Is Shirley Sherrod Redeemed?

You Got The Power, Inc.
Program Outline
July 28, 2010

Topic of discussion:  Is Shirely Sherrod Redeemed?

Black farmers are the real victims of USDA discrimination

• Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was direct, forceful and blunt when he said that the USDA does not tolerate racial discrimination

• This was Vilsack's widely circulated public explanation for firing Shirley Sherrod

• There are two problems with this

  • One, the world now knows that Sherrod did not do or say anything to merit being branded a bigot and sacked

  • The second problem is more troubling. Vilsack should have been talking about the shameful and disgraceful treatment of black farmers by his agency, and the equally shameful and disgraceful treatment of the farmers by Congress

• During the past quarter century, tens of thousands of black farmers have lost their land, homes, and livestock, due to the blatant refusal by the USDA to make or guarantee loans to them

• Black farmers have filed individual and class lawsuits, staged sit-ins, held protests marches and rallies challenging the naked discriminatory lending practices of the USDA

• Shirley Sherrod was one of them. She and her husband and a cooperative of black farmers were refused loans and their farms were foreclosed on in 1985

• They filed a suit. It took more than two decades of legal wrangling but finally Sherrod and her husband and the other farmers won their suit and were awarded damages $13 million in damages

• In a statement, the black farmer's association notes that the USDA has not punished any of its agents or officials that encouraged or turned a blind eye to discriminatory lending

• Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he apologized to dismissed USDA worker Shirley Sherrod for forcing her to resign

• Vilsack told reporters that he alone made the decision regarding Sherrod, with no White House involvement

• White House press secretary Robert Gibbs apologized on behalf of President Barack Obama's administration

• White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “Members of this administration, members of the media, members of different political factions on both sides of this have all made determinations and judgments without a full set of facts”

• Vilsack spoke to Sherrod and said he asked for her forgiveness, which she gave

• Vilsack also said he offered Sherrod another job in the department, and she was thinking about it

• “She's a good woman -- she's been put through hell,” Vilsack said of Sherrod

• He admitted acting too hastily in the case, acknowledging that he was focused on reversing a history of racial discrimination at the agriculture department

• Vilsack loftily intoned about clamping down on racial discrimination at the USDA in reference to Sherrod but will not talk about the settlement for Black Farmers the President sign that is been sitting in Congress for months

• At the center of the storm surrounding Ms. Sherrrod is Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart known for fatuous race-baiting, lied and defamed a government employee under the pretext of journalism

• A July 19^th posting on Andrew Breitbart's website titled “Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism–2010” set everything into motion

• Big Government's edited video gave the impression Sherrod discriminated against a white farmer

• The NAACP first statement was in response to Fox News and initial media coverage of portraying Shirley Sherrod as someone who had harmed white farmers because of racial bias

• The NAACP changed it's mind as the full context of the original remarks was revealed -- including the fact that the incident in question happened 24 years ago and the farmers involved have praised Sherrod's efforts on their behalf

• Sherrod's full remarks made clear she was relating a story from two decades ago -- long before she joined the USDA

• The story she's telling takes place in the 1980s, when she was working for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, not the government

• Sherrod story explained how she ultimately learned an important lesson to disregard race

• The whole point of her anecdote is that the experience she talks about helped her overcome her own prejudices

• Shirley Sherrod tried to explain how she realized the common struggle faced by both poor whites and poor blacks

• Sherrod went on to spend two years helping Roger Spooner, the white farmer in question

• The wife of Spooner stated that Sherrod is a “friend for life” who helped save their family farm.

• Sherrod said she told Vilsack she accepted his apology and that “we could move on”

• She also acknowledged being “really hurt” by accusations of racism

Senator Webb's op-ed titled "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege"in Wallstreet Journal

• Webb stirred controversy with an op-ed piece suggesting most government diversity programs should be abolished because they "marginalized" white Americans

• Webb complained that “the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America”

• Webb said that affirmative action programs made sense for African Americans who suffered from the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow laws but not for other ethnic groups and recent immigrants

• The head of the Virginia Conference of the NAACP in a letter lashed out at Sen. James Webb

  • “We vehemently disagree with your analysis and wonder if serving in the elite, rich United States Senate has skewed your vision of the world in which we live”

  • "Do you really believe that affirmative action has hurt white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants or are you pandering to the divisive, conservative, Tea Bagger types whose votes you will need in 2012?"

  • “The true beneficiaries of affirmative action programs are white, Anglo-Saxon women...overwhelmingly”

  • “You have given cover & solace to those "who want to take their country back (from whom?), who want to reload not regroup, who think it is ok to spit on and use racial epithets against African members of the House of Representatives.”

• Researchers consistently confirm that African Americans and Hispanics continue to face serious levels of discrimination in purchasing and renting housing and in obtaining mortgages

• Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data clearly shows that the highest income African Americans and Hispanics are denied a mortgage more often than the poorest whites

• The bottom line is that in every income category Blacks and Hispanics have the lowest rates of mortgage approval and the highest rates of denial

• Examination of all the reasons for denial by race and by income and can find no explanation for these differences other than racial/ethnic discrimination

• The nation's schools are returning to the levels of segregation that existed prior to Brown v. Board of Education in the mid-1950s, there is little doubt that it is the African American and the Hispanic who is marginalized today

• We cannot expect to wipe out 300 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow, and 50 years of half-hearted largely unenforced civil rights, fair housing, and fair employment laws in just a generation or two

• A huge portion of white America continues to fight laws that supports civil rights, fair housing, and fair employment

• The Republican/Tea Party has built itself on its opposition to reversed racial discrimination

• As long as officials continue to spread the Big Lie that it's white people who are marginalized in America today, it will take far longer than anybody imagined to extend the full benefits of living in America

White Voter Discrimination

• A partisan debate is brewing about whether the Department of Justice is hostile to white voters whose rights are violated

• So far the evidence is anecdotal

• The DOJ has denied that race plays any role in its decisions enforcing the Voting Rights Act

• The harshest DOJ critic is the conservative co-opted U.S. Civil Rights Commission who have yet to establish that a worthy case

• The clash between the commission and the Justice Department has its origins in an election day incident in which two members of the New Black Panther Party, one of whom was carrying a nightstick, were captured on videotape standing outside a polling station

• According to a witness, the Panthers shouted racial slurs

• The Justice Department obtained an injunction to forbid the New Black Panther Party member from carrying a weapon at a polling place in the future.

• Critics are saying the Panthers' behavior caught on video was outrageous, even if no voter was actually deterred from exercising the franchise

• Critics want the Justice Department to crack down on the New Black Panther Party for white voter intimidation