Shirley Sherrod

[Premmy]

Guess I'm doing it
*sigh*
Shirley Sherrod (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38352348/ns/default)is an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The basic gist of her story is Tea Party Douchebag Andrew Breitbart posted a video clip of her giving a speech( 20 years ago) at an NAACP hosted event directed at kids in rural areas. In the speech she talks about how her father was killed by angry white farmers when she was young, and how she grew up to be in her current position helping farmers, many of them just like her father, and many more like the men who killed him.

She told a story about her first encounter with a white man in which she felt animosity towards him, and shuffled him off to a white lawyer to let him handle the problem. She goes on to say that the white lawyer dicked the farmer around, and she got involved, becoming fast friends with said farmer and realizing it's about the haves and have nots and not about race.*



Guess which five seconds of her fourty minute speech got posted and circulated?

And you don't have to guess, that she was fired THAT DAY before anybody had even seen the full tape, and over the next two days, ended up in a huge scandal when the tape was released.


Coupla things
1: This tape was, presumably, put up in response to allegations of Racism amongst teapartiers from the NAACP. This is a classic scenario:

Brown Guy: Dude, that's racist
White guy:"But... but.... this one time... at band camp.... a black guy called me cracker! SEE!? YOU GUYS ARE THE REAL VILLAINS HERE!"

The thing that intrests me is of course, that my response to this is:
"Excuse me dumb-ass, but if you can only refer to racism as "This one time" you don't freaking get what people are talking about when they speak about systemic, institutionalized racism, and since that black guy couldn't do much more damage than hurting your feelings, please shut the fuck up."

ButAt first glance, this situation would look like a perfect rebuttal to that

White guy: no, see? She oppressed that farmer! She had authority and she used it to discriminate in a way that actually mattered!

Except not at all, cause, you know, bullshit

2: I find it interesting that she got fired while on her way home in her car, so damn quick, without any investigation. Well, not interesting, really, just so. damn. obvious. I wonder what would happen if she were white? Or a man? maybe we'd get a week of drama before it all came out, instead of five seconds? who knows

* I may not completely agree with this, but this is exactly the kind of thing the people against her usually like to hear black people say, which makes the whole thing even more ridiculous

[krogothwolf]

It seemed like gun jumping and was stupid on the government parts. Even if what she did way back then was racist she was making a point of learning that what she was thinking back then was wrong.

Seriously, who takes a video clip at face value so quickly anyways? Even my grandparents know that they can be edited easily.

I figured it was the government showing that it disciplines racists of all colors not just us whitefolk! Which seems stupid cause she didn't even do anything racist or bad.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the * Prem. Do you mean you don't agree with the statement about it not being about race and about being the have's and have not's or are you talking about something else?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm curious about the star too.
Just to give my issue on this, coming from my background of NZ where the Maori are the native minority and are disproportionately poor/uneducated. We have a lot of schemes targeted towards helping Maori but the problem is these pretty much universally help the middle class/rich Maori who don't need it becasue they are the ones who are best informed, best resourced, most vocal, best able to take advantage. Schemes targeted at the poor will still overwhelmingly help the Maori race and more importantly will help the ones who actually need it.
Edit: Or even add economic requirements to affirimitave action schemes alongside racial requirements, I'dbe ok with that. I don't reallyknow how these thingswork in US though.

[Premmy]

"It's not racism, it's____" Implies that race does not play into the situation at all, and a White person and a brown person are certain to experience the same thingsbut since they're a minority, anything aimed purely at poor people will STILL mostly benefit white poor people, and not really address the " IN the black community, there are more poor people/ asians don't progress equally" problem. In other words: "It's not about race, its about poverty"=" NO racisms evarz! all the black people representing a disporportionate number of poor people* much more so than white people, Must just suck for some reason, can't quite figure out what that might be...."
Edit:
Also, her story was basically "I found a white guy with problems! that means brown people don't ALSO have OTHER problems, unrelated to that" Which is the kind of thing Republicans/Libertarians just eat up: "BOOTSTRAPS MUTHAFUCKAS!" It's nice in the sense that it addresses the "rich fuckers leeching everybody" problem, which is a big fucking deal, but it also downplays an equally big fucking deal in a way favored by the very people attacking her, which was my first point.

