Dean links the Sherrod videos below, and you can see Aziz getting self-righteous a few posts down. The latter post is probably fairly representative of the lefty response to the Sherrod debacle, complete with the usual invocation of Frum as “conservative conscience” (which just means he agrees with lefties half the time; is there a “liberal conscience?” I guess only conservatives are assumed to lack conscience), but there’ s a few problems with the left’s Journolistic rush to pretend she didn’t do anything controversial and declare Sherrod a victim of vast right-wing conspiring:
1) Contrary to lefty spin, this context adds little and excuses less; no one ever thought she just got up there to talk about how she doesn’t like white people, so that this vignette about not helping a white farmer turns out to be part of an inspirational story of realizing class warfare is more important than racism (hooray!) isn’t a big surprise. Sherrod admits to racial discrimination in the course of her work as an official of the U.S. government an NGO, a fireable offense whether part of a later “come-to-Jesus” moment or not. The only acceptable context for these remarks is “in a dream I had.” Whether she later helped him or not is probably material, but not exculpatory as everyone seems to be assuming. And notice: the man was harmed by her actions as he ended up paying the lawyer, regardless of whether she later actually did her job because she realized even though he was white he was also poor (hooray!). Also notice she seems to engage in some present-tense racism in talking about sending him to “one of his own.”
2) This is perfectly emblematic of the double standard Breitbart’s video was intended to demonstrate. If this was a white Republican man who admitted to having discriminated against blacks no one would be reconsidering anything, except whether to also file criminal charges. Try to imagine him describing how “This Negro was talking, trying to show how he was superior to me… so I didn’t do all I could to help him…. so I took him to a black lawyer… I figured his own kind would take care of him… I took him to one of his own…” No road-to-Damascus moment would get him off the hook (unless of course he became a Democrat — like Sherrod, most lefties generally get a pass on this kind of thing, probably because they have consciences unlike the rest of us).
3) No prominent voice on the right, as far as I know, actually called for Sherrod to be fired. There wasn’t even time for much of an outcry before the Obama admin threw her under the bus. The purpose of the video was to show that there is racism in the NAACP, and while the larger context suggests her act of racism was only cited in the context of overcoming racism with Marxism (hooray!), the audience response is still pretty telling, and the “full context” video incidentally tends to add force to the longstanding charge that the NAACP is more about leftism and promoting Democrat Party fortunes than about better race relations.
UPDATE: I’m assuming in the story she tells, she worked for the government. It was a little hard to follow in some places, someone correct me if I’m wrong.
UPDATE: Kevin corrects me in the comments; it was an NGO, where everyone gets to be as racist as they want. Right? (I seem to recall Rand Paul getting a lot of heat for answering that question wrong.) Glenn links and excerpts this excellent point from Ann Althouse:
Make a note for later use: When someone discriminates based on race, if they subsequently assert that it’s important not to do that, it’s wrong to hold her or him accountable. . .
That didn’t seem to help Trent Lott any. Maybe you need to have a conscience for the rule to apply.
UPDATE: More at InstaPundit: “I’d add, the Left has actually manufactured completely false evidence of racism at Tea Party events out here. I have yet to see any outrage over that. So, pardon me if I don’t play useful idiot and place a kick me, again, I’m stupid sign on my back as I’ve seen too many of the usual hand wringers on the Right already do in this matter.” Indeed.
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Dave,
1. Sherrod states that when she turned away the white farmer, she was working for a non-profit, not for the state of Georgia or the U.S. government.
2. Sherrod states she was forced to resign so quickly by the Obama Administration because they feared what Glenn Beck would do. Yes, Glenn Beck was mentioned by name by the Administration.
FWIW, I do disagree with Dean’s assertion that she didn’t deserve to be fired. I believe that we should fire everyone in the USDA — so that has nothing to do with what she said.
Completely incorrect.
The incident Sherrod described in the speech occurred in 1986. Sherrod worked for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund, a charitable organization, from 1985 until 2009. The US Agriculture Department sometimes referred farmers to this charitable group, but this was a private organization.
Breitbart deliberately edited and presented this video to make you believe Sherrod was describing something she did while working for the government, and you apparently fell for the deliberate distortion.
> Breitbart deliberately edited and presented this video to make you believe Sherrod was describing something she did while working for the government, and you apparently fell for the deliberate distortion.
Breitbart did not edit the video. Whose deliberate distortion are you falling for, mikeca?
