson and Farm Aid Stand with Shirley Sherrod, Call for Her ...
Sometimes speakers of truth are punished for it. This was one of those times.
More voices from the left need to call out this President. Black, Hispanic and white. The administration would argue that it is accomplishing a lot legislatively and they are. But in terms of the battle between right and left this WH is getting its a$$ handed to them. They've yet to even throw a serious punch. The right is set on their course to keep the majority of Americans poorer and more and more powerless as well as inflame whites to be afraid of and mobilized against non-whites. Our society is naturally becoming more progressive and ethnic and that is a direct threat to the right and they are fighting back with both barrels blazing. With slime of course.
I love Obama. He was my senator and I've always been for him. But sadly I'm starting to lose hope in him.
SUE THEM NOW!
Mrs. Sherrod comments during this speech lessened the importance of the NAACP. If people collectively agree that race is not an issue anymore than the NAACP no longer has a fight and lost it’s power.
The NAACP attacks the Tea Party because it needs to find a “cause or purpose” even if it is made up.
Shirley Sherrod was a racist 25 years ago but that is no longer seems to be the case. I think she is very brave to tell her story. She sees the bigger picture now, that Obama does NOT share. Read his book, Dreams Of My Father and don’t forget his other slip ups while in office. Obama and the NAACP believe in the same idea that it is blacks against the whites. Sherrod is NOT on Obama's TEAM anymore and that is why she got the boot.
Speaking pragmatically, if the TPM wants people to listen to them vis a vis possible solutions to the serious economic problems in this country then it should stop denigrating people who don't share their views and threatening the duly elected leadership of this country, if for no other reason, than because the rest of us are tired of the nonsense.
"Obama and the NAACP believe in the same idea that it is blacks against the whites"'
The not the position of the president or the NAACP: Those are Fox News/Andrew Breightbart talking
points. Conservatives don't fix anything, but they sure do spend a lot of time trying to make people afraid of things and insighting division.
I, for one will have none of it
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072106437.html
From what I can see, Shirley Sherrod is a wonderful woman. I hope she sues the pants off of Fox and Breitbart for defamation of character.
I am afraid President Obama is too much like Carter when we need the strength of FDR
It was a pleasure to read your powerful essay. Meet your newest fan.
You echoed many of the same sentiments as Keith Olbermann did in his special comment tonight. (Look for it tomorrow folks, it's well worth watching.)
He also asked the president to stand up. He suggested that Mr. Obama take a look at the movie "The American President" and play over and over the part where the President in the movie admits that: "I've been trying so hard to keep my job that I forgot to do my job."
I look forward to reading more insightful columns of yours in the future.
The simple fact is (as has been pointed out several times by now), the White House jumped the gun and fired Sherrod to cover its own backside. And that decision was made before Fox News ever aired the clip, released by Andrew Breitbart.
Moreover, the left simply got hit with a taste of its own medicine, and they're screaming like children, as a result. All this race-baiting on their end is about getting minorities to midterms, to keep the Democrats from getting the hell beat out of them this November.
And, it's all because they can't run on Obama's pitiful record (or theirs). He simply either hasn't delivered on his campaign promises or what he's delivered did NOT produce the advertised results.
Fox ran the clip all day Monday before she was asked to resign on Tuesday. Try to keep up from now on okay.
With regard to your charge that "the left simply got hit with a taste of its own medicine", I'll ask you the same question I've asked other teabaggers. None of them seem to be able to answer it Maybe you can.
"Can you name one instance where a demonstratively false or distorted story was relentlessly pounded into the media narrative by MSNBC. the same way Fox has done with this story or anyone of a dozen others over the years?
O'Reilly may have the ratings, thanks to the over abundance of drooling rubes we have in this country who lap up what he shovels out without question, but Olbermann has the truth. Unless you can prove otherwise.
Yeah, and Bush was going to shrink government, bring down the deficit, and not engage in any nation building.
How'd that work out for ya?
I am really surprised that Sherrod was fired on the basis of a faux news report. It's too easy to discredit people these days, and black people often don't have the level of support to battle back. President Obama should realize that the right wing media operations are tabloid propaganda and should just be ignored. They spread lies and disinformation in their quest to regain power for the likes of Bush and Cheney.
As has been stated many times, Fox had NOTHING to do with Sherrod getting fired, nor did Breitbart. By the time Fox got the story, Sherrod had already been canned.
Sherrod said as much herself. The USDA folks were calling her constantly to get her to resign (effectively to give her notice that she'd been scrapped) as she was driving back to Athens, GA. Sherrod cites under-Secretary, Cheryl Cook, as calling her several times to learn of her location, so she could pull to the side of the road and quit, because "You're going to be on Glenn Beck, tonight".
The White House and NAACP wanted to distance themselves from someone who made them look racist. The NAACP dogged Sherrod, to save their own pitiful behinds. They didn't give a BLACK WOMAN, and a HUGE SUPPORTER of their cause the benefit of the doubt. And, they had the ENTIRE TAPE. They accused the Tea Party of racism within its ranks. Now, the same charge was thrown at them and they got humiliated. So, Sherrod had to be sacrificed.
And, all of this is an attempt to rally blacks for midterms, to keep the Dems from getting clobbered in November.
Both the NAACP and WH needs to stop reacting to the contrivances of right wing media whose charges of black racism are absolutely idiotic. Racism stems from the view that a racial group is superior to another and is enabled by the power to oppress the "inferior" group economically, socially, politically, educationally, etc. Black people don't have that kind of power or the numbers to oppress the racial majority in this country in the same way that black people experienced racism. Odds are that black people will continue to have their lives affected substantially by race & racism and that whites will never experience the kind of racial oppression that alters their lives.
Your blog post states exactly what I have been ventinjg on other blogs now for the past hour - this was a 21st Century LYNCHING by FAUX News rabid mobs, and, the Administration LET IT HAPPEN!!!
Van Jones
ACORN
And now Ms. Sherrod. Luckily, this last instance was so outrageous and intolerable, they saw the error in their ways immediately. But, why the heck isn't it obvious in the first place?
This is so hurtful, and I am so angry right now. I saw this spineless quality in him back when he had won the nomination, and didn't know how to take on the right when they were trying to link him to the mortgage scandal.
I never in my worst fears thought it could ever come to this. They ALL need to be taken to task on this, and FAUX News needs to be sued.
It appears some of you liberals never read the articles that indicated that, by the time the video aired on Fox News, The White House had already canned Sherrod.
If you doubt me, listen to Sherrod herself. She said they were calling her numerous times while she was driving. Heck, under-Secretary of USDA, Cheryl Cook, wanted her to resign on the side of the highway, because "you're going to be on Glenn Beck, tonight!".
The decision had already been made that Sherrod had to go. What kills me is why folks aren't taking the NAACP to task for throwing her under the bus, even though they had the entire speech. I'm not buying Ben Jealous' "we were snookered by Fox News" line. Sherrod spoke at an NAACP event. How could he NOT have access to the full tape?
At the very least, he could have given her the benefit of the doubt. NOPE!! To cover their behinds, after all that smack they talked about the Tea Party, they hung Sherrod out to dry.