Is there a racist in the audience?
Re the Shirley Sherrod video, commenter “cm” remarks:
i thought the point of the video was showing the reaction of the audience (naacp ppl) when she mentioned not helping the white farmer. they laughed and said amen at this point in her speech. it shows their racism.
i believe this was stated elsewhere too. i think ppl are intentionally focusing on her and her words when everyone should be focusing on the audiences’ reaction to her comments.
The commenter makes an interesting and important point, but I disagree with its conclusion.
During the flap over whether the Tea Party is a racist movement, most of the charges have been that a few people in a large crowd either held racist signs or shouted racist epithets. Let’s ignore for a moment the truth or falsity of those claims (although truth or falsity is very important), and for the purposes of this discussion stipulate that, even if it is true, a few signs or epithets do not necessarily a racist organization make.
I believe we should judge a group by the predominant persuasion of its members and especially by the message of its leaders and speakers. Sherrod’s statements and their alledgedly racist nature are far more important than the reactions of a few people in a crowd, and the same would be true of the speakers at a Tea Party function.
Why do I say “a few people?” Because an audience is for the most part silent, and therefore just a few in the crowd calling out or reacting can make a lot of noise, relatively speaking. On the video in question (here it is again), I don’t hear evidence of a great many people reacting and saying “amen,” although it’s very hard to gauge from a tape.
What’s more, my understanding is that Sherrod’s full speech ultimately describes a sort of redemption on the part of Sherrod, to the tune of “I once thought this but now I think that; I once had these beliefs about white people but now I realize we’re all in the same boat and the poor need help no matter what their race.” Unless we watch the entire speech we don’t know, nor do we know the reaction of that same audience if and when Sherrod voices those later thoughts; perhaps even more people cheer and say “amen”at that point.
Racism and racists exist, in people of all races and all political persuasions. What matters is the proportion of racists within a group, and especially the stated goals and agenda and offical actions of said group, as well as the subject matter of speeches given by its advocates. That’s what we should be focusing on rather than the random eruptions of a few people in a crowd.
[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that these reactions of a small portion of a crowd could be considered an example of what I’ve chosen to call “the Martin Higby Phenomenon.”]
[ADDENDUM II: And here’s the full video, which I won’t have a chance to watch till later because I’m busy. I’m putting it up here now for your convenience.]
Her final words in the tape were ‘…I took him to one of his own.’ If a white person said that, would there be any question about whether his or her talk was about redemption? Don’t kid yourself.
The audience reaction to her statement about deciding how much to help the white farmer is kind of like laughing at a funeral. Inappropriate but sometimes the emotions force it. I say that because the statement is the culmination of long story of how after her father was murdered by an un-indicted white man she vowed to stay in the south and help black people. So many years later, there she is faced with helping a white man. And she grows as a person.
The real indictment of the NAACP is that first she quickly realizes that the lesson learned about poor vs. haves regardless of color isn’t going to fly and so add back in the black vs. white. Add to that the fully socially acceptable racially couched encouragement of black people to apply for loans, get USDA jobs, etc.
Nothing radical about that because that is accepted, just attend any african-american history month event or women’s history month event in government. What is racial about it that one dare not say white people should seek loans or white kids should invest in their future or even permit the existence of a civil rights organization dedicated to the advancement of white people. And yet, if you’re a minority the government officials go out of their way to phrase their talks in racial terms.
And yet the NAACP wants to paint the Tea Party as racist. When no speaker has ever spoken of what white people should do or black people should do or latino people should do. Every speaker I’ve heard has spoken of Americans and what Americans can do.
Steve: but those are not her final words in the speech. That’s just where the edited tape cuts off. As I wrote, I have not seen the entire tape, but apparently it’s a story of her change in attitude. If the full tape comes out I might change my mind and consider her speech more reprehensible, based on what she ends up saying.
But this does not change my main point here, which is that the reaction of a few in an audience is far less important than what the majority do and what the speaker says, as well as the official acts of that group. This is true of organizations on all sides.
And yet it remains that not one person screamed the N word at congressmen in a Tea Party rally, but we must gladly suffer those slings and arrows of false accusations and turn a blind eye and deaf ear now to those who actually nod in assent or chirp an “amen!” to a most pernicious (and suspected widespread) example of abuse of power by those seeking power?
You and I could care less what others think on a personal level, but Breitbart’s in the Devil’s Den of such thinkers and smear-merchants who propagate this sort of race-baiting for gain. If he smells a bit of the smoke in his efforts, I may advise him to hit the showers for the day, but in no wise do I kick him off my team.
His personal passion against the corrupt media and his personal investment of funds as he is going up against the likes of Soros speak to me of an authenticity. God help him if he ever betrays that trust. I don’t think he has yet.
Gerard’s opinion means a lot to me, and so I will consider his insider status on the “spin” angle, as something to consider, as well.
The issue isn’t whether the video proves rascism at NAACP, but whether or not it was intentionally edited and then offered by Breitbart to damage Sherrod. This is the spin the left media is going to try and play and ignore 1) The NAACP is rascist, and 2) The Obama administration, in the context of the dismissal of the Black Panther case of voter intimidation, sought to counter that perception with a blatant over-reaction.
Did Breitbart make any demands that Sherrod be fired? Apologize?
I disagree with the idea that a few people don’t speak for the crowd. Usually, a few people do speak for the crowd because most people don’t speak up, but the few who do have a very good understanding of the crowd’s mood and views.
And it is disingenuous to compare the NAACP crowd to teaparty gatherings or the incident of the “spitting” and “N” word supposedly being said to the congressmen. In the latter, there were zero, not one, not two, not a few, epithets said.
Joan of Argghh!: I agree that most of what Breitbart does has been good. He is a fighter and a scrapper. But he needs to be very very careful to be correct. Not waiting for the full tape and going with an excerpt was an obvious mistake, one he should never have made. He should have known better.
I do wonder whether a white government official who gave a speech to an organization entitled “National Association for the Advancement of White People” describing her past racist treatment of a black applicant for government assistance — even if followed by the world’s most sincere and eloquent explanation of her later redemption and regret — would keep her job. I doubt she would.
Curtis: well, we must disagree then. I have been in many crowds in which a few people do not speak for me, nor for most of the people there.
Of course, sometimes a few do speak for those who are too weak or too afraid to speak out. But to assume that they do is a flaw of both logic and understanding of human nature. I am not that much of a collectivist, and I am surprised that you are. Did you read the Martin Higby link I added at the end of my piece?
