USDA Official Shirley Sherrod Claims White House Fired Her for Clumsy Remarks

Is Shirley Sherrod the victim of an increasingly tense racial environment? Has the "post-racial" presidency reneged on its promises? Can public officials no longer speak honestly? Should Sherrod have her job back? Are the Tea Partiers racist? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and no.

Shirley Sherrod was a USDA official speaker at an NAACP banquet on March 27. Apparently, Sherrod was speaking of her early resentment of "white" persons, and how she was eventually able to transcend her racial biases. She was trying to make a point, however clumsily.

Sherrod's speech occurred against a backdrop in which the NAACP took a surprisingly strident and unenlightened turn against the rise of American Tea Parties. Conservatives are rightly angry, for, instead of being engaged upon issues, they are often smeared by the too-facile and hypocritical accusation of racism. It was in this environment and against this hypocrisy that blogger Andrew Breitbart tuned up Sherrod's NAACP appearance in a video that "went viral."

Events quickly spiraled downward as pent-up resentments from all quarters exploded in Internet blogs. The liberal big guns of the mainstream media and political circles opened up. Some of this is thoughtful, a great deal of it is political, and much of it is ugly.

Among the ugliest of responses to Andrew Breitbart's viral video was that which is reported to have come from the Obama administration. Shirley Sherrod maintains that she was contacted on her car phone and told that the White House wanted her to resign.

Sherrod was the sacrificial victim of a White House overly concerned with how things appear and too little concerned with how they are. Desperate over the declining popularity of a president for reasons which have little to do with race or ethnicity, the NAACP and some Democrats have attempted to gin up excitement by inflaming racial sentiments. The Holder Justice Department contributed to the tense situation by vitiating a judgment against NBPP members intimidating voters in Philadelphia.

The Tea Parties are no more biased than any congregation of Democrats, Republicans, or even the NAACP, and certainly less racist than the New Black Panther Party, who have at least one member exhorting followers to "kill white babies."

George Allen's "macaca" reference in his Virginia campaign was lame, ignorant, and insensitive to ethnic differences, but, if excellence were a criterion for public office, there would be perhaps 10 people in the Senate, 23 in the House, and none in the vice-presidency. Wasn't it Obama's Vice President, Joe Biden, who described Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy?"

Obama's not the first "articulate and bright" etc. mixed-race person the rest of us have seen, but Senator Biden was a Democrat, so "no fault, no foul."

A phrase you keep hearing, however, is that "words do matter." Sure they do, but we're not all State Department envoys, and the ongoing televised snippets of dialogue between an aged Georgia farmer and U.S.D.A civil servant Shirley Sherrod is ample evidence of that. Sherrod speaks of overcoming the cultural biases she had. The Georgia farmer seems to have done the same.

I've had plenty of occasion to experience cultural differences in urban boxing gyms. While many things can be hidden beneath the veneer of politics, there are not so many things you can hide in a boxing gym. I'm not blind to racism, whichever way the door swings. Obama needs to admit he choked and give that lady her job back. The race game stops at the top.

Sources:

Shirley Sherrod: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN9vMelMz8A&feature=related

George Allen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90z0PMnKwI

Joe Biden:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3rKpYT3kxw

NBPP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APZ3-Lcbwmc

CNN Interview with Sharrod:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTd87qJTiiY

USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/07/obama-white-house-dragged-into-ag-departmentnaacp-flap/1