Yours,
Wince
Another shoe drops. According to Media Matters, Sherrod is still stupidly playing the race card. She said, “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.”
I am not impressed.
Yours,
Wince
[sigh] Whatever.
It was intended as a backhanded agreement, Dean. Totally friendly. I don’t think she has been treated well as a person, but I am not strong enough to forget that in her job she is unlikely to treat others well.
My comment was for the whole thread, not your Phelps.
I think I should take heart that people born 10 years younger than I or more really don’t have any memory what racial attitudes were still like back 25 years ago, or just how strained and difficult it was for anyone back then to just be “color blind” or even believe “color blind” was possible. Of course a petty young bureaucrat in that part of the country in that time would still have those root assumptions about how things worked, it’s how it had always worked no matter what the law said. And going back to fire someone for something they admit they did 25 years ago and then saw the better of and made up for? Argh.
You can’t let go of the past if you don’t let go of the past. I don’t even know what else to say.
And going back to fire someone for something they admit they did 25 years ago and then saw the better of and made up for? Argh
Tell it to Trent Lott.
Gander, meet the goose…
I don’t know that she really deserved to be fired, any more than Lott deserved what happened to him. I just object to the notion that what happened to her was the result of some slick editing job by the VRWC rather than the combination of her own past racism and the Obama admin’s general incompetence. It’s nonsense. And there seems to be some present tense racism in her speech as well. Just try to imagine a Bush official getting away with talking about sending a black farmer to “one of his own.”
“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.”
Does anybody seriously think that Affirmative Action employees like this turkey are competitive?
Let me see if I understand this correctly.
Shirley Sherrod: Grew up on a poor farm where her family was terroized by the KKK, developed prejudices against white people, when faced with a case dealing with a poor white farmer came to the revelation her views were wrong.
Trent Lott: US senator who believed the US was better off electing a white supremacist as president.
Yeap, the double standard is sickening.
What? Strom Thurmond was a white supremacist?
How about —
Shirley Sherrod — actually engaged in racist discrimination 24 years ago
Trent Lott — gave a Senator an innocent compliment on his 100th birthday about his Presidential run 62 years ago, which was then deliberately misconstrued by the NAACP as having racist overtones
Thanks for finally pointing out the really outrageous phrase — “one of his own.” Used here in the 21st century, despite her glorious(ly heralded) blinding by the light of un-racism in 1986.
Go ahead and try using that phrase sometime today, and report back on whatever reaction you get.
Let’s dwell on the back story for a moment:
The record shows that Sherrod, warts and all, grew over the years, discarding an arguably anti-white mindset possibly influenced by the murder of her father, and became someone who could go to bat for a white World War II veteran and his wife when they were about to lose their farm.
In summary, Sherrod’s life has been a trial by fire, of a sort, and that certainly is the case of the veteran.
I have been reading your posts for some time now, Dave Price, and cannot detect even a modicum of growth, let alone your being wizened by your own trials by fire.
Please share a few of them with your dear readers and I will reserve judgment as to whether you are as pathetic as Andrew Breitbart, only maybe not as clever.
Well, since I didn’t start out discriminating against people and then later decide the class struggle was more important than “sending them to their own,” clearly that makes Sherrod my moral superior (our relative moral position being so very relevant), as she endured the “trial by fire” of not helping a white farmer, then belatedly helping him after the lawyer she sent him to screwed him over, which I’m sure was a hellish ordeal for her. (Is it too late to develop some racism of my own that I can later overcome with Marxism?)
“Arguably” anti-white? Arguably? It was the whole point of her story! It’s sad we can’t even expect a modicum of sense from our trolls anymore.
Please don’t reserve judgement shaun, as I certainly won’t. I’ve already decided you’re not the brightest candle.
TFG,
I can just imagine Bush officials explaining that one away, while the MSM and NAACP shriek racism and demand heads on platters.
“What? Strom Thurmond was a white supremacist?”
Thurmond:” I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches”
“How about — Shirley Sherrod — actually engaged in racist discrimination 24 years ago”
Well according to the farmer in question who actually spent time with Sherrod (as opposed to two people on the internet) she “always treated us good, was friendly, nice mannered, and a good person”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUcH0ABKDII
“Trent Lott — gave a Senator an innocent compliment on his 100th birthday about his Presidential run 62 years ago, which was then deliberately misconstrued by the NAACP as having racist overtones”
Full quote: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”
Had he not mentioned the “all these problems over the years” the defense that it was all an innocent compliment may have been just ever so plausible. Unfortunately for Lott, his compliment also asserted his own personal belief about what course the US should’ve taken during the civil rights struggle.