In addition, I am very carefully not saying that the racist charges aimed at the Tea Party are true. I’m saying that even if they were true, a couple of racists were in a huge crowd does not a racist organization make, and that’s the case whether the group is left or right or black or white.
If anything, the rascism of the NAACP appears bas relief from Sherrod’s extraordinary reach for the freedom that comes from forgiveness.
I believe we should judge a group by the predominant persuasion of its members and especially by the message of its leaders and speakers
that’s not what you said when i posted all those things the leaders of feminism said. you basically told me about all the reasonable people, and didn’t want me to judge the group by its leaders, but on the number of useful idiots that they control.
high words that most of us dont practice at all.
if we did no one would be a democrat and a different party would have existed from the hayes election period
we would have noticed hillary clinton telling the world in the debate that she was queen progressive…
we would have noticed obama giving a shout out to Moses Harmon and lucifer bringer of light if we knew what he ment by the birth place of progressivism..
where is the outrage for S.C.U.M (society for cutting up men)… or the new offices of minorities and women (disenfranchising what group by race and gender?)… or even allowed a professor calling for the extermination of men (several), as a solution critical to the survival of the human race.
“The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness…can be trained to do most things.” — Jilly Cooper, SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Men, started by Valerie Solanas)
solanas the leader, jilly the member…
did i miss something?
“If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.” — Mary Daly, former Professor at Boston College, 2001
“For one of the implicit, if unadmitted, tenets of feminism has been a fundamental disrespect for men.” — Wendy Dennis
and this one is a pip:
“All men are rapists and that’s all they are” — Marilyn French, Authoress; (later, advisoress to Al Gore’s Presidential Campaign.)
here is a member trying to be a leader through commiseration over racist/gender hate
“In general, I support a girl’s right to offend any member of the opposite sex who happens to cross her path. In fact, I’d much rather see a little girl wearing a shirt that mocks boys than one that turns them on.” — Treena Shapiro
leader:
“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.” — Valerie Solana, SCUM founder (Society for Cutting Up Men.)
copy of the manifesto here: gos.sbc.edu/s/solanas.html
follower:
“The more famous I get, the more power I have to hurt men.” — Sharon Stone
and on oppressor oppressed dialectic:
“I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.” — Robin Morgan
oh.. and also from the right to class hatred category, the reason why such is not oppression back at you
“And let’s put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism–the lie that there can be such a thing as ‘men’s liberation groups.’
Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group, specifically because of a ‘threatening’ characteristic shared by the latter group–skin color, sex or age, etc.
The oppressors are indeed F*CK*D UP by being masters, but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism–the oppressed have no alternative–for they have no power–but to fight.
In the long run, Women’s Liberation will of course free men–but in the short run it’s going to cost men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women–kill your fathers, not your mothers.” — Robin Morgan
Neo. I will read the Higby link. Right now I’m trying to get all the facts. One assumption I did make about the NAACP gathering was that it was a collection of like minded people. Therefore, comments by the few most likely were articulations of what all thought. I just don’t find the idea that comments contrary to the general values would be voiced. And yet, there is the alternate truth that the minority view is often more strongly held and thus voiced. So, I’ll take your idea and put my perceptions in the “Not necessarily true and worth a second look” bin.
However, let’s not angst ourselves and make ourselves the issue. A general truth, which everyone has known but been politcally bullied to be silent about, is being challenged. The most vehement and accepted rascism is in the leftist and black camp.
Artfldgr: I have always stated that certain elements of the feminist movement are to be repudiated and condemned. I don’t repudiate other elements of which I approve. I have been quite consistent in making distinctions about what parts of feminism I accept and what parts I reject. And I am not a member of any feminist group, nor have I ever been, and I consider these groups pernicious for the most part.
Here’s the thing for me about Sherrod’s statements, even given the notion that her total point may have been aimed at fixing her outlook and redemption — they were point blank racist comments and she expressly said she withheld the full force of her discretion based on race to the white farmer’s detriment. Great, she realized it and, claims, she’s not like that anymore. But if you were/are a white farmer and you feel that she has given you less assistance than may be warranted, are you so magnanimous to think that her “past” racism has nothing to do with it? Particularly when you and your family’s livelihood is on the line?
How could she tell the white farmer was trying to show he was superior?
If she gave road test’s for the DMV and you are white and failed and then saw a similar video, would you 100% dismiss that racism had nothing to do with it? How about a black judge, you’re white and the opposing party is black? Why should you? We’re talking about a government official who gets to meter out government assistance and she admits she did so in the past in a racist manner.
Fact of the matter is is that her admission poisons the well of her ever having the perception of objectivity. Maybe it would be fine in the private sector, the market will decide. But in the public sector?
Note: I’ve just posted the full video in ADDENDUM II above, although I won’t be watching it (and perhaps commenting further) till later.
“”But he (Breitbart) needs to be very very careful to be correct.””
Neo
I disagree. I’m tired of the walking on eggshells approach. An approach i’d have to say is as demonstrably as much a failure as any appeasement approach in foreign policy. We’ve given so many inches and blacks have taken so many miles under this scenario that it no longer even dawns on us that the very existence of the naacp is racist on its face.
Breitbart erred in not further investigating the totality of Sherrod’s speech.
However, oddly, Breitbart’s error did serve to dampen the power of the NAACP’s charge that Tea Parties are unusually racist.
Breitbart either accidentally or purposefully succeeded in his goal of countering false charges of racism against the right. Think, if you are Breitbart, and you are holding the Sherrod tape, and you don’t have it investigated, and yet, due to the NAACP’s statement, THE TIME IS NOW(!) to release this thing. It’s easy to say “I would never have released it!”. Except, in my experience of real life scenarios: at the moment of decision, passions are high, and making the call does not always seem so clear cut as it does in retrospect.
Also, oddly, releasing the Sherrod tape – as unethical as it turned out to be – also turned out to be a good thing in the end. The treatment of Sherrod is a lesson for everyone. The lessons of the entire incident are good for all involved to absorb. This entire incident contains ironies.
SteveH: I disagree. By “careful,” I do not mean “pull your punches.” By “careful” I mean “make sure what you are actually stating is true.” Truncated quotes, for example, are a no-no without knowing the context. And excerpts from speeches can be misleading, likewise. You can post them and critique them, but you’d better make sure you know the context. If you don’t, you might be perpetuating an untruth. That is wrong on either side, as well as especially stupid for the right, because the MSM is against them and will pick apart all mistakes.
As I’ve said before, I will watch the full video later and make my final judgment. It may be that Sherrod is racist after all, or perhaps not. But I continue to maintain that the reactions of a few in a crowd do not a racist organization make.
