Uncategorized

The truth is exactly what Shirley Sherrod spoke about, that disadvantaged black folks have something in common with disadvantaged while folk.

by Teddy Fikre.  Posted:  Wednesday ,July 21, 2010

The irony drips thicker than the midday humidity in Selam, Mississippi.  Somehow, the first African-American president is ensconced in a racial controversy.  Perhaps it was too good to be true; I thought for a minute that the election of the first black president would begin to turn the page on the one issue which Dubois once predicted would haunt the 20^th century.  Not only did racial issues haunt the 20^th century, it became a literal noose that chocked the freedoms from countless Americans.  Incrementally, things began to change; the Civil Rights Era began to restore dignity to African-Americans.  In truth, the progress was always two steps forward, one step back.  America never really confronted fully and honestly the topic of race, we went from being haunted by the issue to ignoring it as if it was an uninvited guest during family dinner.

Perhaps I write this in one bit despair and one bit disappointment.  Despair because I am not sure what can get us to fully engage in a conversation where we can heal the wounds which fester since the first slave was kidnapped from the west Coast of Africa and arrived in bondage in America.  When Obama gave the speech in Philadelphia in 2008, I was awash with a feeling that a leader can in fact lead a nation in a dialogue where all sides could discuss pain and suffering without prejudice.  However, since that time, Obama has mostly decided to stay away from race.  Leery of being seen as the “black President”, he has distanced himself from speaking frankly on the one issue that continues to be disregarded in the 21^st century unless it is being used as a red flag to inflame the passions of one side or the other.

So here we are today, the day after Shirley Sherrod was summarily dismissed, faced again with the issue of race without having an ounce of a solution for the injustices the biases of so many spew forth on so few.  The Department of Agriculture, for decades, has been the scene of racial biases which has discriminated against African-American farmers.  Black men and women have for years fought without remedy against a department which was supposed to arbitrate fairly without regard to race yet for too often sided with the power brokers and the influence peddlers—of which precious few African-American agricultural powerbrokers exist.  Yet, the day that Fox News—a propaganda machine that passes as news to the right wing lunatics—airs a heavily edited footage of Shirley Sherrod, the justice is delivered swiftly while the injustices hung around the necks and backs of so many African-American farmers have yet to be adjudicated.

This is the state of racial relations in America in the 21^st century.  The right wing has hijacked the issue from the first African-American president and uses it to bludgeon African-Americans all in an effort to paint Obama as a “racist” president.  Tea Party activists throughout America demand that they get their country back, as if some alien power has taken over the America that they loved so much.  Then again, maybe that is how they view Obama and the other minorities who dare to call America home—a belief that our quest for equality and greatness is somehow one that comes at the cost of theirs.

The truth is exactly what Shirley Sherrod spoke about, that disadvantaged black folks have something in common with disadvantaged while folk.  For daring to show a crowd of black folks that their plight is tied in with that of poor white people, to show that equality and greatness is not a zero-sum game and that both sides can win by working together, Ms. Sherrod was summarily dismissed and painted as a racist zealot.  However, the discussion that she led is exactly the one that is needed and one which can begin to erase the sins of the past.  However, there are too many vested interests who would rather see the racial wounds fester, too many powerbrokers who would rather have us think that success is limited to only a few so we—black, white, Latino and all who come from humble beginnings—could continue to fight over crumbs.