A
false accusation sets off the modern media: ex-Agriculture Department
official
Shirley Sherrod and right-wing Web entrepreneur Andy Breitbart.
Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany
Return of America's
'Race Card Game'
"With
the election of the first Black president, and with the votes of many White
Americans, the country hoped to overcome racial antagonisms.
Eighteen months later, not much remains of this fiction. … Nobody’s talking
about a post-racist society anymore."
When Barack Obama moved into
the White House, there was a lot of talk in the United States about the "post-racial
society." With the election of the first Black president, and with the
votes of many White Americans, the country hoped to overcome racial antagonisms. Eighteen months later, not much remains of this fiction.
The change is undeniable, but the U.S. appears a long way from post-racial
normalcy. Those who doubted this can now observe how brutally the "race
card" is played, how cynically old wounds are torn open as a result of
political scheming - and how hard it is to for a Black president’s government
to deal with the issue.
The subject and victim of the
most recent controversy is Shirley Sherrod, who until earlier this week was
regional director of the Department of Agriculture in Georgia. Her life story
could actually be a model for racial change: Sherrod grew up as daughter of a Black
farmer in the South in the midst of the turbulent Civil Rights Era. In 1965,
her father was murdered by Whites; the perpetrators were never convicted. The
daughter then dedicated herself to the fight against discrimination and defended
Black farmers when they were systematically disadvantaged.
When in 1986, for the first
time, a White farmer facing foreclosure asked her for help, Sherrod hesitated. She
admitted at a NAACP banquet in March that she didn’t do everything to help the
man [watch video].
But: "Working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have
vs. those who don’t. … They could be Black, they could be White, or Hispanic.
It made me realize that I needed to work to help poor people."
It was a thoughtful speech
about inner struggles and conquering prejudice. But of this speech, only a
two-and-a-half minute excerpt showed up on the Internet on Monday, turning the
message into the opposite: just the passage in which Sherrod admitted that she
gave the White farmer limited help.
Thereafter things happened
quickly: On the right-wing battle station Fox News, prominent agitators threw
themselves at the story, accusing the NAACP and the Obama government of "reverse
racism," and calling for Sherrod’s dismissal. To keep the president from
being damaged politically, the head of the Department of Agriculture [Tom
Vilsack] pressured the woman to resign. Even the NAACP distanced itself from
Sherrod.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
In the meantime, the full-length
video surfaced, and we now know that the government was the victim of a provocation
by Andrew Breitbart, a well-known blogger on similar topics. The man sees Obama
as the agent of a communist plot and is close to the Tea Party, the populist
movement brought about by conservative outrage. The NAACP, the Secretary of
Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the White House, even Fox News demagogues, have
all apologized to Sherrod.
But this doesn’t mean the
case is closed, least of all for the president. Many African Americans are outraged
by how naively the government swallowed the smear campaign - and by the
cowardly manner in which they dropped Sherrod. But Black
columnist Eugene Robinson also speaks about the targeted attempt to foment diffuse
fears that, "when African Americans or other minorities reach positions of
power, they seek some kind of revenge against Whites." Nobody’s talking
about a post-racist society anymore.