Regarding Breitbart, I think he can thank Obama for firing Sherrod so quickly. Obama’s obviously learned nothing from the Cambridge police incident about rushing to judgement. Had he only wait 24 hours…he could’ve turned this video as the ULTIMATE teachable moment to bludgeon the Right wing. Now he must share in the heat of embarassment with Andrew and Fox News. I regard this as a setback for our cause but breath a tremendous sigh of relief that it could’ve been SO MUCH worse if the O had displayed an ounce of patience.
What strikes me about this discussion and the other post that engendered it is that it sheds no light on how true or untrue, sincere or insincere, the original video clip was, but how passionately people here want it to be true.
The central thing that people here want really, really want this video to prove is, quite bluntly, that black people in America in their “sekrit” meetings amongst themselves really hate white folk and seek to use their recently acquired power (as government employees, NAACP members, New Black Panthers, etc.) to reduce whites to a servile class.
I suppose one could set out to “prove” that supposition of reverse racism and I imagine that “evidence” could be discovered and brought forward and laid out in the open as the Breitbart video’s subtext purports to do. But — as neo — points out, but which somehow fails to sink into some of the wrapped-in concrete colonized-at-an-early-age minds around here (I’m lookin’ at you artfl) is that you had better have EVERYTHING NAILED DOWN before you begin. “If you strike at a prince…”
Otherwise, as Brietbart has found, the mythical beast escapes the trap.
This video seems to be the classic case of cutting things off just when they get interesting. It seems to be the classic case of “out of context” quoting.
Seems to be. Is it? That waits upon a review of the entire tape.
To roll back onto the “reactions of the audience” position to justify the tape, as Breitbart has done, is spin but worse than spin. It’s misdirection.
Reactions of the audience, I ASSURE YOU, meant little to nothing to Andrew until it dawned on him his flank was vulnerable. When it did, it became a good thing that the reactions were there because it gave him something to point to. But ….
LET’S REVIEW!
The video is pointed at one person and one person only and what that person says is the entire message and point of putting the tape online as we first saw it.
Having one’s back up after years of being falsely accused of racism is something I understand quite well. It feels good to finally get something / ANYTHING that gets some back and blackens the nose of the opposition. But if, in the end, it proves not to be true or only part of the truth, you’ve got nothing.
I suspect that that is what is driving the passion here and elsewhere. White folks thought they had something, but now may have nothing.
Curses! Foiled again!
Hong: Yes, Obama was surprisingly quick on the trigger with that one. I wonder why.
Maybe I missed something but I somehow got the impression that racism as a significant political force has been dead for over two generations in this country.
The Poem Antigonish seems describe contemporary American racism:
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
BTW didn’t the NAACP just give an award to the avowed Communist Van Jones?
Bob from Virginia: but charges of racism are just too tempting and useful to give up. So if it doesn’t exist as a major political force, it must be invented. Racism certainly exists at the personal level, however, on both sides.
I understand Breitbart’s original video is not abridged. His point was not what Sherrod said, but the reaction of some in the audience. Then, some sites used an abridged version to make Sherrod and the NAACP look bad.
I find it hard to fault Alinsky tactics being used by righties against lefties, since I’m with the righties, but just because I find it hard doesn’t mean I need not make the effort. Certainly, it’s not as though there’s a shortage of legitimate things the left says and does for which we can legitimately hammer them.
As to Alinsky tactics, I do value my own integrity — I find it difficult to deliberately exaggerate and yank things out of context, etc., etc., to advance an ideology. If that’s namby-pamby and weak-kneed, so be it. I’ll fight, but I can’t sell my soul doing it.
Of course, there’s the context of the NAACP charging tea partiers with racism — I quite suppose that that’s what led Breitbart to post the video. And there’s the longer-running context of righties being held to much higher standards than lefties. No need to elaborate on that around these here parts.
Sherrod is an unfortunate who’s been caught in a crossfire. She harbored racist thoughts, is now frank about that, acted on them, thought better of it, and is now recommending her more enlightened approach to others. I abhor her political point of view (from what I know/gather of it), but I cannot fault her in this particular instance. She ought to get that apology and her job back.
.
As Hong has pointed out, this incident has a lot in common with the Cambridge flap. After stepping in it without the facts, Obama and his flunkies should know better. The instant reaction to this one suggests they are a bunch of amateurs. It also suggests they are freaked out by the conservative media. The fear that the tape would show up on Glenn Beck is revealing.
As near as I can tell, the audience only laughs once–on both edits. It may be my imagination, but it seems like it occurs at slightly different spots. In the edited version, the laugh seemed more offensive. But it might just be that the context in the unedited version simply made the audience reaction seem more natural.
Does anyone have the technical chops to tell if the sound had been edited?
“”White folks thought they had something, but now may have nothing””
Vanderleun
We have the name of their organisation. Which if put on the other foot would prove racism. The video i would prefer to see from Breitbart is a parody storefront for the NAAWP and watch the fireworks and outrage.
Time will tell, truth will out.
Do we really need a video to tell that an organization named the ‘National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’ is racist? Really?
We can haz NAAWP?
I’m looking at this as a forest vs. trees POV. She might have been the focus of the video, at least from the camera’s visual angle, but I see the totality of it -audio and video. It might not be totally condemning of her, but it sure makes the NAACP look very, very embarrasing.
Contrast this with another video (which I hope is online somewhere) about Trent Lott’s remarks on Strom Thurmond a few years ago. He spoke. The crowd’s reaction: total gasp. Silence. A good dose of WTF, man?!?
We all know what happened a few days later…
Neo wrote: Bob from Virginia: but charges of racism are just too tempting and useful to give up. So if it doesn’t exist as a major political force, it must be invented.
Can’t agree more. It also seems symptomatic of a society with too much free time on its hands. We are lucky t be able to worry about something that largely does not exist rather than a real problem.
American society seems to have reached a state of near bliss. Creepy, like that Twilight Zone where a criminal thinks he’s in heaven because he can get everything he wants only to discover it’s really hell.
When you view the entire talk you see that her story isn’t so bad. She is even forced to find the farmer a black lawyer to help him after the white one proves useless even while taking the farmer’s money for months. Lawyers don’t come out to well in her story.
Still the talk was framed in racial terms to appease the NAACP audience. Most Americans would be surprised at the racially segregated nature of these speeches even when given to mixed audiences. The NAACP and the federal government’s emphasis on promoting programs in a race-based manner definitely keep us from a post-racial America where skin color is not a driving factor.
Breitbart might have had a video out of context but the NAACP and the Obama administration sure did act like he had the goods. That says a lot about what they know exists in the organization.
