A post by Pat
God must be wondering what it takes for Shirley Sherrod to get the message on racism. She claims she got the message in 1987 and told that story in lesson form to an NAACP audience years later. Then out of the blue, wham-o she’s the center of a firestorm of hasty judgments over who is a racist. Her 1987 revelation is revisited and apologies flow. Does Shirley think it’s time to recommit to the tenderheartedness God revealed to her so long ago? Nope. She starts tossing around her own accusations of racism based on her prejudice.
This is what she concluded about Fox which, by the way, did not say one word about the Breitbart clip until hours after Sherrod was commanded by the Deputy Undersecretary of the USDA to pull over and resign.
Sherrod: I’m a Victim of Breitbart, Fox ‘Racism’
“They [Fox] have called me today and initially I had said yes (to an interview), but I thought about it and I did not think they intended to be fair in their reporting. They are going to say what they want to say regardless of what I say.”
She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage. [She also faults Fox for not having bothered to contact her earlier.]
“I think they should but they won’t. They intended exactly what they did. They were looking for the result they got yesterday,” she said of Fox. “I am just a pawn. I was just here. They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.
Still, Fox continued to push for an interview with her, Sherrod said.
“It was unbelievable. I am refusing to be on there. They have been calling me and calling me. “I have refused to do an interview because they are biased, she explained. “I don’t think Fox News does it fairly. It is worse so now. I have sat and listened to the way they cover the news even before this administration and I saw what was going on.”
Sherrod said this situation has worsened her view of racism in media coverage
I think it is race. You think we have come a long way in terms of race relations in this country, but we keep going backwards,” she said. “We have become more racist. This was their doing, Breitbart put that together misrepresenting what I was saying and Fox carried it.
I don’t think the reaction of the NAACP audience to Sherrod’s story constituted racism. I thought it was an understandable though not laudable reaction after being reminded of the true horrors of real racism that shamefully occurred in this country. The audience knew at the time that the event took place decades ago. I’d think differently if Sherrod was relating a recent incident of treating a white man unfairly in her professional capacity. That would have been an endorsement of on-going racism. I do think the NAACP is racially prejudiced, but that short clip wasn’t substantial evidence of it. Anyway, that’s my opinion about what I saw on the video.
It is clear in the aftermath that Sherrod’s revelation has gone to pieces and she sees everything through the prism of race. She hasn’t even learned a lesson based on what happened to her yesterday. It’s being said she is the victim in all this. I think she’s always considered herself a victim.
I am a Mormon. The history of my church is rife with persecution, up to and including cold-blooded murder of members of the church. I personally have been on the receiving end of some thoughtless and even hateful remarks about my religion. Let’s say that, given the history of my faith and my own experiences, I decided, years ago, that it was my turn to dish it out, and started treating people like garbage based on their own faith. Let’s say that I recently gave a talk in church about this experience. If, in that talk, I told about a time when I had been rude and dismissive to someone because of his Presbyterianism, and told like it was a massive inside joke, taking encouragement from the congregation as I lightly recounted exactly how I had put this man down — would you then believe me if I told you that this was the point that I realized that I, as a Mormon, should know better than anyone else how awful religious persecution is, and that I should treat everyone as people, regardless of faith? If I indeed believed this, wouldn’t you expect me to show some degree of shame? And, regardless of how long ago this may have happened, if this was an audience that did not at all condone the behavior I was describing, would you expect them to laugh and/or clap?
Some may applaud Ms. Sherrod’s supposed revelation about the evils of racism, but I don’t buy it any more than I would believe that Hypothetical Me had really learned that religious persecution is always wrong. And, sorry Pat, but I think the audience reaction is reprehensible in any context. What Ms. Sherrod is describing is neither funny nor laudible.
What I do think you hit on the head, though, was your conclusion: “I think she’s always considered herself a victim.” I completely agree. Ms. Sherrod’s worldview did not widen to include all whites as just people like her — rather, she simply opened her definition of “oppressed” to include more than just black people. I have no doubt that if she were confronted with a white person who is not in dire straits, she would have the same contempt for him or her as she initially did for that farmer who came into her office twenty-odd years ago.
I’m not buying Sherrod’s epiphany either. Nothing ever changed her narrow mind when it comes to race. I’m talking about the audience’s reaction and whether or not it is racism or human nature.
In searching my soul I cannot confidently say I am above animus. I believe I would be susceptible to a moment of uncompassion toward those who had severely wronged me. I believe I could indulge myself emotionally in a mild form of distant retribution through laughter shared with my fellow wronged. Depending on the details, a story about a vengeful incident perpetrated by someone else 20 years ago might be such an occasion to allow myself to surrender to bitter merriment. You’re absolutely right, such behavior is reprehensible. I hope afterward I would be ashamed about those feelings, but can’t say for sure I would be.
