The Shirley Sherrod Situation

[River]

I think we have an innate tendency to distinguish "like me" and "not like me" and an innate tendency to be wary of the unknown and/or unfamilliar. The former comes with being self-aware, the latter is something of a survival skill. But what we do with those tendencies is another matter. Racism, that belief that your group is superior to that other group, is what happens when those innate tendencies get twisted by those who find a profit in it but I would not call it a new idea. You can find it in the writings of the ancient Greeks. You can find it in any group that, at some point in its recorded history, did not recognize its neighbors as fellow human beings or looked at them as lesser and therefore it was justifiable to subjugate them. It's a relatively recent development for us, as groups, to look at each other and, despite the obvious physical differences, recognize each other as the same animal. It's also a relatively recent development for society as a whole to abhor the practice of slavery. We've come a long way in recognizing the value of lives. Interestingly enough, progress on that front came parallel with the Industrial Revolution and advent of germ theory, vaccinations, and antibiotics, all developments that allowed our overall population on this planet to explode. There's more of us now than ever before, and we care about each other more than ever before.

[vison]

I don't think "racism" is "innate". What is innate, I think, is the very natural human caution regarding strangers, or for that matter anything strange. A new type of food or animal shows up - is it good to eat, will it try to eat us? A new person or new people appear - to small, isolated groups of people such as our ancestors probably were - their first thought would be, "Are they dangerous?"

It's obvious that our ancestors were able to move past caution to friendship or we wouldn't be here.

Caution is natural, and also natural is the need for food and water. If you run out where you are, you are going to go looking for it elsewhere. If you go where there are already people, and if those people will not share with you, or trade with you, what are you going to do? Slink away and die of thirst or starve? No, you're going to take what you can.

I know it's not that simple, and when you get into agricultural and trading societies things become vastly more complicated, but I rather resent being told (and I have been told) that being wary of strangers is just proof that we are all racists at heart.

Children notice that people differ. I can still remember the time my youngest son first saw a black man. This man is very, very black indeed, he's an African teacher at a local bible college. Which reminds me of Alex Haley's comment in "Roots", when he went to Africa he saw that Africans are much blacker than he was, and it shocked him.

[JewelSong]

Well basically to sum it up, I think racism is more taught then innate.

The great musical "South Pacific" by Rodgers and Hammerstein has a song in it about this very thing. It's called "You've Got to be Taught" and was almost banned from the show because it "promoted" inter-racial marriage. Both R & H and James Michener (who wrote the book on which the show is based) refused to eliminate the song.

From Wikipedia: Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire South Pacific venture in light of legislative challenges to its decency or supposed Communist agenda. While on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a bill outlawing entertainment containing "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow." One legislator said that "a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life." Rodgers and Hammerstein defended their work strongly. James Michener, upon whose stories South Pacific was based, recalled, "The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in."

The "inter-racial" relationships in this case are white and Polynesian, but the sentiment is the same. Prejudice and bigotry against people whose skin and customs are different than yours.

The show was WAY ahead of its time - it was produced in 1949! ...my daughter and I saw an incredibly well-done revival at Lincoln Center last winter and the music and message are still just as powerful as ever.

Lyrics:
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Here's a recording of Mandy Patinkin singing it...but the song is much more powerful within the play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHKzn8aHyXg

[Hachimitsu]

LM thank you so much for clarifying. Some of the things you mention were some of my personal gripes with the course, particularly stuff about the working class, but I don't wanna argue with a prof,. Actually I would want to ask what type of thinkers would you recommend (after the summer I will have a lot of free time for reading), but I think I need to start another thread for that.

Vison, and River thank you for clarifying and differentiating between being wary of strangers and being racist. I personally feel they are 2 different things and Vison's post is helping me split the difference. That is where I was kind of confused on and I think Vison put your finger on it. Being wary of stranger is different to, (this is a comment I told to me and it really shocked me)" Ew, that is Jew bread" when discussing grocery shopping. I am thinking how is that kind of comment innate? I really appreciate pointing out the difference to those things.

Jewlsong thank you for posting about South Pacific. That is for me what I was getting at but not explaining well.

Back to the Sherrod suing though it will be interesting. When people sue for things like this who determines how much or what damages are involved? Especially as this incident was so public.