After watching the whole video I can’t agree with Breitbart’s opinion. My take on it renders an exact opposite opinion.
I took it on Breitbart’s word that there must be something. I also relied on the following from Powerline:
“To the laughter and obvious approval of members of the NAACP audience, Sherrod admitted that she did not give the white farmer “the full force of what I could do . . .”
That’s not what I saw or heard.
At about minute 7:42 on the second tape (from the Breitbart site) is what I imagine all the fuss is about. It’s like making a tidal wave out of a small pond ripple.
But, in fact, the crowd’s response is nothing more than a murmer of recognition to Sherrod’s statement that she struggled with how much help she was going to give the white farmer who came to her for help even while expressing his superiority. I take from the crowd’s response that they too have struggled with the same issue, not that they were in agreement with any refusal to help, which was never expressed except as an inner conflict.
There’s no racism on this tape from Sherrod or the crowd. (Well, actually, there is some racism but it is unknown to Sherrod as she is still a promoter of the government as an answer. I’m thinking along the lines of Star Parker and her book, “Uncle Sam’s Plantation.”)
If this is Breitbart’s idea of an expression of racism, even if taking only the edited view, it’s an indictment against him. And I have to agree with Vanderleun. I wanted it to be true.
I think that attention has to be paid to another possible motive for Shirley Sherrod’s quick firing, and that is her apparent deep involvement in a much larger potential scandal, the successful class action suit by “black farmers” against the USDA, and the Agriculture Department’s PIGFORD program to pay what is, in effect, now close to a billion dollars in “reparations” to black farmers–those who were farming or who “attempted to farm”–and who were deliberately denied aid from the USDA to save their farms during the period from 1983 to 1997 (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/forty_acres_a_mule_sherrod_sty.html).
According to the article linked above, the program was supposed to make payments to the estimated two to three thousand “black farmers” who were affected, but payments have already been adjudicated so far for 22,505 black farmers, 50 times the original estimate, and four times the number of black farmers in existence in 1977 and somehow, prior to her appointment as an official in the Agriculture department, Sherrod and her husband were awarded $300,000 to pay for their “pain and suffering,” and an organization titled “New Communities,” founded by Sherrod and her husband and other family members, is slated to receive the largest payout under this agreement, $13,000,000 dollars, a far larger payment than that given to any other “black farmers.”
Thus, I can readily see why Obama & Co. might want to take this opportunity (say, who actually peddled this tape to Breitbart anyway?) to whisk her off the stage.
Make that “Sherrod’s possible involvement in what could be a much larger potential scandal,…”
“We have the name of their organisation. ”
Oh please.
Like, ah, was it a big mystery?
Vanderleun suggests that people here really really want the reverse racism charge to be true. Unfortunately he has taken the situation out of context and does not have everything nailed down. Many people here doubt the sincerity and good will of the NAACP because of their baseless accusations of racism. They really, really want the tea party to be racist.
Some time back, The Anchoress remarked that she gets really tired of saying, “Imagine if it had been Bush doing this.”
A larger point would be, imagine if it were white folks doing it. Or republicans, or….
She got tired, presumably, because there are so many opportunities (or obligations) to say something like, imagine if it were Bush who did this.
What is interesting is the reaction of the administration. One possibility is that they thought AB had something else, something worse. She may.
Mark Levin just played a different excerpt from the video where she strongly implied that people who are upset about the health care legislation are really opposed to a black president.
Well, I don’t know. I’m starting to think that, just maybe, Eric Holder was right–we’re a nation of cowards when it comes to race–only not in the way he thought, or in the way he hoped. The conversation itself has turned us all into cowards. There’s a real tension between the fact that ordinary decent people of good will in this country are sick and damned tired of being told that they’re racists–they just want to live their lives, thank you very much–and the fact that the Left lays race-baiting traps laid everywhere, and for everyone. There’s effectively no worse accusation you can have hurled at you, and once it’s hurled, self-defense is nearly impossible. It’s like being asked, “When did you stop beating your wife?” It’s the old “no-win” situation, isn’t it–you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, damned if you never did, damned if you never would have, and we’re all racists now, Baby Blue. Where can I sign up for rehab? I’ll do it, I’ll go quietly, but please please please just make the noise stop.
The tea party people at the Capitol rally should have known when they saw the Congressional Black Caucus descend the steps and wade into them that they were being set up, and many of them probably did. Breitbart is eating his $100,000 reward, and has been suckered into going a bridge too far with the NAACP/Sherrod mess. News organizations like McClatchy aren’t changing their spin. There’s something of the Star Wars trash compacter scene, and we just want to scream, with C3PO, “Shut them all down!
Jeremiah Wright, come to the white (?) courtesy phone.
Wow, I have a completely different take on this. I see a women from a small rural town trying to keep that town and others like it alive. She talking to the young people and encouraging them to learn, to start businesses, and to hold on to values that have always kept people in small towns going. She is telling them to overcome their impressions that the white man will always keep them down. This is the woman who would organize a church supper to help a family whose house just burned down, and I don’t think it would matter whether that family is black or white.
This is not an inner city ACORN worker who has been schooled in Alinskey scamming. In fact, she doesn’t seem to realize how the race baiters have hurt inner city kids. She really thinks they are on the same side. Her listings of all the government programs available is to put the burden on the young to use those opportunities instead of constantly whining and blaming whites. She is giving the Bill Cosby speech re-tuned for a country audience. You simply can’t judge her or her audience on the same scale as the national NAACP, or for that matter as the Farrakhans, Shabazzes, or Jeremiah Wrights. They probably see her and her communities as clingers in the same coolly analytical way that Obama sees those of the Rust Belt.
We have shared a lot of our difficult mind-changing experiences here, but have any of us started with the murder of our father when we were 17 and having to accept that his murderers would not be prosecuted? She has come a very long way. I would be proud to share a dinner of fried chicken and pecan pie with her any day.
rickl: that would be playing the race card. Not a good thing, but a different thing.
Wow, I (along with others) wish we had a brief edit period for our posts! If we did, I would have modified my post to say that, “they just want to live their lives, thank you very much, and they don’t hate anybody.”
Alright, I’ve watched the entire video, and I’m not impressed. Here’s why.
She is a petty tyrant. Her “redemption” consists of rejecting a form of petty tyrany — discrimination against white people — that is frowned upon, and replacing it with a more socially acceptable form of petty tyrany — discrimination against people who are not poor enough to meet her standard of approval.
