Re: [新聞] 白宮及農長向去職黑人主管致歉
The Shirley Sherrod firing: Once again, the Obama administration cowers
before ultra-right
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/usda-j22.shtml
By David Walsh
22 July 2010
The firing of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) employee Shirley Sherrod by
the Obama administration, on the basis of false allegations of racism, was
one more shameful and cowardly concession to the extreme right. All the
administration's backtracking and apologies, and even a job offer, doesn't
alter the fact.
On Monday an ultra-right web site posted a misleading excerpt from a March
27, 2010 speech by Sherrod to an NAACP dinner in Douglas, Georgia, in which
she indicated that years before, when she worked for a charitable lending
organization, she had been hesitant to exert herself on behalf of a white
farmer.
The clip was posted by Andrew Breitbart as part of his feud with the NAACP,
the civil rights organization, on behalf of the Tea Party movement. Following
recent charges of racism by the civil rights organization against Tea Party
activists, Breitbart was eager to prove that individuals associated with the
NAACP were guilty of anti-white racism.
The March 27 remarks in their entirety showed no such thing. On the contrary,
Ms. Sherrod went on to explain that she came to see that the great issue in
America was class, and not race. Breitbart's action was dishonest and
despicable, but that's to be expected.
In any event, terrified of an attack from the right, the administration
rushed to force Sherrod out. She explained to CNN’s Tony Harris Tuesday how
she was “harassed” into quitting her post as USDA director of Rural
Development in Georgia:
“Why am I out? They asked me to resign. And, in fact, they harassed me as I
was driving back to the state office from West Point, Georgia, yesterday. I
had at least three calls telling me the White House wanted me to resign. …
And the last one asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it.”
The calls came from Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development Cheryl Cook.
Sherrod explained that when Cook called her a third time, “I said, ‘I'm at
least 45 minutes to an hour from Athens [Georgia].’ She said, ‘Well,
Shirley, they want you to pull over to the side of the road and do it because
you're going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.’” How fitting! Glenn Beck, an
unstable right-wing ignoramus, threatens and the Obama administration jumps
through hoops.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack later claimed that the forced resignation
was his idea alone, but there is no reason to credit this. Sherrod stated
clearly she was told “the White House” wanted her head. In any event, this
has the odor of an Obama White House decision: cowardly, cold-blooded, and
fully calculated to satisfy the right-wing.
CNN anchor Tony Harris asked Sherrod whether she felt she had been given a
chance to tell her side of the story. She replied, “The administration, they
were not interested in hearing the truth. No one wanted to hear the truth.”
Mary Frances Berry, former chairwoman for the US Commission on Civil Rights
under President Jimmy Carter, told Politico.com, “We now know for sure that
the Obama administration fears Fox and right-wing media more than making sure
they have the facts.”
The NAACP also fell into line Monday night, attacking Sherrod, without even
examining the contents of her speech. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous
released a statement in which he said, “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. We are
appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers
of color and female farmers.”
In regard to the NAACP, Sherrod told CNN, “The NAACP has not tried to
contact me one time … I would have appreciated—when you look at my history
of civil rights, I would have appreciated having the NAACP at least contact
me … contact me to try to get the truth about what happened.
“That hurts, because if you look at my history, that's what I'm saying. I've
done more to advance the causes of civil rights in this area than some of
them who are sitting in those positions now with the NAACP. They need to
learn something about me. They need to know about my work. They need to know
what I've contributed through the years.”
Jealous later excused himself on the grounds that it was late Monday when the
news came in of Sherrod's comments and the NAACP had to react quickly. And
the rapid, instinctive reaction, from this quarter too, was to cave in to the
extreme right.
What did Ms. Sherrod actually say on March 27?
In the first portion of her address she explained that her father, a farmer “
and a leader in the community,” had been murdered by a white man in Baker
County, Georgia in 1965 and that despite the testimony of three witnesses, a
grand jury had refused to indict the killer. Later a cross was burned on her
family's lawn by a group of racists.
Sherrod explained that her father's murder led her to a decision: “I
couldn't just let his death go without doing something in answer to what
happened. I made the commitment on the night of my father's death, at the age
of 17, that I would not leave the South, that I would stay in the South and
devote my life to working for change. And I've been true to that commitment
all of these 45 years.”
As for the incident in 1986 at the center of the excerpt aired Monday that
cost Sherrod her job, the proper context makes clear the experience was
life-changing. At the time she worked for the non-profit Federation of
Southern Cooperative Land Assistance Fund. Sherrod acknowledges the uneasy
character of her first encounter with the white farmer, Roger Spooner, in
need of help. She felt Spooner “was trying to show me he was superior to me,
” and “I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him.”
Sherrod explained, “I didn't give him the full force of what I could do,”
merely taking him “to a white lawyer,” expecting “that his own kind would
take care of him.” But the lawyer's inaction and indifference to Spooner's
fate “opened my eyes.” She continued, “Well, working with him [Spooner]
made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who don't, you
know. And they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic.
And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people—those
who don't have access the way others have.”
Sherrod attributed racism to the desire of “the people with money, the elite
” to divide whites and blacks. “There is no difference between us. The only
difference is that the folks with money want to stay in power,” she said.
The posting of the full speech led one ultra-right commentator to denounce
Sherrod as a “Marxist.” She is no such thing, and in the same March 27
address she registered her strong support for Obama. But she is obviously an
honest and principled person, and the administration simply threw her to the
wolves at the first sign of trouble.
Eloise Spooner, wife of the farmer Sherrod helped in 1986, told the Atlanta
Journal Constitution that the victimized USDA official “kept us out of
bankruptcy.” She considers Sherrod “a friend for life.” Spooner told the
newspaper, “Her [Sherrod's] husband told her, ‘You're spending more time
with the Spooners than you are with me.’” The Iron City, Georgia woman told
the Atlanta newspaper that she had spoken with Sherrod since the furor
erupted. “She's very sad about it,” Spooner said. “She told me she was so
glad we talked. I just can’t believe this is happening to her.”
Roger Spooner, now elderly, told CNN that Sherrod had “stuck with us” back
in 1986 and “we still got the farm.” Asked whether he thought Sherrod was a
racist, Spooner responded emphatically, “No way in the world. … I don't
even want to talk about it. It don’t make sense.”
His wife added, “She always treated us really good. And she was
nice-mannered, thoughtful, friendly. A good person.” After hearing the news
story about Sherrod being fired, Eloise Spooner explained, “We said, she
helped us, so we're helping her.”
--
30歲以前的李根政，除了在學校教書外，便沈浸於藝術創作中，認為那是畢生
的追尋，但，「我是要以行動愛護這塊大地，或只是要幫大地畫遺照？」
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◆ From: 114.33.44.46
※ 編輯: swallow73 來自: 114.33.44.46 (07/24 18:34)
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