[River]

"That's weird-looking bread" would fall into the normal range of reactions if you've never seen challah before (I'm assuming it was challah). And depending on your personality and dietary issues you may or may not try it. "That's nasty Jew bread" is something else entirely. My guess would be the person who said that has either tried challah and has an ugly way of expressing their dislike (gotta wonder what's to dislike, though) or they've had a very unfortunate upbringing. Or maybe both.

[anthriel]

It looks like everyone who over-reacted to this (based on Breitbart's rather evil bit of editing)[...].

Breitbart did not edit the video. The excerpt he posted was what he was sent.

So he says. But I suppose I have a cynical heart, when I observe that the edited bit certainly fit his need to tit-for-tat that the NAACP was racist, when they had just called the Tea Party types racist. Seems convenient editing, to me, and whether he did it or not, he sure ran with it.

I don't believe the NAACP had read the whole transcript at the time they put out that statement, since they say that she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man, whereas in the full story she does make that clear. But that doesn't not at all get the NAACP off the hook, because they (or at least one of their branches) were the ones that had the full video in their possession...

Not only did they have the full transcript, they were there. The darned speech was given to THEM. And they still condemned her. Unreal.

[Hachimitsu]

River, I had reached for rye bread and they said that. I have been eating rye bread most of my life and it tastes pretty good to me.

Anthy you bring up some good points. Is there a record of what officials were there?

[axordil]

Not only did they have the full transcript, they were there. The darned speech was given to THEM. And they still condemned her. Unreal.

She was addressing a local chapter, not a national meeting, as I understand it. The national figures who mouthed off prematurely were, I suspect, not in the audience.

[River]

River, I had reached for rye bread and they said that. I have been eating rye bread most of my life and it tastes pretty good to me.

Anthy you bring up some good points. Is there a record of what officials were there?

Okay, that's weird. I was assuming it was challah just because you said it was Jewish and challah and matzah are the only breads I'd peg as a distinctly Jewish contribution to the wonderful world of bread (bagels too). That said, I do think rye is nasty but none of the breads I've listed necessarily need to be rye...

Methinks the NAACP took a shoot-first-as-questions-later approach. They deserve many dead fish to the head for this one. Yeesh.

[anthriel]

I love rye bread. I didn't know it was considered Jewish. Yesterday this ol' leftover Southern girl had bagels with cream cheese and lox, and LOVED it. Who woulda thunk.

Ax, that was a masterful point, and a nicely honed defense of the NAACP's reaction, but I'm still not buying it. Really, they can hardly say that they were distracted from what Sherrod really said by the dastardly acts of an evil right wing blogger when they were THERE when she said it. She said it to THEM. Easy access to the facts, right?

They even acknowledged in their letter many points of her speech that were edited out of the blogger's ugly little attempt at painting her a racist.

I think River is completely spot-on. It's too bad the NAACP (and the Obama administration) just didn't take two more minutes to get the facts before slamming this woman (and taking her job!). What a great opportunity for them to highlight how the blogger (or whoever) was simply skewing words to fit his own agenda. That guy should have sunk like a rock for such behavior. Now he's just one of a crowd who treated her unfairly.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That guy should have sunk like a rock for such behavior. Now he's just one of a crowd who treated her unfairly.

That pretty much sums up the whole mess.

[axordil]

Anthy, I see it in no way as a defense. I see it rather as a glimpse into how these things happen.

What the NAACP and the administration are guilty of is a lack of courage, or perhaps, a calculated decision that courage doesn't pay when it comes to questions of race. I hate that such a calculation even exists...but it shouldn't obscure the fact that the real evildoers were elsewhere: Breitbart and his putative source.

I mean, even Fox admitted they screwed up. O'Reilly apologized (once in a while he shows glimpses of honest humanity). Vilsack apologized. Breitbart is unrepentant.

[Primula Baggins]

IAWA&A. This was a messup on all sides and has managed as a result to distract everyone from what Breitbart did. Maybe the lawsuit will bring some focus back to that.

(Whether or not he edited the video himself, his malicious intent in using it was clear. Even if he was unaware that Sherrod's full speech contradicted the twist the edited version gave it, he should certainly have been aware there was more and reviewed it before proceeding, if his motivation had been an honest wish to unmask a racist.)