It would seem to me that her job description is to help anyone and everyone who asks for help or is sent to her, without regard to their color, race or socioeconomic background. But in her mentality, no, that is exactly the special privilege of the tyrant government bureaucrat. No one receives help without first stroking the tyrant bureaucrat’s ego. This man wasn’t black, so his race was no help there with the racist petty tyrant. But fortunately he was poor, so he lucked out in that he was able to arouse pity in the bureaucrat, who fortunately for him turned out to also be a Marxist petty tyrant, perfectly willing to grant special favors illegally based on socioeconomic status.
What if instead of a “poor” man, the person coming to see Ms. Sherrod had been lower middle class. trying to keep his land against a government using all its power to take it from him, she would have had no reason to help him, as he wasn’t black, and wasn’t poor enough. I don’t make a huge amount of money. Certainly not enough to pay lawyers to fight the government. If I had to go to a government office, I would hope and pray that I wouldn’t have the misfortune to encounter someone like Ms. Sherrod. I wouldn’t happen to meet her personal standards for who is and is not worthy of receiving the attentions of such an important person as herself.
Two other points that really rubbed me raw. First, when she describes her first encounter with this poor white person, Sherrod makes a point of emphasizing how he was trying to show his superiority to her. It apparently never dawns upon her that a person facing seizure of their land by the government is probably a terrified person, operating and functioning way, way out of their comfort zone. She never explains exactly how he was trying to “prove” this, but Sherrod seems to be trying really hard to signal that this man was behaving “uppity”, to use the word that a white racist would use in the same situation. Of course, a black racist can’t use that word, but she gets the message across crystal clear.
This is also not a part of her redemption.
And as far as her being “redeemed”, later in the speech she tells a story where she laments that so many acres of black-owned farmland are being sold to whites, and appears to describe how she used her office to try and prevent the sale of land to whites. She laments the fact that ultimately some of the land went to a new white owner.
This is not a redeemed person. This is not a person doing God’s work. This is a person whom from the time she was 17 years old has devoted her life to using her power as a government bureaucrat to indulge her own prejudices, first against white people as a racist, then as a Marxist, by turning her hate from white people to poor people, and then as a racist again, by using her office to fight the free-market sale of black-owned land to a white buyer, based on his skin color.
She needs to stay fired.
I’m in total agreement with you expat. This is an admirable women and the crowd, throughout her speech, was approving of her general message that hating back is wrong, and that self-reliance is key to advancement. And she seemed to be moving towards a realization that some of the old ways were better, for instance, when she stated how the black community used to police their own and provide their own funds and own their own land. How unfortunate that this speech and meeting (which probably is an exception but how much I don’t know) should be utilized as an example of racism. That being said, I would refrain from condemning Breitbart but would like an explanation as to what he really perceived as racist in that video. Surely there is plenty of fodder elsewhere.
I wish Obama acted as quickly on the Gulf Coast oil spill as he did on Sherrod. Genius is the ability to decide what is important I guess.
I agree completely with jms–much good may it do me. Or any of us.
jms:
That part rankled me too. It was probably the chip on her shoulder that interpreted it that way. Far too many blacks see everything through a racial lens.
Not only terrified, but damn pissed off as well.
Breitbart just wrecked his credibility. His only chance of ever being relevant again is a total apology and admission of error. It’s too bad because he is one of the good guys and a real fighter. He let his anger over the NAACP charge against the tea party lead him to do something he should not have done.
There are double standards between liberals and conservatives (libs can do what Breitbart did; Cons cannot), and between white and black (Blacks can say what she said; whites could not)…but that is the world we live in.
ANyway, we are supposed to be bigger than them, and better than them. A full admission and apology with total honesty about motives is what B should do.
This is way, way, WAY off topic, but it’s an utterly fascinating post and comment thread. For what it’s worth.
Drowning doesn’t look like drowning
/hat tip Instapundit
Mike Mc.:
I disagree. That woman clearly has some serious issues. See jms’ comment above.
I can’t help wondering whether Breitbart was set up by being fed an edited video.
Thanks Walla Dalbo for the link to the Pigford class action case via American Thinker. The settlement of it and Sherrod’s involvement in it present a strong explanation for the quick action taken against Sherrod by the Obamits. Hopefully more light will be shown into this whole affair, but I’m not holding my breathe about that. Her apparent manipulations of the system suggests that she is no innocent angel to say the least. For those of you who might have missed the link, here it is again:
(http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/forty_acres_a_mule_sherrod_sty.html)
rickl,
I saw that too, and was fascinated. I’ve heard that drowning is really rather a pleasant (????) experience, as those things go. I’m not sure why it matters, but somehow it seems to.
Give me a break. We’re all a bit racist.
I am, I know I am. I try not to be, but it comes out sometimes, in my thoughts, in a joke, walking down the street, rooting for the Irish boxer, thinking less of that white girl with the black guy.
Kind of ashamed of it, honestly.
I’d appreciate Breitbart just saying “Yesterday was the first salvo of egregious made up s*** to level this playing field immersed in one sided egregious made up s***. I’ll let you know when i sense i’m so over the top in this battle i need to apologise to anyone”.
Man, betsybounds, I am gobsmacked at your reaction. You’re a Christian, right? So you have been to Church and through many a sermon. And that was really more like a sermon at Church than anything else. Those people were laughing at shared experiences and weaknesses. Sherrod prefaced the whole thing by stating she began her tenure thinking she was only going to help black people. But God taught her different. The crowd knew where she was going with her speech and when she reached the epiphany that’s what they agreed with. I’ve been through too many church services to know that when a reformed, say, adulterer, tells his story of redemption, the congregation doesn’t agree with the underlying sin, but with the shared temptation we all feel.
As far as what jms said, the facts of Sherrod’s speech showed she went to extraordinary lengths to help the white farmer. As for the substitutition of being poor for black, I chalk that up to a necessary element of a structure that could only take so much change. Why it was necessary, I don’t know and could conjecture all night. I don’t think it is a dispositive issue.
Okay rickl. I read jms. And you could very well be right about a set-up. We don’t know enough. But that’s speculation without real eveidence.
Breitnart, even if it was a set-up. took the bait. Very unwise and damaging.
And I agree the woman is basically racially oriented. If she was white and talking about blacks, everyone would say that she was racist perhaps without realizing how racist she was.
But there is a double standard. That’s just the way it is. And this will perpetuate it. They will say: See what those racist and heartless conservatives do! This poor woman! Just trying to help people out and look what happens. This shows the NAACP was right about the Tea Party and all conservatives. They’re just a bunch of racists holding us back.
“”But there is a double standard. That’s just the way it is. And this will perpetuate it.””