I don’t think the audience’s reaction is narrowly racist. I thought they exhibited a universal human frailty. I may be wrong. Possibly it’s a rare moral flaw afflicting only racists and me. I had no idea I was that weird. It’s a revelation to me.
You could be right, Pat. I was brought up on the west coast, so racial animosity, and the depth of the wounds inflicted, is kind of foreign to me. I was in South Carolina a couple of years ago for my husband’s graduation from basic training, and while I was there I had an experience that I found utterly bizarre. I was seeing my blond, blue-eyed husband off at the airport. I am a mixed bag as far as my ancestry goes, but the end result is I could easily pass myself off as someone of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, or Native American descent (as far as I know, only two of those are actually true), but due to my largely European background I just always considered myself white. There was an older black man working at the gate, and he looked at my husband, looked at me, looked back at my husband and told him, “Son, you married outside your race.” I was completely nonplussed. The man didn’t say it with any animosity in his voice — he was simply stating what he saw as fact — but I found the fact that he felt the need to say it at all just plain weird. So I am certainly not an authority on the current state of race relations in, say, Georgia.
Still, though, the fact remains that, unless the address was made to a group of senior citizens, I seriously doubt that very many people in that room had been actual victims of the sort of blatant racism that Ms. Sherrod described propagating herself. If the video had been made in the 70’s or 80’s — someone speaking about how, while white racists were aiming fire hoses and siccing dogs on Martin Luther King, Jr. and those with the guts to stand with him, she got in a dig of her own — I could more easily see your point. Instead what you have is someone almost gleefully telling about how she was perpetuating some ridiculous “race war” long after the dust had settled. And it’s people like this who make me mad, because as much as they’ll tell you what a hero he was, they clearly have no idea what MLK stood for, and what he died for.
I think a lot of people screaming, “RAAAAAAAACIST!!!” have decided that, since they themselves have zero legitimate claim to the “empowerment” of victimhood, they will instead claim victimhood by proxy. They encourage and enable people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in constantly picking at old wounds, ensuring those wounds will never actually heal, so they can continue to aggrandize themselves by guilt-tripping people who had nothing to do with oppressing anybody. As someone who used to buy into the victimization by proxy garbage, I really just want to sit all of these people down and tell them to get over themselves. Lots of people were born into crappy situations. Even assuming they’re actually in that category, there comes a time when you have to decide whether to turn that crap into fertilizer and make something good of it, or whether to go through your life just throwing s*** at other people.
Lots of people were born into crappy situations. Even assuming they’re actually in that category, there comes a time when you have to decide whether to turn that crap into fertilizer and make something good of it, or whether to go through your life just throwing s*** at other people.
Great summation! We should never forget but we have to move on.
Okay, I listened to the whole clip–and I still think there are problems with her reasoning. I would be ashamed to admit that I considered race as a factor when asked to assist someone.
I agree with your assessment. Thanks for carrying the torch of common sense!
Good argument and explanation, angelaisms.
Listen to the final moments of the FULL tape; she blames white-racists coming out of the cracks for the opposition to Healthcare. Last time I checked, Healthcare is a “recent incident”.
This is the most important part of the tape. She essentially says that those who are against the healthcare law are not for it because we have a black president, implying that those with a different solution to problems with healthcare are racist. Does this mean that those who were against President Bush are racist? She claims that during 8 years of Bush, no one pushed back against President Bush. Yes, of course, I remember how compliant Democrats were to everything that Bush did. I am sorry, please move the healthcare law to single payor, please pass cap and trade, please pass card check and please increase taxes. But whatever you do, please do not call me a racist, I will be compliant. Thank you!
This whole incident is absolutely surreal. The government lends money, hires people, awards contracts and scholarships using race preference criteria as part of the evaluation process. The new finance bill has race as a criteria for bailing out banks, thanks to Maxine Waters. Why would we be surprised Sherrod would use race as a consideration for providing a help. The racialist thinking is so ingrained, her revelation centered on the absurdity of using race as a criteria. The good news is that despite all the screams of racism, no racism actually existed on the part of FOX, Brietbart, the Tea Party or Sherrod. The NAACP.. well, they have to keep the wound from healing to stay alive, that’s understandable. If there were no more racism, there would be no NAACP.
Shirley Sherrod was quite arrogant in the videotape, and still is publicly. She is no victim. The audience didn’t get happy until she came to the ‘let’s get whitey!’ part and then the ‘civil rights’ organization cheered. If this were reversed -and she was white- she’d have no life unless she publicly groveled about her racism sin before the NAACP, and slipped them some money. The NAACP is an extralegal organization not a civil rights organization. Breitbart almost had them as well as he did ACORN;he’ll be back.
The NAACP still has not made its case that the Tea Party is racist.