[Frelga]

There is a key point about this situation that I haven't seen mentioned (and apologize if I overlooked, this is a long and fascinating thread). It's like an urban legend come true - fear taking palpable form.

The fear of the privileged is that, should a disenfranchised group gain power, members of this group will use the power to the exclusive benefit of fellow members and to detriment or outright revenge against the original privileged group. Blacks, women, atheists, whatever.

This is somewhat distinct from racism in that the members of privileged group don't necessarily believe that "the them" are inherently inferior. Instead, they expect "the them" to hog the power, because after all that's what the privileged group had done all along.

From the edited version of the video, it appeared that Sherrod had done exactly that. That I think is one reason why the administration reacted so swiftly and harshly. If anyone is aware of that fear, it's Obama. I don't think it was the right thing to do.

Of course, the full video shows exactly opposite, but that would not fit the urban legend.

P.S: River, rye bread is an Eastern (and Northern?) European thing. Not uniquely Jewish, but certainly as much a favorite among Jews of Eastern European descent as among Slavs. I love it, and find white bread bland by comparison.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[ot]Pastrami should only be eated on rye bread. [/ot]

[halplm]

Once again, the video that was originally posted did in fact have Sherrod's quote about overcoming her own racism. The NAACP and Obama Administration just happened to miss that part.

Everything was done by said NAAACP and Obama administration before Fox News said a word about the story... and their News organization did not comment on it the entire day.

Also, Sherrod and her husband are complete crooks.

(Conservative site... try to find the story elsewhere...)

Then, thanks to their "good lawyers," said a gleeful Sherrod, who seems to have fully recovered from his mental suffering, the Sherrods successfully sued the government for "a large sum of money -- a large sum of money." While saying this, he made hand gestures suggesting $15 million. The land itself was admittedly worth no more than $9 million.

Sherrod gave this talk to announce that the FCC had awarded New Communities a radio station in Albany, Georgia, still another race-based corporate welfare boondoggle. Before the award of this station, he added, the Sherrods "had no means of communicating with our people."

The "our people" in question, of course, are black people. With this new voice, the Sherrods will help "stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections. We must not be afraid to vote black."

[Hachimitsu]

Frela you you really hit it. Especially as in the spech she things link "send them to their own kind" when she was in a position of power herself. It sounds horrible.

I think it was very important to sue as it holds this blogger to task as to the source of this edited video and expose who, did the editing for what purposes.

Ax, I was thinking, how things could have been different if the NAACP and Obama administration simply waited a little to get to the bottom of things? Would the the news outlets that reacted to this add feul to the flames if Sherrod wasn't fired? If they didn't fire her and expose the full video, would the news outlets admit their error?

For the bread incident, for the person, the yuck factor did not come from the taste of the berad. It's that for this person, the yuck factor came from the idea that it was associated with Jewish people. That is what got me, and when people tell me something specific like that is innate I need someone or something to help me make that clear (like Vison and River did). I did talk to the person afterward and at least around me they don't say antisemetic things and know I have Jewish friends. I think, I did change that persons mind.

[River]

[ot]Frelga, when S is feeling selfish, he buys himself rye bread because he knows I won't touch it. It's pretty popular as far north as Scandanavia as well.

I seem to have a minority opinion about rye bread. My very loose and fuzzy impression is that one out of every five people will have the same feelings about rye that I do, maybe even less than that. Everyone else thinks it's delicious and I don't know why. But, then again, I also think meat tastes nasty (so no pastrami either ) so take that for what you will.[/ot]

[yovargas]

[ot]I also don't like rye...just so you know you're not alone here. [/ot]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

hal, that is interesting. While I think that calling Sherrod and her husband "complete crooks" is not supported (and I remind you again to make your points without using unnecessarily insulting language, or you won't be making any points), it is clear that there was more to the quick decision to force her out than initially met the eye. The column by Willie Brown - the flamboyant former mayor of San Francisco and Speaker of the California Assembly and himself a liberal icon - that is referred to in your linked piece is interesting.

Here is a link to that column:
Shirley Sherrod long a thorn in Ag Dept.'s side