[krogothwolf]

No, it just means she realized that poverty extends beyond race and in the long run race doesn't matter when it comes to poverty. A white person can be in the same situation as a black person when it comes down to it. Seriously Prem, the only way I see racism actually dying is if you actually do away with these laws benefiting minorities. It just helps breed racism in poor white people who see a black person getting better help then them. How can equality be created if you put programs in place that benefit a person based on religion or race? I never really understood that. If you want equality you should be treated the same way regardless of being black,white,hispanic,muslim,native American. I'm really against laws and programs that are in place for that purpose, it just seems that in this day and age we should be over this whole ridiculousness of dividing people by race,religion,sexual orientation. I don't really understand why everyone makes a big deal over those things, doesn't really change the fact that their still people.

Wasn't that part of her full message which was before the people started attacking her, how could she have made the message for the benefit of the people attacking her for this if she had it part of her speech in the beginning?

This Tea Bag douche though reminds me to much of Glen Beck for my liking.

[phil_]

Seriously Prem, the only way I see racism actually dying is if you actually do away with these laws benefiting minorities.The only way I can see racism dying is when all the racist fucks like the guy who got her fired with an out-of-context quote literally die, as well as the racist fucks pretending to be apologist fucks who actually did the firing because of said earlier racist fuck's out-of-context quote.

This will probably never happen. Maybe if there was some world-wide cataclysm or something, but otherwise, nah. And that probably wouldn't do it either, what with powerful people being the most likely to survive.

[Magus]

I was going to say something about the White House getting Helen Thomas fired, too, but then again her comments weren't taken out of context so I guess it's not applicable (I mean, they were taken out of context of her entire life time, but other than that, the full statement was there).

Anyway, most of the news outlets compare this to the Henry Gates controversy, where Obama commented on it without knowing jack shit about the situation or having anything to do with it. Thus his error here, too, though at least in this case Sherrod was actually a government official and thus under his purview, so it's not total idiocy for him to comment on it. Seriously, though, people jumped the gun on this thing. Even the NAACP condemned Sherrod, even though she gave the speech at their party! Then they posted the full speech and apologized to her.

Seriously, people need to take a few hours when making decisions that affect other people's lives so drastically, especially based on two minute video clips from speeches that lasted an hour or so, let alone, you know, that person's entire lifetime prior to that, as well.

[Premmy]

Seriously, people need to take a few hours when making decisions that affect other people's lives so drastically, especially based on two minute video clips from speeches that lasted an hour or so, let alone, you know, that person's entire lifetime prior to that, as well.
You seem to misunderstand the point of Fox News.

[Magus]

Yes, yes, but I thought all those Democrats were supposed to be too smart for those Republicans' wily tricks. Shows what I know!

(Note: I did not actually think the Democrats were smart enough to not fall for this)

[Professor Smarmiarty]

"It's not racism, it's____" Implies that race does not play into the situation at all, and a White person and a brown person are certain to experience the same thingsbut since they're a minority, anything aimed purely at poor people will STILL mostly benefit white poor people, and not really address the " IN the black community, there are more poor people/ asians don't progress equally" problem. In other words: "It's not about race, its about poverty"=" NO racisms evarz! all the black people representing a disporportionate number of poor people* much more so than white people, Must just suck for some reason, can't quite figure out what that might be...."
That's a pretty extreme way of looking at her view.The way would rewrite it is "I don'tcare what colour you are, i care if you are starving". It's not deniyng that theere is instituationalised racism. Its targeting the most important effect of this racism- being poverty andsaying "We should help poor people" instead of "We should help those who are minorities regardless if they are fat cats who are contributing to their own minorities oppression" .


Also, her story was basically "I found a white guy with problems! that means brown people don't ALSO have OTHER problems, unrelated to that" Which is the kind of thing Republicans/Libertarians just eat up: "BOOTSTRAPS MUTHAFUCKAS!" It's nice in the sense that it addresses the "rich fuckers leeching everybody" problem, which is a big fucking deal, but it also downplays an equally big fucking deal in a way favored by the very people attacking her, which was my first point.

I do understand what you saying but my problem is that the people who misinterpret these statements as "black people are just poor people, probably because they lazy" they going to misinterpret everything. Like if she came out and was like "The US constitution is an evil document designed to enshrine the power of a small minority of white men" they would all be like "She just an uppity black, doesn't respect our country, and is probably uneducated". You can't win with those people.

