Shirley Sherrod Revisited

THE FLIP SIDE OF THE SHERROD STORY


Remember Shirley Sherrod, the black woman forced just three weeks ago to resign her position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture when the media, the NAACP, and the Obama administration rushed to judgment about her supposed racist past. The issue got media "legs" when a right wing blogger , quickly followed by Fox News and other media, edited her remarks before an NAACP gathering supposedly showing that she was guilty of reverse racism by not helping a white farmer who was losing his farm almost 25 years ago. (At the time she was working for a private advocacy group.) When the unedited version of her remarks were heard, it was clear that she was not a black racist. To the contrary, it was an uplifting story of a woman who had exorcised her personal feelings and helped the white farmer save his farm.

Now, just three weeks later, we get a look at the flip side of the issue-- federal government discrimination against black farmers. This more familiar form of racial discrimination, white against black, came up last week as part of legislation before the Senate to compensate both Native Indians and black farmers for past injustices.

The proposal included $3.4 billion to go to Indians to compensate them for being cheated by the U.S. Department of Interior out of royalties on gas, oil, timber, and grazing rights on Indian lands. The money was to settle a 1999 class action lawsuit involving shorted funds owed them by the government since l887.

Another part of the same legislation would have provided $1 billion to compensate a group of black farmers for past discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the same Department that forced Shirley Sherrod to resign because of supposed reverse discrimination on her part. The government had already paid out about $1 billion to about 16,000 black farmers who had been denied various forms of assistance over the period l983 to 1997. The new funds were to compensate another group of black farmers who for various reasons, including claims of inadequate government notice and legal misrepresentation, had failed to file their claims before the deadline.

What stood out to this blogger was the frenzied rush to judgment in the Sherrod case by people who should have known better and checked the full facts, and their silence on the Indian and black farmers compensation payments. I guess the problem is that the media has become immunized on the problem of Republican partisanship on "to the barricades" issues of federal deficits and spending. It was just another case of GOP partisanship in blocking action on spending, as well as other legislation, regardless of the merits of what is involved. In the case of the Indians, Sen. John Barrasso (R.-Wy.), who has the Wind River Indian Reservation in his state, added that perhaps the Senate should also consider getting involved in a round of new settlement negotiations. As though the Senate needed still more hurdles on the legislative path.

But in addition to their continuous playing to the deficit hawks, including the Tea Party movement, it is also evident that the Republicans were making evident one more time (as though they needed more evidence) that their rhetoric about reaching out to make the party more diverse is just that, rhetoric. Ask the Hispanics. Or perhaps, some in the the party believe that having Michael Steele as party chairman is already more diversity than they want.