Last March Sherrod a veteran in the department of agriculture gave a speech at a NAACP (National association for the Advancement of Coloured People) Conference, little did she know that her speech would be used as a teachable moment in the game of American Politics.
One the one side we have Fox News, The Tea Party and various Right wing Bloggers , on the other side we have The NAACP, The Obama Administration & The Farmers helped by Sherrod.
NAACP passed a resolution asking the Tea Party to purge the racism in their ranks elements of the Tea Party responded by claiming that The NAACP itself was racist.
One Tea party supporting Blogger Andrew Beitbart went one step further and claimed to have discovered proof that such racism existed. An edited version of a NAACP meeting was posted on his website. This was quickly picked up by other sites and also by Fox News http://mediamatters.org/research/201007220004 The time line indicates that this quickly became viral.
The Administration & NAACP acted to head off any accusation of Racism and condemned Mrs Sherrod the Administration called for and received her resignation.
The following describes the feeling some bloggers had
.The numerical minorities and those without power are always in need of advocacy organizations to protect them from the tyranny of the majority. There are children's rights advocacy organizations but no ADULTS' rights organizations because children are without power. I bet you'd never complain about that.
Unlike the White Citizens Council, now named the Concerned Citizens Council (that also brags about its support of and membership in the t-party movement), the NAACP doesn't advocate for the empowerment of one race over the other or vehemently express the sentiment that African Americans are smarter, more civilized or more human than non-black people. The NAACP exists today because racism against non-black exists today on the micro and the macro levels.
Because peaceful and unarmed Black men & boys (one of whom was mentally handicapped) escaping a flood can be shot by police officers without a hue & a cry from the general public, the NAACP still has a reason to exist. Because a young Black man, while laying down on the pavement with a police officer's knee in his neck , can be shot in the back by another police officer & white people condone it, the NAACP still has work to do.
Because the executives of a giant corporation jokingly referred to African American employees who wanted and DESERVED a promotion as "black jellybeans stuck to the bottom of the bag" (this was tape recorded by one of the executives), we realize the NAACP has a lot of work yet to do.
Because a Black man went to work in the rural south at a company that never had a Black employee before and the employees attempted to lynch him in the bathroom, the NAACP still has work to do.
I could write ten pages of injustices that are happening to people of African descent TODAY in this country that you never knew about because you have the luxury of it not affecting you, or the audacity to downplay its significance
Fortunately Mrs Sherrod was able to disprove the allegations against her because the full video was placed on the internet
Here
http://www.naacp.org/news/entry/video_sherrod/
Mrs Sherrod can teach us a thing or two!!
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