[Premmy]

That's a pretty extreme way of looking at her view.The way would rewrite it is "I don'tcare what colour you are, i care if you are starving". It's not deniyng that theere is instituationalised racism. Its targeting the most important effect of this racism- being poverty andsaying "We should help poor people" instead of "We should help those who are minorities regardless if they are fat cats who are contributing to their own minorities oppression" .
I agree with this, thing is, in her speech she describes the man going for help and getting dicked around specifically. It wasn't "Oh, this man needed help, so I helped him" it was "Oh, this man was white, so I sent him to a white person, cause I was all angy n'stuff, he got dicked around by said white person so I helped him myself, he was getting dicked around by the same rich white people who dick around black people!"
That said, She does go into greater detail in a response on msnbc.
Basically saying what I'm saying, "It's not just race, but also class" which is pretty acceptable to me.


Like if she came out and was like "The US constitution is an evil document designed to enshrine the power of a small minority of white men" they would all be like "She just an uppity black, doesn't respect our country, and is probably uneducated". You can't win with those people.
They'd say some version of that no matter who made that statment, true though it may be.
Obviously "Uppity" wouldn't be part of it, but that's kinda on the opposite end of what I'm talking about.

[Ryanderman]

Interesting blog commentary I read. Not so sure I agree with everything he said, especially about the White House not be wrong in jumping to fire her, but for the most part it covers and expounds upon my reaction to the video upon watching the whole thing. I also want to look into it to see if he's actually right that she lied in her speech to the NAACP about not helping the farmer initially. It'd be interesting if she did, to try to understand why she did.

Anyway, thought I'd share.
THE SHIRLEY SHERROD SAGA

There are interesting things to learn from the saga of Shirley Sherrod.

She’s the federal Department of Agriculture employee who was fired this week after a video turned up in which she said that she didn’t do her best to help a white farmer because of his race, that she, rather, referred him to “one of his own.”

The video popped up, the White House called for her head, and she was forced to resign.
Then more of the video came out, and it turned out that her larger point was that she was wrong to discriminate, and she became a media hero.

The White House press secretary apologized. The secretary of agriculture apologized and offered her a new job. She has been on every news show there is.

Some have vilified the website that released the video, some have attacked conservative media, some have faulted the president for not looking before he leaped.

But nobody has looked honestly at this matter and pointed out the insights it offers, or the lessons that might be learned from it. They have pretended to, and then repeated the politically correct but fundamentally false assumptions about race in America. But nobody has really said what this incident teaches.
Nobody has pointed out, for example, that Shirley Sherrod lied.

I’m not criticizing her, and she seems – when all of this matter is understood – to be a good-hearted and honorable person.

But she did lie.

And that lie, and the reaction of the people she told it to, are informative.
Shirley Sherrod used her opportunity to speak at a Georgia NAACP dinner to talk about her evolving belief that race doesn’t matter. That might not seem like a bold revelation, but given Shirley Sherrod’s cultural and personal background as a middle-aged, poor, rural, Southern black, it took not just wisdom but forgiveness.

As she made her point, she told about being approached more than 25 years before by a white family in danger of losing its farm.

She first stated that the family’s father dealt with her in a racially superior way, talking to her in a fashion that she interpreted as being intended to put her in her place. As she recounted this, there was antagonism in her voice.
It seems likely that her reaction to him was determined more by her racial attitudes toward him than his toward her. It seems likely, based on what we’ve since learned about the man and his family, that she took racial offense where none was given or intended.

That’s one lesson to learn.

Another can be learned from the lie.

And the lie has to do with how Shirley Sherrod dealt with the white family. To her NAACP audience, she said that she didn’t do all she could, that she was there to help blacks, not whites, and that she referred the whites to “one of their own” who would take better care of them.

None of that has turned out to be true.

There’s no way to know what Shirley Sherrod thought about or felt toward this particular family, but the record shows that she actually went above and beyond her normal responsibilities to be of assistance. She personally went with them some significant distance to a government office three separate times to help them file and walk through their paperwork.

She didn’t refer them, she didn’t short them, she was an angel to them.
She was so helpful, respectful and kind that more than 25 years later the family still remembers her, thanks her and loves her. And even after Shirley Sherrod’s videotaped comments made the father of the family out to be a racist, both he and his wife sang her praises with sincere and unabashed gratitude.

