USDA official resigns amid race controversy

[cosmo99]

USDA official resigns amid race controversy


By Andrew Golis andrew Golis ? 1 hr 50 mins ago

An employee of the Department of Agriculture has resigned, after conservative media outlets posted video Monday of her describing a time in the past when she hadn't used the "full force" of her abilities to help a farmer because he was white.

In the video, which appears to be from March of this year, Shirley Sherrod, who is black, recounts having been asked to help a white farmer avoid foreclosure. She says she was torn over how much to help him because so many black farmers were also struggling, and decided to do just enough to be able to say she'd tried:

I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough. ... So I took him to a white lawyer. ... So I figured if I would take him to one of them, his own kind would take care of him.

Sherrod spoke to CNN on Tuesday, explaining that she told the story of her actions ? which, she said, occurred 24 years ago when she was working for a nonprofit, not the USDA ? to illustrate how she has since realized that everything is not about race but "about those who have versus those who do not have." She says she later became friends with the farmer and his wife.

Even so, Sherrod resigned after conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart posted video of the story and Fox News picked it up. She told CNN that she tried to explain to USDA officials that the incident was in the past, but said "for some reason, the stuff Fox and the tea party does is scaring the administration."

In a statement quoted by CNN, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said of Sherrod's actions:

There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person. ... We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.

NAACP CEO Ben Jealous was also quick to condemn Sherrod's actions, though. In a statement Monday posted on Breitbart's Big Government site, he said:

Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man.

In response, Sherrod told CNN that it was "unfortunate that the NAACP would make a statement without even checking to see what happened. This was 24 years ago, and I'm telling a story to try to unite people."

USDA official resigns amid race controversy - Yahoo! News

[CoeburnCane]

Inexcusable. This was a 'tarded thing to say, no matter which side of the aisle you're on, and it's the right thing for her to step down IF she still feels this way.

HOWEVER...keep in mind that this did, indeed, happen damn-near a quarter-century ago. I'm sure there's things I've said to people as little as 5 years ago that if brought up now I'd wish to take back. I'd wager to say almost all of us are like that.

Now that Sherrod's stepped down, maybe she can oblige the Tea Partiers and Fox News people that dug up this on her and dig up some stuff on them and throw it in the public light, see how they feel about it, and if they have the same common sense and integrity to step down from their positions once they're embarrassed.

[R13]

Where was the leader of the tea-baggers Breitbart when Mark Williams was spouting off his blatant racist stuff? Nowhere to be found. This is the guy who called Ted Kennedy villain,? a ?duplicitous bastard,? a ?prick? and "a special pile of human shit....after he died. Nowhere to be found. He doesn't care about it, he only cares with trying to negatively effect Obama and slow any kind of progress we have down. Of course Breitbart only posted the snippet when she tells the story, but refused to post the rest of the speech, that how that kind of thing doesn't need to happen so everyone can work together. Good job Breitbart, a true piece of shit.


And the wife of that farmer is now defending her.
USDA ex-worker: Administration 'wasn't interested' in truth - CNN.com

[TheBeast]

HOWEVER...keep in mind that this did, indeed, happen damn-near a quarter-century ago.

No this was said in March nearly a quarter of a YEAR ago. She was bragging to the naacp how she used her office to be racist against a white farmer. Yes the event happened that long ago but the bragging took place very recently. Is the naacp going to put out a statement condemning her and itself. This was pure flat out racism and applauded by the naacp.

Now that Sherrod's stepped down, maybe she can oblige the Tea Partiers and Fox News people that dug up this on her and dig up some stuff on them and throw it in the public light, see how they feel about it, and if they have the same common sense and integrity to step down from their positions once they're embarrassed.

You actually think mslsd, cnn, time, new york post or any other outlet hasn't been trying to do just that since the inception of the Tea Party.


Why do y'all think odumbshit appointed Donald Berwick in a recess so he wouldn't have to go through any confirmation hearings and have to answer for all his ignorance.

[R13]

No this was said in March nearly a quarter of a YEAR ago. She was bragging to the naacp how she used her office to be racist against a white farmer. Yes the event happened that long ago but the bragging took place very recently. Is the naacp going to put out a statement condemning her and itself. This was pure flat out racism and applauded by the naacp.

Bragging? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAH. You've had some gems, but that one I'll remember. Not only was that rich, you flat out lied again when you said the NAACP applauded this..when they have blasted her unfairly over this.


"Why do y'all think odumbshit appointed Donald Berwick in a recess so he wouldn't have to go through any confirmation hearings and have to answer for all his ignorance."

To skip the BS "hearings" over a completely qualified pick, that would only delay his approval.

[CoeburnCane]

No this was said in March nearly a quarter of a YEAR ago. She was bragging to the naacp how she used her office to be racist against a white farmer. Yes the event happened that long ago but the bragging took place very recently. Is the naacp going to put out a statement condemning her and itself. This was pure flat out racism and applauded by the naacp.

Watch these, then carefully answer my question below.