Mike Mc
We’ve been in this appeasement mode of those who insult the hell out of us for long past greivances for a very long time. I’ll suggest it is exactly what HAS perpetuated it into “just the way it is”.
Eric Holder said that we are too cowardly to have a “conversation about race”.
Well, I’m ready to have that “conversation” and I don’t think that people like Holder are going to be very happy about it.
I am done with “white guilt” and I am not going to play that game any more.
I am also sick and tired of “angry blacks” and I frankly don’t want to hear their shit any more. If things are so bad here, they are perfectly free to emigrate to Africa.
I am sick of all the BS. Of course the NAACP is racist. As is the Congressional Black Caucus. As is Holder. As are Baraq and Michelle. It goes on and on and on.
To pretend otherwise is to be a factual coward.
It’s enough to drive me to racism.
Steve,
If you follow my posts, I’m all about fighting. But this isn’t the one to fight on. Breitbart was wrong. You fight by admitting that and also talking about the double standard. Now is just the time to show it. Breitbart won’t be abloe to fight again if he doesn’t apologize or otherwsie credibly explain the use of the clip.
Vieux Charles,
Well, here’s the thing: I had, years ago (and I mean YEARSago–back when I was in grade school, in the 1950s) rejected it, rejected any kind of racism. I put it aside, didn’t indulge it, refused to recognize it. The thing that, maybe, bothers me most about all this crap is that I’m thinking about it again. After all these years. Not that blacks are inferior, but that they are an enemy. I haven’t made them an enemy. They have made me one. Based on the color of my skin.
Don’t you see what’s happening? You’re being made to condemn yourself, irrespective of whatever good motives you might otherwise have. You’re being culled out, and you’re being made to think it’s right and just that you should be.
Never mind that blacks have, in their minds and in their actions, separated you from them for lo these many years, now, and their leaders have turned it into a sort of orthodoxy. An entire generation, and more, of black people have been raised to see racism at every turn, to understand every slight as motivated by racism. That cannot be overcome. It’s the kind of thing that is ingrained, and that sets conflict up.
I’m so sick of it. White people’s good motives don’t count for a damn in this drama, this narrative. You’re racist whether you’re racist or not. We elected Obama president (and he could not have won without the white vote), and still we’re racists. There is no sufficient penance, no absolution, for the white man.
More must always be done.
Nothing good will come of this.
betsybounds Says:
July 21st, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Well said. You were much more articulate than I was.
I can’t help thinking that all this racial animosity is being deliberately orchestrated. For the international Communists, the end game is the destruction of America. This is just a means to an end. Our enemies want us at each others’ throats. Nothing would make them happier.
We Americans have mostly healed our historic racial divisions. That cannot be allowed to stand.
rickl,
Exactly. Exactly.
Sherrod is telling the story of her life, her experiences, and to make an analogy to, “What if a white person said the same…” is not being serious, and willfully without historical perspective, heartless. She is describing how she became someone someone better than she could imagined. Conservatives should stand by her.
nyomythus … home computer still blocked :[
Here is a transcript beginning at 33:09.
There’s another point I want to make though. You know, coming out of slavery black folks used to help each other. That’s how they built the schools that we had, you know, that’s how they bought the land that we have that we’ve (?) lost all of it. At our peak we had almost fifteen million acres. As black people we have less than two million acres of farmland left. And we will sell it for nothing. For nothing.
You know, I was helping a family here recently. 515 acres of land. Never had a drop of debt on it since the grandfather bought it years ago, and he died in 1974. And two cousins up in the North. Guess what they decided. They tried to force a sale of every acre of it. And one of their Aunts had spent all of her life on the land … she was 93 years old when she died. And she died after those for-sale signs went up out there on that farm. Auction signs went up on the farm. She was in the hospital the next month. She was dead … that was January. She was dead by October.
Up to here, this is all defensible, and even exemplary. She is defending an elderly woman who wants to live out her life on the land she has lived on, against the financial interests of her relatives who want to put the entire parcel on the market, presumably to maximize their inheritance by maximizing the value of the entire large parcel. But then the aunt passes away and exits the picture. But does she stop? No.
But we kept working at it. And we found some honest lawyers — they were white. I wish I could say that about all lawyers, especially black lawyers, but they will nickel and dime you to death. I’m sorry – I don’t have a good opinion of most lawyers. But anyway, that land has been saved. You know. But they were trying to force a sale of all of it. They’ll eventually get 62 acres of the 515 and guess what. They have a white man already lined up to buy it. And it’s the land on the creek, which is what he wanted.
So she used the power of the government to try and block a land sale for the sole reason that the person trying to buy the land was white. This isn’t something that happened 24 years ago. This is something that happened, in her words, recently. Watch her body language. She rues the fact that she was unable to prevent the sale of black-owned land, in which she had no interest or interested party, to a white buyer.
This isn’t something that happened 24 years ago. This is an example of Sherrod abusing her government position, in her own word “recently”, to interfere with a land sale because she didn’t like the color of the buyer’s skin.
I refuse to stand by her. She is a racist who “recently” abused her governmental authority to advance her goal of preventing a land sale from a black seller to a white buyer.
Or maybe that’s just the policy of the new administration. Obama and the rest of the government sure seem to be treating her like some sort of saintly hero today. Don’t think it’s going unnoticed. A lot of lines were crossed today.
And yes. Nothing good will come out of this. Obama is in way over his head. He and his administration are busy lighting racial bonfires left and right at the slightest perception of tactical advantage, and I don’t think that any of them have the slightest idea of the future consequences of what they are doing right now.
Yeah, if I were in the audience with someone saying crazy stuff I’d wait until the end before making a decision on the hope they were getting to a [respectable] point. So, yeah, not buying it either (that people in the crowd can be called out for not booing her off the podium).
I think she still ended up saying racist stuff (using code words for white like greedy people with power…very reminiscent of anti Jewish code of old), but yeah, the edits were done to misconstrue the point she was making on that part about the white farmer… We should all admit that and move on. The biggovernment.com people claim it was sent preedited to them… they should stop trying to spin it, point that out, and also move on.
Joan of Argghh! Says:
“And yet it remains that not one person screamed the N word at congressmen in a Tea Party rally, but we must gladly suffer those slings and arrows of false accusations”
What I’d really like is someone to tap zombietime’s photo gallery now that the signs of a few people at huge rallies means a lot about the group who set it up. Because, from the look of it, a LOT of people at democrat / progressive protests are leftist nuts if not left fascists.
Anyone who thinks in terms of “our people’ and ‘your people’ is a racist.
And anyone who is willing to talk like that to a large group knows that they are in the company of those of like mind.