Shirley Sherrod: Grew up on a poor farm where her family was terroized by the KKK, developed prejudices against white people, when faced with a case dealing with a poor white farmer came to the revelation her views were wrong.
After she screwed him over real hard and sent him to “one of his own”, she realized that poor was poor and helped him as she should have from the start – being that she was a charity worker.
Trent Lott: US senator who believed the US was better off electing a white supremacist as president.
Is that what he said? Was Strom Thurmond’s policies and campaign platform all centered around crushing the Black man? There is no doubt that Strom WAS a racist…anymore than I doubt that Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ were all racists too.
Despite any actions they took to “help” advance civil rights. It was the time we lived in…they were all racists then. Hell, they are racists NOW. Those socialist policies are all about keeping African Americans and all the minorities knee deep in need of social programs…so they (Democrats) can stay in power.
So, yeah, the double standard is disgusting. Trent Lott simply tried to be nice to an old man on his 100th birthday and is vilified even to this very day; Sherrod fucks one over, realizes her error and finally helps him.
Had he not mentioned the “all these problems over the years” the defense that it was all an innocent compliment may have been just ever so plausible. Unfortunately for Lott, his compliment also asserted his own personal belief about what course the US should’ve taken during the civil rights struggle.
I stand corrected. Trent Lott did say that and that simply has only one implication. He’s was always such a jackass. LOL
she “always treated us good, was friendly, nice mannered, and a good person”.
That’s nice. So it’s okay to engage in racist discrimination, as long as you’re polite about it? I’m learning so much!
Had he not mentioned the “all these problems over the years” the defense that it was all an innocent compliment may have been just ever so plausible.
Harry Truman won that election, so Lott could easily have meant all the problems leftist Democrats have caused us. Or he might have meant blacks would have been better off without government meddling. Anyways, Dems and the NAACP are the segregationists today — they want everyone segregated into their ethnic identity groups, with gov’t mandated racial discrimination via affirmative action. So apparently what the NAACP objected to was that Strom thought of it first.
Sherrod’s father was killed by a member of the KKK. She grew up in a segregated society. Some white people are still grappling with the end of segregation. Do you think that segregation did not effect the attitude of blacks towards whites?
In this story of events from 24 years ago, Sherrod admits that she harbored some resentment towards white people for the generations of segregation that was ending. But she came to realize that poor white farmers were just like poor black farmers. They were not responsible for the generations of segregation, and she overcame that resentment towards white people.
In other words Shirley Sherrod is a human being who had a very different life experience than mine, and I would guess yours. That life experience left her with some scares, as it would on most people. Shirley Sherrod has faced up to those scares and moved on to recognize that we are all gods children, regardless of our skin color.
> Shirley Sherrod has faced up to those scares and moved on to recognize that we are all gods children, regardless of our skin color.
Except for Republicans…. ;)
Yours,
Wince
Wince, are you saying that Republicans are not gods children?
Hehehehehe. Good one, mikeca!
Yours,
Wince
In other words Shirley Sherrod is a human being who had a very different life experience than mine
Huh. I’ve heard plenty of racists explain away their bigotries with that line. It’s nice. Can anyone use it?
Oh bullshit, Dean. 25 years ago ? In 1985 ? Laughable. I am only a couple years younger than you, born in 1969 and the idea that there was some kind of rampant racism going on in 1985 is patently ridiculous.
There was no more or less racism then compared to now. Give me a break.
deadrody:
While “measuring” the level of racism is a fool’s errand, I am inclined to agree with Dean.
I was born in the distant days of 1947. I have followed the dialogue, such as it is, between and about whites and blacks closely as a commentator, journalist and more recently as a blogger.
While racism might not have been “rampant” in 1985, it was significantly more noticeable than it is today.
If I can get past the chip on your shoulder, there are several reasons for this. In no particular order:
* Racists in general are getting older. Some are dead. Others are dying. It is less cool to spout bigoted bile unless you are a Republican who puts his teeth in a bedside glass at night.
* On the whole, we are a more thoroughly integrated society insofar as where we live, shop, recreate and go to school. There’s nothing like hanging out with whites and vise versa to dull the sharp edges of racism.
* While there always will be racism, its power is blunted with each succeeding generation. Same for homophobia. The 2008 election results are but one very big piece of evidence of that.
