Thread: Shirley Sherrod Resigns from USDA over Race Remark Furor

July 20, 2010 9:53 AM
Shirley Sherrod Resigns from USDA over Race Remark Furor


A high-ranking black employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has resigned after remarks she made about race were distributed by conservative web sites and aired on Fox News.

A video clip of Shirley Sherrod, the USDA's Georgia State Director of Rural Development, was circulated by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart and his site, biggovernment.com, in which Sherrod talked of withholding help to a white man facing the loss of his family farm.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement Tuesday saying he had accepted Sherrod's resignation, and added that the department has no tolerance for discrimination.

The remarks was purportedly from a speech Sherrod gave at an NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet on March 27, 2010, in Douglas, Ga. The video clip has inflamed innumerable conservative bloggers and has lit up YouTube.

The news came a week after the NAACP and the Tea Party movement each became embroiled in accusations of racism and bigotry within the other group, and after a high-ranking Tea Party spokesperson was expelled by other movement officials after he published a blog about slavery that was deemed racist.

In a statement released Monday, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said that the organization concurred with Vilsack accepting Sherrod's resignation, adding, "Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race."

But in an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sherrod said the clip doesn't tell the whole story. And indeed, it is a story that pre-dates her tenure at the USDA by more than two decades.

Sherrod is a graduate of Albany State University in Albany, Ga., with a masters degree in Community Development from Antioch University in Ohio. Beginning in 1985 she served as Director of the Georgia State Office for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, which works to help family farmers retain and develop their property.

Last July Vilsack appointed her to head the USDA's Rural Development office in Georgia.

In the video clip (which you can watch at left), Sherrod is heard telling a story about a white man who came to her for help:

"The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he took a long time talking, but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing. But he had come to me for help.

"What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him. I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farm land, 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 I took him to a white lawyer that had attended some of the training that we had provided because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm. So I figured if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him.

"That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have. It's not so much about white -- It IS about white and black, because I took him to one of his own . . . "

The clip ends just as Sherrod has begun talking about a realization that it is class -- not race -- that is the issue, which is ironic given how Sherrod's critics are trying to take her remarks to prove racism exists.

What's more, Sherrod told the Journal-Constitution, the encounter she's relating occurred 24 years ago, long before she was a government employee. [Indeed, Chapter 12 bankruptcy, which she says in the video had just been enacted, was instituted for family farmers in 1986.]

Sherrod also told the paper that the video except did not include the full story of her relationship with the farmer, working with him for two years to help his fight off foreclosure and keep his land, and even becoming friends with him and his wife.

"And I went on to work with many more white farmers," she said. "The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it's about the people who have and the people who don't. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race."

Sherrod told the paper the USDA forced her out of her position because "They were just looking at what the Tea Party and what Fox said, and thought it was too (politically) dangerous for them."

The Journal-Constitution, the Huffington Post and other media outlets have called for a release of the complete tape, in order to better judge the context of Sherrod's remarks. There is more recording available, as Breitbart has managed to release a second clip in which Sherrod discusses the paucity of black employees in government positions relating to agriculture.

Sherrod suggests it would be a good career move, even in hard economic times: "You've heard of a lot of lay-offs. Have you heard of anybody in the federal government losing their job?"

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162- ... 03544.html

Racism really does not know skin color. At least she admits what she said - have to commend her for that.

Racism really does not know skin color

So true!

Black USDA official resigns after saying she only 'did enough' for white farmer

But the former staffer says her remarks are being misconstrued

updated 1 hour 13 minutes ago

A black USDA official in Georgia has resigned after publicly admitting she didn't help a white man some 24 years ago trying to save his farm to the "full force" of her power and instead referred him to "one of his own."

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack accepted Shirley Sherrod's resignation, saying there was "zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA."

But Sherrod, in an interview with CNN, said her remarks to the NAACP were being intentionally misconstrued by conservative groups stoking racial tensions.

"I was speaking to that group, like I've done many groups, and I tell them about a time when I thought the issue was race and race only," Sherrod told CNN. She said the incident she described in her speech occurred some 24 years ago, when she worked for a nonprofit aid group. "I was telling the story of how working with him helped me to see the issue is not about race. It's about those who have versus those who do not have."

The farmer's wife, Eloise Spooner, 82, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday that Sherrod helped save their land. Spooner, who considered Sherrod a "friend for life," said that "the federal official worked tirelessly to help" the couple hold onto their farm as they faced bankruptcy in 1986, the Atlanta newspaper reported.

"Her husband told her, ‘You're spending more time with the Spooners than you are with me,' " Spooner told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "She took probably two or three trips with us to Albany just to help us out."

Sherrod said she was on the road Monday after an event in rural Georgia when USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook called her and told her the White House wanted her to resign. "They called me twice," Sherrod told The Associated Press in an interview. "The last time they asked me to pull over the side of the road and submit my resignation on my Blackberry, and that's what I did."

The controversy began Monday when the conservative website biggovernment.com posted a two-minute, 38-second video clip of Sherrod's remarks to a local NAACP chapter. The Huffington Post said a YouTube video was then aired on Fox News.

Sherrod is shown talking about "the first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm." Her remarks came at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet, which the video says took place in March this year.

She said in the clip that the farmer had tried to show he was "superior" to her.

"He had to come to me for help. What he didn't know, while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him," she said in the film.

"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have 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," she added.

'His own kind'
Some of Sherrod's remarks appear to be greeted with laughter by some of the crowd.

Sherrod said she took the farmer to see "one of his own," referring to a white lawyer. "I figured that if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him," she said.

The NAACP, which recently condemned racism in tea party groups , issued a statement Monday night: "Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race."

In the statement, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said the organization was "appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers."

"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," he said.

"The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action," Jealous said.

He thanked the people who had brought Sherrod's remarks to the attention of the NAACP's national office.

"Sherrod's behavior is even more intolerable in light of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's well documented history of denying opportunities to African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American farmers, as well as female farmers of all races," Jealous said. "Currently, justice for many of these farmers is being held up by Congress."

Vilsack's statement said he "strongly" condemned discrimination against anyone.

"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," he said.

Msnbc.com and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38321920/ns/us_news-life/