Breitbart's original video...
YouTube - Racist Shirley Sherrod

Full video from NAACP...
YouTube - The FULL Shirley Sherrod video

White farmer whom this happened to (supposedly)...
YouTube - White farmers at the center of Shirley Sherrod controversy: 'No way in the world' she is a racist.

Breitbart backtracking calling the white farmer a plant...
YouTube - Breitbart thinks farmer's wife is a plant

My question--care to retract your statement that I quoted above?

I only ask b/c I called it a "retarded" thing to say--w/o looking at the context and timeline, and I was wrong. When you look at the context of the story she was telling and how it ultimately taught her not to hold hate in her heart towards white people due to her father's murder by white people. People of any race would do that--let's say a group of Muslims killed a Mexican person's father--that Mexican person may hold hate towards/bias against Muslims, just as a for instance--easy to see that as a human being. May not be right, but it's a human thing to do. Sherrod is using this story to show how you shouldn't hold hatred against others even if you've been done wrong against first. You shouldn't take opportunities to "get even" because it does nothing but perpetuate hate between the races.

Also, as for the timeline--she was working for a nonprofit organization back in the late 80's when this happened. How do I know it was the late 80's? Look at the full video of her speech, and skip to 18:10 of it. She says "Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farmer". That wasn't put into law until 1986, so it could have been '86-'89 or so...I highly doubt she would have said it had just been put into law had this happened in 2009...when she was actually hired on at the USDA.

This speech (the full one, not Breitbart's chop-up) was done in March of last year--that's correct. BUT--she did not have this racist thought that Brieitbart bastardized out of this speech's true context while a member of the US Government. Had that been the case, then you need to start harpooning members of the Reagan Administration for hiring a racist...but that's still not the point of her story. It's the point of Breitbart's hackjob to paint her as a racist, but not the actual point of her story.

[TheBeast]

Yes I have watched the whole thing and see that she was telling a story of how she was using race to pawn off this white farmer on one of his own kind and then later after the farmer was forced into foreclosure she actually took up his case and did her job and tried to help. In the video put out by Breitbart he was showing Sherrod telling a tale of racism that was recieved by the naacp audience with laughter and cheers.
"They weren?t cheering redemption; they were cheering discrimination. Upon hearing the cheers, Sherrod fails to offer any immediate clarification and even smiles right along with them." Breitbart

YouTube - Breitbart on King!

To skip the BS "hearings" over a completely qualified pick, that would only delay his approval.

Do you have any clue what this guy supports in healthcare.

BERWICK: Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must ? must ? redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition re-distributional.


Berwick argued that purposely provided an inadequate supply of health-care?as Britain?s health-care system does?is superior to allowing the market to provide an excess.

?In America, the best predictor of cost is supply; the more we make, the more we use?hospi*tal beds, consultancy services, procedures, diagnostic tests,? Dr. Berwick wrote. ?? Here, you choose a harder path. You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; you prefer slightly too lit*tle of a technology or a service to too much; then you search for care bottlenecks and try to relieve them.?


Taking his cues from the same place dear leader does, Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto.

[cosmo99]

WASHINGTON ? The woman at the center of a racially tinged firestorm involving the Obama administration and the NAACP said Wednesday she doesn't know if she'd return to her job at the Agriculture Department, even if asked.

"I am just not sure how I would be treated there," Shirley Sherrod said in a nationally broadcast interview. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday he would reconsider the department's decision to oust Sherrod over her comments that she didn't give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago.

The White House called the Agriculture Department Tuesday night after more information about Sherrod's remarks emerged, a White House official said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the call, said the White House and the department agreed that the case should be reviewed based on the new evidence.

A conservative website posted video of Sherrod's remarks, causing a furor which led to her condemnation by the NAACP and her ouster by Vilsack. Until Tuesday, she was the Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia. Then, she said, she was pressured by superiors to resign.

Sherrod said her remarks, delivered in March at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia, were part of a larger story about learning from her mistakes and racial reconciliation, not racism, and said they were taken out of context by bloggers who posted only part of her speech.

Vilsack's statement came after the NAACP posted the full video of Sherrod's comments Tuesday night.

"I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner," Vilsack said.

The Obama administration's move to reconsider her employment was an absolute reversal from hours earlier, when the White House official said President Barack Obama had been briefed on Sherrod's resignation after the fact and stood by the Agriculture Department's handling of it.

But growing calls for the administration to reconsider the decision put pressure on Vilsack, who stressed that the decision to ask for her resignation was his alone. The NAACP, which initially condemned Sherrod's remarks and supported her ouster, later said she should keep her job. The civil rights group said it and millions of others were duped by the conservative website that posted partial video of her speech on Monday.

Appearing in a nationally broadcast interview Wednesday morning, Sherrod said she "couldn't get the people I was working with" to listen to her explanation.

She said the tone of her comments posted on the website were misleading because they lacked context. "That's not me. If you look at my life's work, you would know that's not me."