Maybe it’s because I come from a smallish city and have lots of relatives who live in the country. My family goes back to pre-revolution days. I know where my great grandfather’s farm used to be. He was awarded a Medal of Honor in the Civil War. The original log house where his family lived was at some point covered in wood siding. My grandfather captured it in an inlaid library table he made using hundreds of differents wood types to show the color variations. My cousin has this table, but the house and farm are now a development. My brother has some of the beautiful furniture my grandfather made, much of it from woods he bought when farm buildings and other old houses were being demolished. I can’t go anywhere back home without seeing new buildings that block out memories of the strength and work and sacrifice of those who went before. I don’t hate all the changes, but I do hate that so many don’t care about the foundation upon which they build their dreams, that they take it for granted and sometimes sacrifice the valuable traditions for the latest in thing.
For Ms Sherrod, it’s not about hating whites or resenting the white man who bought that farm land. It’s about those cousins who didn’t care about the aunt’s love of the family homestead and who saw only dollar signs instead of years of family struggle. It’s about people who take everything for granted. It’s the country farmer version of what so many here when we see our constitution being trampled and our schools being turned into indoctrination factories. She is a lot like VDH but not as articulate. No one criticizes him for noting the differences between himself, Mexican-Americans who share his values and heritage, and a newer group of immigrants who trample them.
In her home town, Ms Sherrod is probably called Mizz Shirley, and in her bones, she carries the way a black woman acts when she passes a white person on the street. She will never stop noticing any more than I will ever pull the right article from the German assortment of ders, dies, and dasses. You are programmed early on to notice or not. But what she has learned is that those white farmers are her allies and that they care about the same thing. What she seems not to fully realize is that some she thinks are political allies are really cousins from the north. I doubt that she is aware of how race is used in the north or how many of the “Uncle Toms” are in reality just like the upstanding hardworking farmers she loves. She probably doesn’t realize how many young were taught to disrespect their fathers for acting white. But she does seem to be trying to tell the young that there is a black heritage far richer than bling and rap. If she uses the words black and white in doing this, I am not at all offended.
i just saw Ms Sherrod’s comments about Fox News etc. Boy. it sure didn’t take long for the national know it alls to tell her what to say. These are the same people who dumped on Cosby, and these are the people I want to scream at. We can’t fight this battle over Sherrod’s speech or press releases. We have to take on those who are poisoning the ground and then blaming whites that the trees aren’t healthy and productive. We have to call them on their hypocrisy and ask constantly where they got the mandate to decide who is black. Sherrod is cannon fodder for them. I hope she comes to realize this because I think she does care about some important things.
Expat: Nice writing, but you have seriously romanticized this woman. She is not the Mizz Shirley you had in mind.
People who own property are allowed to sell it without respect to an uninvolved party’s esthetic preferences.
Keep Walmart out if you like, but be aware you’re forcing a lot of folks to pay a premium to support a small-town theme park.
Government run health care should be a lot of fun.
“But what she has learned is that those white farmers are her allies and that they care about the same thing.”
That or she has the left narrative down. It’s anti anglo but with double think to exempt leftists and the poor.
Artfldgr: I have always stated that certain elements of the feminist movement are to be repudiated and condemned. I don’t repudiate other elements of which I approve. I have been quite consistent in making distinctions about what parts of feminism I accept and what parts I reject. And I am not a member of any feminist group, nor have I ever been, and I consider these groups pernicious for the most part.
yes… but you dont get to select parts.
you either take the whole or can the whole.
your PERSONAL version has no meaning.
nor does a million other women who have personal versions which allow them to be members of something they are not members of.
its a collectivist technique to get those who really dont support things to be a part of what they dont support.
YOUR version is MEANINGLESS to reality except your PERSONAL perceptive reality. got that? you never put it down, no one else knows it, it doesn’t match the leaders, and on and on.
it only serves one function.
it makes the gaggle of women not turn on you.
a catholic that believes in premarital sex, the use of condoms and abortion is NOT A CATHOLIC.
you confuse what you want to call yourself with what you are. the catholic in the example wants to call themselves a catholic, but since they dont agree with the people who define and dictate the meaning, they are not catholic.
i set up a club, and i say that everyone in it (that counts and not being used) has to be socialist wanting full bore totalitarianism. i also say that we will accept anyone who wants to be a member even though they dont agree… in this way, we have an army in which the peopel WE deal with think they are all in line and in agreement.
so ratehr than have 15% support, we get 70% support and can crush all opposition.
and the end result?
waht the LEADERS WANTED AND DEFINED is actuated and realized.
Do women as a majority want the institution of marriage to be abolished?
nope… then why support a group that has that as their key goal that cant be changed?
because you want to be with the in crowd. your biology cant stand being put out (to primates thats death)… so you will do ANYTHING to be with the dominant power group, including make some false interface between the stuff they want, and the stuff you want and imagine that somehow this means something and will influence the leaders.
why? you serve them, not they serve you.
does the false hopes of a serf change the emperors mind? of course not.
but its the only thing that allows the slave its sanity
this is the DUAL MIND that communist subjects and totalitarian serfs have to develop. the personal version that allows them an internal reality in which they can be what they think they are, and the external version, in which they support those that dont represent them
why?
there is no place else to go.
and so, rather than stand up on their own, they listen to the crutch tell them they are needed, critical to their future, and all that.
in truth, only the crutch needs them.
they dont need the crutch.
just as only the parasite needs them.
not they need the parasite.
in 180 years the womens personal versions hve not changed one iota of anything.
and since you believe in the propaganda that all women are honest, and good, and would never lie (as its told constantly over and over) you trust your masters.
i dont need any peolle like that to stand on my own
so i see your crutch.
you dont want to stand on your own, so you pretend your crutch is not there.
even worse, your crutch doesn hold you up…
open your eyes… not one idea in the personal versions most women have is being implemented, supported, addressed or even acknowledged.
and these are your only representatives.
they ALL what the same end goals that’s what collectivism is about… whatever you want to think that lets you stay with them is find with them. they need bodies to show up so that the politician will listen to THEM (and not you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
lets go down their list
abolition of the slavery of marraige is key to their movement, and has not changed since 1830.
most women do not want the abolition of marraige.
most women do not want their daughters being taught that the think they want is the most horrible thing that can be. do they?
lets look at what we have.
did obama help married or hurt them? hurt them by penalizing them for being married
does free std injections help women or hurt them?
is their refusal to olppose mutilation of womens sexual organs what women want?
is hookup cultuer and 5inch heels, ubiquitous anal sex with fisting, group sex and sex with same sex partners, and animals (for some) waht women fought for?