* Racists in general are getting older. Some are dead. Others are dying. It is less cool to spout bigoted bile unless you are a Republican who puts his teeth in a bedside glass at night.
Yes, because Democrats have a natural immunity to racism in their old age. /sarc
> While “measuring” the level of racism is a fool’s errand, I am inclined to agree with Dean.
No, it’s not. It’s essential. We must stop overeacting to minor racism, like we generally have here, and underreacting to the most dangerous form of bigotry around right now – genocidal Jew hatred.
Never again also means don’t sweat the small stuff when there is an elephant in the room.
Yours,
Wince
Shaun,
I agree with you on 2.5/3 of your points. But, ironically, you just couldn’t help but reveal your own bigotry (unless it is naivete, but at your age?!?) towards whatever (simple and childish) mental stereotype of Republicans it is that you harbor.
Awesome.
Well, it was. . . uh, impolitic to introduce a partisan angle to the thread.
And yes, there are racist Democrats for sure. But in 2010 we have the astonishing sight of many Republicans, including politicians, openly embracing racist rhetoric. That is neither simple nor childish. It’s terribly sad.
> But in 2010 we have the astonishing sight of many Republicans, including politicians, openly embracing racist rhetoric.
We do not. We have, as usual, a bunch of Democrats, including politicians, openly embracing racist rhetoric and never getting called on it. The Republicans are afraid to do so, mostly because it has always backfired on them. This is changing because the Obama administration is doing such a poor job handling race relations that it is opening the door to non-backfiring Republican racism.
In any case, this is really small potatoes.
Yours,
Wince
“Many Republicans, including politicians”? Really? Can you name three? Or for that matter, even one?
Well, it was. . . uh, impolitic to introduce a partisan angle to the thread.
So what you are saying is that bigotry against Republicans is OK, you just shouldn’t have made it public.
So much better, that.
Shaun just stepping in a big ol’ pile of it. The only thing that we have here aplenty in 2010 is the disturbing trend of calling people who aren’t…racists.
For every 1 Republican Shaun can point an accurate racist finger at – I’ll name 4 Democrats who are hatemongers and bigots.
Put up or shut up.
Come on Phelps,
The existance of the Tea Parties proves Republicans are racist. In fact, racism is so strong in the Tea Parties that black congressmen could hear the racial slurs in the Tea Partiers thoughts as clear as if they had been shouted.
It takes some pretty powerful racism to broadcast your thoughts into another’s mind.
I’m not so sure it was impolitic. I just found it mildly amusing to observe an old guy displaying his own bigotry to complain about his perception of other old people’s bigotry.
I suppose it takes at least some self-awareness to pick up on one’s own cognitive dissonance.
I just found it mildly amusing to observe an old guy displaying his own bigotry to complain about his perception of other old people’s bigotry.
It suggests to me that racism has dropped below other kinds of bigotry in terms of significance.
I am not certain that bigotry could be eliminated altogether, or that such a result would even be desireable (there is value in dissent).
Still, it amuses me greatly when those who rail against bigotry display their own.
I just found it mildly amusing to observe an old guy displaying his own bigotry to complain about his perception of other old people’s bigotry.
But only if they are Republicans. Other old people who are Democrats aren’t so afflicted.
I wonder if this statement would qualify as one of shaun’s “politicians openly embracing racist rhetoric”:
“I’d add, the Left has actually manufactured completely false evidence of racism at Tea Party events out here.”
Lie. the reason Breitbart wigged out was that the NAACP resolution caused Williams to out himself as a stone racist in TPM leadership, and the TP Federation was forced to expell him and the Tea Party Express. Proved there were racists in the TPM kinda graphically.
a true gotcha moment.
the racial slurs on capitol hill are another story…its he said/she said.
Breitbart has no evidence that slurs weren’t hurled and just not caught on tape….or supressed by the tapers.
I personally think Breitbart was pranked. Even a teabagger couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to try to land a racial slur on the daughter of a black farmer killed by a white man over a cow, and the daughter of a civil rights activist that stood off the Klan from her front porch.
Look for the Shirley Sherrod Story, produced by Oprah, on the Lifetime or Oxygen channel.
Breitbart is a just dumbass that got pranked. Did you see the CBS video of him raving about how the movie Crash was liek Sherrod? hes the racist version of anti-semite misogynist Mel Gibson.
So… I guess that he thinks that the best way to convince people that tea partiers are all bigots is to refer to them using a bigoted, homophobic term.
Got it.
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