Again, in her heart, Shirley Sherrod might have recoiled from these white people because of their race. But in her actions and dealings with them, there was none of that.

So why did she tell the NAACP something different?

And why as she did, did the NAACP clap and cheer?

Was Shirley Sherrod speaking to that audience in a way that would curry its favor, and did that audience react to her in a way that reveals its racial attitudes? Shirley Sherrod’s audience reacted positively and happily when she said she discriminated against whites.

If there is racism in this incident, that is where it’s found. Not really in her words, but in their reaction.

And the apparent fact that she knew her words would elicit that reaction, and the possibility that that is why she used them.

Maybe that’s a second lesson to learn.

Maybe sometimes in the casual conversations of some African-Americans there are racial attitudes, stereotypes or expectations that are, if we are honest about it, racist.

Put another way: It’s hard to see the crowd’s reaction to her comments about white people as anything other than racist.

Now, to the reaction to the video.

The guy who posted the video on the Internet was not wrong to do so unless he knew that it had been edited to twist what Shirley Sherrod really meant to say. That said, even though Shirley Sherrod’s intent was to say that black-on-white racism is wrong, the video still had news value because of the crowd’s reaction.

Also, edited out of context or not, Shirley Sherrod didn’t help herself very much by the way she spoke at the NAACP meeting. Hearing her words as spoken it is hard to sense anything other than animosity toward whites.
Was FOX News wrong to play the video?

No. It was a legitimate piece of video that seemed to be complete.
Was the White House wrong to call for her to be fired?

Probably not. The video did seem to be pretty clear, and pretty offensive, and there’s nothing wrong with the president sharing a judgment that untold millions of Americans have also made.

Was the national NAACP wrong to condemn her?

No. It actually showed, given the evidence it had, a pretty color-blind approach to the matter. The swift condemnation by the head of the national NAACP showed strength, not weakness.

So who was wrong?

Probably the local NAACP group that hosted the dinner, and the people who attended.

The people who heard Shirley Sherrod’s speech in person, her hosts and listeners, knew what she had said and what she hadn’t said. They knew that, actually, Shirley Sherrod had come in there and almost scolded them. She had said that, in spite of the discrimination some in that room had themselves faced, a race-based approach to life wasn’t right or wise.

They knew that that video clip was edited and incomplete. They knew that it was inaccurate and unfair.

And for two days, as the matter raged nationally, involving the president and the national NAACP, no one seems to have said anything. Not any of the leaders or the president of the local NAACP, or any of the socially prominent people who listened to Shirley Sherrod.

Further, the local NAACP had a recording of the entire talk, which vindicated Shirley Sherrod, and inexplicably dragged its feet for more than a day before giving permission for the video company to release it.

They knew the truth, but didn’t speak it.

And Shirley Sherrod twisted in the wind, and some feel the president got egg on his face.

But this matter really doesn’t end up being about finger pointing. It ends up being about lesson learning.

And not just the lesson about rushing to judgment and the power of video editing. Rather, it’s about some of the cultural uniquenesses of rural, Southern blacks, and how we don’t always speak honestly about race, even when talking to people of our own race. There were racial expectations and attitudes at play here, by blacks and whites, but they weren’t necessarily intended to be sinister.

Shirley Sherrod gave a talk this spring. She made her point to her audience in the way that she apparently thought would be most effective.

Some of us who weren’t in the audience got to peek in, and it didn’t make any sense to us.

Which doesn’t mean that it didn’t make any sense.

Because if you listen to the whole tape, including the part where she makes her point – that it’s not about white and black – you notice that the audience reacts then, too. It reacts with approval.

So she got her point across, and in the audience there were at least some who agreed.

Which is heartening and good.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I agree with this, thing is, in her speech she describes the man going for help and getting dicked around specifically. It wasn't "Oh, this man needed help, so I helped him" it was "Oh, this man was white, so I sent him to a white person, cause I was all angy n'stuff, he got dicked around by said white perso so I helped him myself, he was getting dicked around by the same rich white people who dick around black people!"
That said, She does go into greater detail in a response on msnbc.
Basically saying what I'm saying, "It's not just race, but also clas" which is pretty acceptable to me.



They'd say some version of that no matter who made that statment, true though it may be.
Obviously "Uppity" wouldn't be part of it, but that's kinda on the opposite end of what I'm talking about.

I completely agree with all of that.