its what these leaders provided
you sit there and wonder why they dont listen to you. why listen to someone that supports your ends by pretending that your sharing some ends that dont mean anything puts you on their side.
that is, the key points do not change, and they toss you a bone on some issue that is irrelevent to those goals… or if provided, cuases great distruction and crisis, to wich the patients return to the blood letters who have the consensus every time.
where else can they go.
as long as they do this, there is no other place as this one place can serve everyone no matter what they think. as the thoughts of the slaves in a colletive dont matter, only what the leaders want matter.
this is why women were not in politics for eons.
and why, every state that grew to allow them in failed the same way. (and why in millions of years there have been zero true matriarchies)
kind of interesting that those who have that record would find socialism key as the thing to select for future success.
heck, the only reason they wanted you in the game was your gullible, inured to any other position than who you call your master, vain enough to be tricked, and hold the key to making the independent men do what someone wants.
by the way… they say so.
but in the stuff you dont read.
think of the journolist..
now think of the readers arguing like you that the leaders have good poitns.
yes, hitler liked dogs… but is that good enough?
feminists dont even like that….
Yesterday I posted at the Anchoress site:
Yup.
The name isn’t important. What is important is the political agenda of the ruling class behind all the shape-shifting. Angelo M. Codevilla from The American Spectator:
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints …
Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/of_course_obamas_a_socialist.html
cant play the game as the ball…
so you cant use the arguments that address the ball to understand the strategy of the players kicking it around (as they will tell the ball what is needed to make the ball think its ok that its being kicked, and that soon, someday, their ideas will be adopted too. like the team would adopt the ideas of a ball they are kicking around. makes the ball feel better though, and gives it something to say to someone who may point out that their the ball in play, not a real player.
in ability to accept the position they have in this game means the ball pretends its a player, and it also defends that its a meaningful player, even though neither side listens to its personal version of how things SHOULD be.
when you understand the GAME, the ball can tell you all it wants to about how its a meaningful decider of things.
Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself.
which means that all arguments for the ball are for the ball to do what they want, not for the ball to actyually have a way of influencing their game.
the ideas and morals and things they say to you, are not what they believe.
until one lets that go, then one will just be a ball thinking they are a meaninful irreplacable part of the game, and that that they, the greater number of balls in the games, are what counts.
personally, in a game of lies, the one lied to is not in a alternative place it he debate.
you can always tell the ball is talking in that their explanations as to why the leaders are ok, is dotted with lots of I… I think this. i didn’t side wiht them on that. i was making reasonable choices… etc.
so what?
your the ball…
you can think whatever you want to
just as long as when they kick you they get what they want…
then its your job to twist it all around and make it reasonable that it was their turn, and the next time its yours. but i guess that’s what happens when you convince a ball its a player so it doesn’t quit the game when it never gets what it really wants. eh?
So what is the moral of this story, that racist Sherrod mended her ways from hating white people in a broader sense to only hating those that aren’t “white and poor”? I get it now. It’s Sherrod on the Road to Damascus, only she doesn’t have an encounter with Jesus. She has a Robin Hood conversion. Hurray- Sherwood Forrest is saved!
By the way..
the argumentative problem here is the same as a sane man put wrongly into a mental ward.
how do you convince them your not crazy?
how do you convince people in a cult that has grown to encompass society that they are actually inside something not outside?
gs:
Thanks for sending me to the Anchoress and the postings there on Pigford v. Vilsack. It will behoove us all to go to the Washington Examiner’s article on Sherrod, her history, and her pain-and-suffering award granted in partial SETTLEMENT of the lawsuit against the USDA just days BEFORE she was hired by the USDA in 2009.
It would appear she is a career race hustler.
Artflgr:
I agree with the thrust of your comments. Merci.
Sherrod: I’d Consider Legal Action against Breitbart
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011306-503544.html
hope she does… then through discovery the case will be dismissed as she is suing the wrong party, and then be told to sue the NAACP who released a edited tape first and refused the rest of it.
Artfldgr: your comment about feminism as it relates to me contains a great many false assumptions.
I repeat: I am not a member of any feminist group, nor have I ever been a member or even a supporter of such groups. I have always found the leadership to be advocating a great many stances with which I do not agree, although I do agree with some basic bedrock ideas such as the ability to work in most fields and get the same pay for the same job (by the way, I do not even agree with modifying/reducing important physical requirements of some jobs such as firefighting in order to accommodate women; I believe standards should be the same for both sexes).
To say that I cannot support some very basic ideas that a group holds and not support others, that I must somehow swallow that group’s tenets whole without even being a member of it, is bizarre. Every day people support certain principles that a group they might not approve of happens to advocate; those principles and ideas are not owned by that group.
Many of the assumptions and assertions you make about me are completely unsupported, presumptuous, and absurd if you have been reading my blog, which you certainly have. For example:
That is so far from being a description of me—or anything I have written here, or anything I believe—that it is absurd.
And then there’s this:
Again—you are creating some strawwoman and knocking her down, but this has nothing to do with me. Sit here and wonder why they don’t listen to me? Hardly. I am pleased that I have any readers at all, but I don’t waste a moment wondering why feminists—or anyone else, for that matter—don’t listen to me.
Judging by what Breitbart and others who’ve seen the entire tape have said about Sherrod’s speech I’m not sure he did anything wrong.
Sherrod while supposedly recanting her former racist beliefs seems to indulge in more racialist verbiage! Declaring opponents of Obamacare to be racist doesn’t sound like she’s learned her lesson. And the reaction of the audience to her story could still spell trouble to the narrative that this was all a harmless misunderstanding.
It does sound like Breitbart rushed this thing through, which he explains in his interview towards the end. If Sherrod sues, then Andrew will have another opportunity to explain himself and give proper context. He never tires of explaining how the NAACP was the real target and not Shirley. I wish him the best of luck.
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/07/cbs-video-breitbart-stands-behind-sherrod-story.html
Tom Says:
gs:
Thanks for sending me to the Anchoress and the postings there on Pigford v. Vilsack. It will behoove us all to go to the Washington Examiner’s article on Sherrod, her history, and her pain-and-suffering award granted in partial SETTLEMENT of the lawsuit against the USDA just days BEFORE she was hired by the USDA in 2009.
It would appear she is a career race hustler.
1. I consider profiting from porkulous special-interest legislation to be different in kind from giving oneself over to hatred and bigotry.
2. Since you found my Anchoress link worthwhile, you might also benefit, as might I, as might we all, from rereading Matthew 7:1-5.
“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.”
Shirley Sherrod
Race Healer
An Epiphany…yeah…that’s it.