"... If they would have looked at the entire tape, I don't see how they could have come away thinking I was a racist," she said.

Sherrod said she was "particularly hurt" by the NAACP's condemnation.

"All of my life has been about civil rights work and fairness," she said. Asked if she would go back to the department if asked, Sherwood said, "That's one ... I just don't know at this point."

The white farming family that was the subject of the story stood by Sherrod and said she should stay.

"We probably wouldn't have (our farm) today if it hadn't been for her leading us in the right direction," said Eloise Spooner, the wife of farmer Roger Spooner of Iron City, Ga. "I wish she could get her job back because she was good to us, I tell you."

As Sherrod reached out to media to plead her case and more people came to her defense, the administration faced criticism that officials nervous about racial perceptions overreacted to her comments and made her a political sacrifice amid dueling allegations of racism between the NAACP and the tea party movement.

In the clip posted on BigGovernment.com, Sherrod described the first time a white farmer came to her for help. It was 1986, and she worked for a nonprofit rural farm aid group. She said the farmer came in acting "superior" to her and she debated how much help to give him.

"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land," Sherrod said.

Initially, she said, "I didn't give him the full force of what I could do" and only gave him enough help to keep his case progressing. Eventually, she said, his situation "opened my eyes" that whites were struggling just like blacks, and helping farmers wasn't so much about race but was "about the poor versus those who have."

The two-minute, 38-second clip posted Monday by BigGovernment.com was presented as evidence that the NAACP was hypocritical in its recent resolution condemning what it calls racist elements of the tea party movement. The website's owner, Andrew Breitbart, said the video shows the civil rights group condoning the same kind of racism it says it wants to erase. Biggovernment.com is the same outfit that gained fame last year after airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.

In his original statement on the matter Tuesday morning, Vilsack said he had accepted Sherrod's resignation and stressed that the department had "zero tolerance for discrimination." Later in the day, after Sherrod spoke to the media about the intention of her comments, Vilsack sent out a second statement that said the controversy surrounding Sherrod's comments could, rightly or wrongly, cause people to question her decisions as a federal employee and lead to lingering doubts about civil rights at the agency, which has a troubled history of discrimination.

Sherrod said officials showed no interest in listening to her explanation when she was asked to resign. She said she was on the road Monday when USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook called her and told her to pull over and submit her resignation on her Blackberry because the White House wanted her out.

"It hurts me that they didn't even try to attempt to see what is happening here, they didn't care," Sherrod said. "I'm not a racist. ... Anyone who knows me knows that I'm for fairness."

_____
Sherrod not sure she would go back to Ag Dept - Yahoo! News

[CoeburnCane]

Yes I have watched the whole thing and see that she was telling a story of how she was using race to pawn off this white farmer on one of his own kind and then later after the farmer was forced into foreclosure she actually took up his case and did her job and tried to help. In the video put out by Breitbart he was showing Sherrod telling a tale of racism that was recieved by the naacp audience with laughter and cheers.
"They weren’t cheering redemption; they were cheering discrimination. Upon hearing the cheers, Sherrod fails to offer any immediate clarification and even smiles right along with them."

You, Brietbart, and anyone else who is trying to paint this in any other light by trying to reach at something like this are desperate.

Let me try to break it down for you...if I told you something as a white person that you could relate to, even if it was wrong/embarrassing, I'd say we'd share some nervous laughter (esp. if I'm telling the story to a group). And I think the people knew how ridiculous that feeling is b/c they've all had it themselves at one point in their life or another. BUT--her point was that some black people act on that bias/prejudice towards whites as a way to get even. Her whole fackin point was speaking out against doing that as it worked out for the better good in the end.

If you, Breitbart, or anyone else w/your POV can't see otherwise, then you've got comprehension problems or are that desperate to paint anyone connected to Obama into a corner of racism. What these claims equate to for me is someone saying that Bush wasn't racist b/c he told "Brownie" he was doing a helluva job with Katrina. How much of a reach is that?

And to skirt the question by trying to bring up Berwick after all the info I gave you on the Sherrod situation above shows that you don't have anything of substance to bring other than a hatred of the NAACP and a want for something in the Obama administration to fall to the ground. I disagree with the way the NAACP and the ACLU handle most things, (as they did in the Sherrod situation), and I don't agree w/everything in the Obama administration (cap & trade being 'tarded for example). BUT--I'm not actively rooting for the smearing and tearing down of our current US President's administration due to a USDA official getting attacked by a half-cocked hack like Andrew Breitbart. If you want to associate yourself with and agree w/him, go ahead. I'll think of you the same way I think of him.

[CoeburnCane]

And for the record, I disagree with Berwick and his quote regarding healthcare.

Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must — must — redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition re-distributional.

That being said, I would like to see the context that's missing from this quote in the obviously redacted part of his quote (see the dashes).

The Tea Partiers and their ilk do the same thing w/political quotes as most of them do w/the Bible. They pick parts, shorten verses, embrace this but ignore that...all so it suits their own agendas.