Did this conversation take place?
“Your mission, Mr. Jealous, if you choose to accept it, is to assist in solidifying now-much-needed black voter support for the president, by raising the issue of right-wing racism among groups such as the Tea Party, while at the same time, diverting attention from the ongoing lack of support of black issues by the government, itself.
“By the way, while you’re doing all of this, you will earn, at least, our special appreciation if you can also prove that there are such things as ‘black racists,’ and if you can point them out for the entire country to see. We will, of course, be supporting you in these efforts, from behind the scenes...way behind the scenes.
“As always, should you or any of your Impossible Mission Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.
“This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”
Sound familiar?
It should. It was taken almost entirely, with just a few topical updates, from the opening scripts of the Mission Impossible TV series and movies.
When you think about it for a minute, it may not seem so far-fetched, after all.
Take what happened last week: The NAACP, claiming to be working alone, uncharacteristically accused the Tea Party of having some racist members and some racist ideologies (which, by the way, happens to be absolutely true).
The next thing you know, a right-wing blogger named Breitbart shows up, wanting to defend the Tea Party and bring shame upon the NAACP by proving that the civil rights organization condones “black racism.”
Breitbart’s very flawed plan was to release a maliciously edited four-month-old video of a hard-working, dignified black woman named Shirley Sherrod, who works for the Department of Agriculture. The video was taken as Mrs. Sherrod made a speech in which she reflected on an incident that took place nearly 25 years ago. As edited, the video gave the impression that Mrs. Sherrod discriminates against whites in providing government services.
As, perhaps, my only old, non-cursing friend from the Richard Allen Projects, named Leonard Small, would have said, “That’s when all ‘heck’ broke lose; that’s when the ‘shunk’ hit the fan.”
The Agriculture Department, fearing that it and the White House would be damaged by association with Mrs. Sherrod, quickly acted to remove her from the government’s payroll, so that they could say, I guess, “Sherrod? Sherrod? She doesn’t even work here."
Indeed, the Agriculture Department was so anxious to move forward with that line of reasoning that the Undersecretary for Rural Development, a Mrs. Cheryl Cook, placed a series of increasingly curt and demanding phone calls to Ms. Sherrod as she drove her car along the highway, after a visit to a farm served by her agency.
Finally, Ms. Cook exasperatedly explained that the White House was concerned that the story was going to “break” that night on Glenn Beck’s FOX TV show. She then insisted that Mrs. Sherrod pull over onto the side of the highway, immediately, and submit her resignation on her Blackberry, which she did.
It didn’t stop there.
That evening, Bill O’Reilly was the first anchor on the FOX News Channel to demand that Mrs. Sherrod resign or be fired.
Shortly thereafter, CNN, not wanting to be accused again of missing a high-profile, FOX-originated story, also began to criticize Mrs. Sherrod. Notably, one of the network's African-American pundits, Roland Martin, was the most aggressive in that regard, implying that the videotape gave the impression that she might be, in fact, a black racist, or simply unsophisticated about the challenges of the modern news cycle. Martin further implied that, just as the racially offensive Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams had been removed from his job in recent days for racially insensitive commentary, so unfortunately, should Mrs. Sherrod.
That's when Mrs. Sherrod told Martin on the air that he was “dead wrong” and that he must live in a “different world” than the one that she inhabits.
Here’s a question, while we're on that subject: Are some black journalists so fearful about losing their jobs in mainstream media that they seem to leap at every opportunity to show their white peers that they agree fully with mainstream journalistic perspectives, and that they have no special sensitivity or insight, whatsoever, with regard to black subjects or topics? Is that why people in the black community fought so hard to provide opportunities for those journalists in mainstream print and broadcast outlets, in the first place?
Excuse me, I digress...
While all this was going on, it didn’t take much time for NAACP President Ben Jealous to weigh in. He especially seemed intent on disproving recent charges by conservatives that his organization had been soft on the alleged “white voter intimidation” activities by the New Black Panther Party, and I guess, in his mind, Ms. Sherrod presented a perfect opportunity for him to do so.
Unfortunately, however, for the Agriculture Department, for FOX, for CNN, and the NAACP, they really didn’t know who they were dealing with when they decided to move against Shirley Sherrod.
Mrs. Sherrod, who served as the Agriculture Department’s Rural Development Director, in Georgia,
happens to be married to one of the founding members of the legendarily effective civil rights organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Her father happened to have been murdered in 1965 in an “unsolved” racially motivated attack, as he fought for the rights of black farmers.
Following her father’s murder, Mrs. Sherrod made a vow to stay in the South and continue to fight for the rights of black farmers and the black community, in general.
While she worked as an official in a non-profit that was committed to advancing the interests of black farmers – not the U.S. Agriculture Department – Sherrod was approached by two white farmers, Mr. and Mrs. Spooner, who asked if she could help save them from losing their farm. Even though such a request was outside the mission of her organization, Mrs. Sherrod wound up assisting the couple. In the words of Mrs. Spooner, last week, “If we hadn’t have found her, we would have lost everything.”
Interestingly, once the kindly white couple vouched for her character, and the complete version of the previously-edited tape was reviewed by all concerned, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the NAACP, both, publicly apologized. The Agriculture Department even offered Mrs. Sherrod a new, more impactful job at the agency.
To her deep credit, she said she’d think about it and get back to them.
In the wake of all of the "vouching" and "reviewing", it quickly became clear that Mrs. Sherrod is a very special person. Despite all that has happened in her life, she is someone who has amazingly been able to rise above all of the insanity and, even, to recommend and demonstrate close working relationships between blacks and whites.
Here’s my take on all of this … the joke about Mission Impossible, notwithstanding, we really do need to know, now, how much of all of this has been a self-inflicted wound by the NAACP and the Obama Administration.
How high up in the "Administration," for example, was the order given to have Mrs. Sherrod "resign?" Was the "Administration" also engaged in conversations with Mr. Jealous prior to his "Tea Party racism" resolution? And, while we're at it, where in the world is Cheryl Cook, the Agriculture Department manager who said she was only calling to obtain Mrs. Sherrod's "resignation because the "White House" ordered that she do so?
No matter how all of this is eventually resolved, I’d feel a lot more comfortable, going forward, if I knew that the NAACP was planning to recommit itself to issues that will enhance their ability to serve black citizens of this country. I'd feel better if I knew that they were now prepared to challenge both liberals and conservatives, black and white, to do for us what we need.
I’d be ecstatic if I knew that the first black President would no longer allow his own administration to over-react against good, hard-working black people, simply because he wants to continue to prove, to the few white voters who still support him, that he is not "President of Black America," whatever that means.
It was a bit reassuring to see the president, late last week, finally get around to extending a long-overdue, personal apology to Mrs. Sherrod
It was, clearly, the right thing to do.
The next step, of course, is for the president to start sending two consistent messages: One, that black voters and their issues are no longer to be considered "toxic," no longer to be avoided and ignored, by him, or by his administration; the second, that the right-wing should no longer routinely expect that black people who happen to offend them, from time to time, will be immediately and callously "thrown overboard" by the "Good Ship Obama."
Seems like we all might avoid a great deal of future embarrassment if those two simple concepts are adopted.
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