Wednesday, July 21, 2010

What Do Shirley Sherrod, the Klan, and South Africa have in Common?

What Do Shirley Sherrod, the Klan, and South Africa have in Common?

Hypocrisy and Redemption in a “Post-Racial America”



Robert Byrd, the recently passed Democratic Senator from West Virginia was a vocal opponent of the War in Iraq and a good friend of Ted Kennedy. There was some stuff admire in the man. But he was, until his recent death, the only currently serving Senator to have the distinction of once belonging to one of the oldest, biggest, and most violent terrorists groups in American history-the Ku Klux Klan. To his credit, he has frequently distanced himself from his actions as a young “boy from the hills.”


Robert Byrd seems like a nice guy, but how he converted from a racist, anti-Semite, anti-Catholic terrorist sympathizer that said some of these things to, well Ted Kennedy’s friend, seems a little vague. What makes it more vague is that he tried to block the Civil Rights Act’s passage after he left the Klan. But you really don’t get an understanding of what led to his redemption other than the fact that he was trying to stay in office during a changing political time. Nevertheless, judging from the lack of nooses in his office and the absence of racial rhetoric in his [recent] speeches, and the fact that Bill Clinton told us he is cool, most of us were sort of forced to take his posthumous (means after your dead) word for it. I mean he was the first Black President (until we got a real one, and realized he wasn’t so great and wasn’t so Black afterall).


Fast forward to this week and to Shirley Sherrod. Sherrod, an African American woman, was a USDA (Agriculture Department) Director of Rural Development in Georgia. She got caught on video this past week by a right-wing pr**k saying this to an NAACP gathering:


“I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough. So that when he, I assumed the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me, either that or the Georgia Department of Agriculture, and he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him.”


So if you just heard this it sounds like one of those reverse discrimination things (one of the stupidest terms ever invented). The entire world, including the NAACP and the USDA, lose their sh*t about the comment. Then the USDA Under Secretary Cheryl Cook forces her resignation, and the USDA quickly accepts, saying they have no tolerance for bigotry. Case Closed. After all why would an opportunist right-wing pr*ck that helped sink ACORN lie about anything? Right?


Well it seems like she was telling that story for a reason (please see the whole video here). And the reason wasn’t so people would know that Barack AKA MUGABE Obama was a new sheriff-in-town and he was takin names and takin white folks farms. She was telling the story to demonstrate, that in 1986 (yes more than 20 years ago) she ended up HELPING that white farmer, becoming friends with him, and realizing that white farmers suffer economic oppression too. It was a story about how we all have to work together.

Add soundtrack here (start singing “One Love” with me…now stop)


So the NAACP apologizes and joins the ranks of Glenn Beck to call for her reinstatement…wait… WTF???? Yep they UNITE to call for her reinstatement. And the White House realizes that she shouldn’t have been fired, and apologizes, partially because she is blowing up the spot of everyone that demanded she call it quits.


Robert Gibbs basically attributes it to a “culture… in this town where everything is viewed through the lens of who wins, who loses, how fast, by what margin," basically admitting that some folks in the administration have the spine of a fly (flies are invertebrate in case you are checking.).


I want to be clear; I have deep respect for the President, most of the time. I feel like he has more potential than any President in recent memory to be a real progressive. And he is blowing that potential faster than Earl “the Goat” Manigault blew his basketball career on…well “Blow.” I also respect a lot of the friends of the Administration that have become targets for character assassination (that is another post).


But this story tells me two things. One, there is a huge hypocrisy in which Redemption stories are valid in the bullsh*t called a “Post-racial America.” This is an America in which a Black woman clearly articulating the point in which she transformed her views is second guessed far more than others whose transformations seemed far more politically or economically convenient (add Dog the Bounty Hunter and Don Imus to the list with Robert Byrd). In fact I feel this whole “Post-Racial America" sh*t makes real reconciliation and redemption much harder.


Let’s look at “Post Apartheid” South Africa for a minute. Under its Truth, and Reconciliation Commission, it did what any country would do to people that admitted to the worst types of racist acts (torture, death, disappearances), it forgave many of them and reincorporated them back into the country once they acknowledged in detail their past crimes.


So you might be thinking, “what does South Africa know?” Don’t they call Soccer “Football”? And didn’t they build a big stadium that pushed a bunch of poor people out of their homes to host a big soccer game that was almost won by one of their former colonizers (the Dutch)? And aren’t there tons of debates about the effectiveness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Sure. But it was a far cry from the repeated attempts to just wish racism away with nothing more than “Post-Racial” ness.


The final moral of the story is that Mrs. Sherrod probably won this battle because she did what anyone attacked would do, (especially if she had a childhood where her father was murdered) she fought back and defended her name and her beliefs. She fought back smart, hard, and decisively. There have been many casualties in the Right’s character war against Progressives. Every battle they win is not just a battle that ruins careers and characters. It attacks the communities that we are fighting for everyday, that struggle with real shit that is still left out of conversations on the hill, in the media, and among the Democrats and Republicans. If we don’t fight back when attacked, then we are in a sense giving up on our communities and ourselves.


I truly believe every story is told better by reggae. So I leave you with Redemption song and Get Up Stand Up.


Forward In Love and Struggle,

A Crazy Indian


How do you like my blog? If you think I’m crazy or not, get at me on email (crazyindiansk@gmail.com) or follow me on twitter crazyindian001


Please spread the word and spread the love.


Other articles I wished (but still might) I blogged about today.


http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/07/201071913463759520.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/nyregion/21deport.html?scp=2&sq=nina%20bernstein&st=cse

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/?referrer=facebook

1 comment:

  1. It's really hard to take any one with any clout within the political realm with anything less than distance, which makes it so easy to paint someone like Sherrod badly.

    Here partisans go and latch themselves onto partisan images like Ted Kennedy or Scott Brown, only to be disappointed by their desire to keep their power by working with the other party. The right/left wing conspiracy is really a mirror of our often divisive culture where conservatives and liberals yell and bicker to no end while sensible moderates shake their heads, turn the channel to Lost and avoid anything involving voting or giving a shit about another politician for another 4-6 years. Until our culture changes, and that means the way BOTH SIDES treat each other, we'll never have the sensible leaders that would mirror our improved world.

    - tanvir

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