Once again, everything The Once touches turns to crap. If they had just ignored it, it would’ve swirled a few days and then disappeared. But no…
And I don’t buy Charade’s epiphany either. Her true epiphany was, “no, it’s not about race, we can ALL be good marsxists.”
What a cluster …
I watched the clip online after I had caught a bit of it on Fox. The language she was using was so provocative I almost missed her “poor vs. those who have” realization at the end of the clip. I was so taken aback by her description of her inferiority complex and how “I didn’t help him as much as I could”, and, “I referred him to his own kind”. I thought, “Imagine if a white public servant was talking like this,” particularly during a Republican administration. You know, it wouldn’t have mattered that the incident happened 20 years ago. The NAACP and other civil rights organizations would be screaming from the rooftops about “latent racism” and such, and quite frankly I wouldn’t blame them.
I can appreciate that Ms. Sherrod has changed her views some, that she’s willing to look beyond race in some circumstances, but I came to the conclusion that I don’t think what happened to her as a result of this coming out was entirely an overreaction. When you are a public servant in a position of managing that service for others, you have to engender a sense of public trust. If you lose that, it doesn’t matter what was really in your heart. You’ve lost it with the people you serve. I think she could’ve expressed herself differently, making it clearer that this was in the past, not how she views things now. I think the audience she was speaking to probably understood perfectly what she meant, but when you’re a public servant, particularly these days, you have to consider that people will hear about your remarks who are outside your community. That just goes with the territory. So while I think the Obama Admin. “acted stupidly” (ie. “hastily” in Obama’s vernacular) WRT her firing (I think they could’ve just suspended her instead, “pending an investigation”), I think it’s appropriate to offer her a different position where she doesn’t have as much managerial power.
O’Reilly said last night that “there’s more to this.” There’s more about what Sherrod said in the past that should be considered, since bureaucrats are supposed to not endorse a particular party, as O’Reilly put it. I wonder if it’s ethical to single her out. I was hearing last year that scientist James Hansen, who works for NASA, and has been a long-time alarmist about human-caused global warming, has regularly engaged in political advocacy, apparently violating what’s called “the Hatch Act” (I think it’s called) which prohibits people in his type of position from doing this. From what I’ve heard, people at NASA have tried to call him on it, but they have not been able to dislodge him, because he has “powerful friends”. I don’t know if it’s the same thing, but I’m thinking it might be unfair to single out Ms. Sherrod for past political advocacy if O’Reilly is not also going to talk about others who have done something similar, and make a general issue out of it.
Shirley Sherrod has a daughter named Russia. Make of that what you will.
lol frank
Another gulf to clean up.
Shirley Sherrod was a left wing stinker who, to her credit, came to terms with her own racism. Since the release of the video of her recounting her epiphany to an NAACP audience, Ms. Sherrod has gone from Torquemada to Mother Theresa. Unfortunately, since her 15 minutes of fame she has become simply…. a left wing stinker. I wonder how much more she will regress.
I don’t believe Shirley Sherrod. I do believe she’s a racist, an opportunist and will do anything to get the ‘poor me’ reaction. In otherwords ‘sympathy’.
Obama and his cronies are evil. And, their agenda is deliberately destroying the United States of America.
And, I’m sure she’ll have a book written and released within months. I am sick and tired of the BLACK RACISTS who hide in positions of power.
Sadly, too many WHITE AND OTHER MINORITIES buy into their DISPICABLE LIES.
I don’t trust Shirley or any of her racist friends.
Many years ago my sister had tried to get employment with GM. At that time she had to apply and go through the State Employment Office.
She discovered minorites were being hired and moved up on the list. My sister decided to go to the Employment Office and voice her opinions. It didn’t help.
Finally, frustrated and angry she flew into a rage and said “IF I WERE BLACK YOU’D HIRE ME.”
Within days she was called for an interview and FINALLY hired.
It appears to me that racists ONLY respond when they are confronted. Confrontations is not what they like.
My experience has been when I see someone give a transformation speech they usually spend about 10% talking about what bad happened and 90% of how they changed to make life better.
They focus on the better part and encouraging others to drop their old way and do better.
This video of Sherrod’s speech impressed me more as how to game the system. As she says it is no longer about white vs black, it is now poor vs the haves. She says get a job at the government because they won’t fire you (well if they do they’ll beg you to come back and do some cushy job). She says there is 100% loans available if you’ll just work the system. She says she can’t believe Black land owners are selling to Whites (that is present day).
I never hear her talk about “we have to all work together”, let me tell you how I have changed to work with all people, irrespective of race and class. NEVER…
Breitbart was right this is about the NAACP pushing racism among its’ ranks. From past experience with Breitbart, I think this is just a shot across the bow and there are more videos coming of other NAACP events. This is not about Sherrod this is about pulling the curtain back on the NAACP. The NAACP is a race baiting organization.