The End of the Post Racial Era
August 3, 2010 - by
An odd thing happened on the way to the post-racial era. Mrs. Shirley Sherrod a black Department of Agriculture employee in rural Georgia gave a speech to the NAACP, admitted twenty years ago she discriminated against a poor white farmer, explained how she’d realized she was wrong and turned around and helped the farmer – then got denounced by the NAACP and fired by President Obama.
How’s that?
Well, a conservative blogger opened his email one morning and a video floated in out of the ether of Mrs. Sherrod – only it had been edited by someone on devilment. They’d left in Mrs. Sherrod saying she’d discriminated against the white farmer but cut out her talking about the moral lesson she learned.
Next the Obama Administration saw the video, heard Glenn Beck was going to put it on Fox News, panicked and fired Ms. Sherrod – so nobody could say they approved of discriminating against white Georgia farmers.
Next the white Georgia farmer went on CNN and said Mrs. Sherrod was as fine a woman as he’d ever met and she’d helped him save his farm and Obama had got it all wrong and that firing her was “a bunch of hogwash.”
That really got the White House’s attention. President Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibb went on TV and apologized to Mrs. Sherrod and Obama offered her a new job; about the same time the conservative blogger went on TV and said he wasn’t attacking Sherrod at all, he was attacking the NAACP for attacking the Tea Party and why on earth wouldn’t CNN investigate that and leave him alone.
So in a panic over a Glenn Beck story our first black President fired a black woman for discriminating against a white farmer, then the white farmer praised the black woman and the black President hired her back and, I reckon, all that is proof the post-racial era is over.
The End of the Post Racial Era
August 3, 2010/
An odd thing happened on the way to the post-racial era. Mrs. Shirley Sherrod a black Department of Agriculture employee in rural Georgia gave a speech to the NAACP, admitted twenty years ago she discriminated against a poor white farmer, explained how she’d realized she was wrong and turned around and helped the farmer – then got denounced by the NAACP and fired by President Obama.
How’s that?
Well, a conservative blogger opened his email one morning and a video floated in out of the ether of Mrs. Sherrod – only it had been edited by someone on devilment. They’d left in Mrs. Sherrod saying she’d discriminated against the white farmer but cut out her talking about the moral lesson she learned.
Next the Obama Administration saw the video, heard Glenn Beck was going to put it on Fox News, panicked and fired Ms. Sherrod – so nobody could say they approved of discriminating against white Georgia farmers.
Next the white Georgia farmer went on CNN and said Mrs. Sherrod was as fine a woman as he’d ever met and she’d helped him save his farm and Obama had got it all wrong and that firing her was “a bunch of hogwash.”
That really got the White House’s attention. President Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibb went on TV and apologized to Mrs. Sherrod and Obama offered her a new job; about the same time the conservative blogger went on TV and said he wasn’t attacking Sherrod at all, he was attacking the NAACP for attacking the Tea Party and why on earth wouldn’t CNN investigate that and leave him alone.
So in a panic over a Glenn Beck story our first black President fired a black woman for discriminating against a white farmer, then the white farmer praised the black woman and the black President hired her back and, I reckon, all that is proof the post-racial era is over.