You are a racist… Shirley Sherrod does not “come to Jesus”, she came to the Class Struggle (UPDATE x2)

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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs.”  -B.T.Washington, 1911

The following was posted as a comment on a facebook link to PZ Meyers farting from his high horse here. I took  a stupid aount of time writing it, so I’m posting it here as well.

The politicians and pundits only look for “context” when charges of racism are leveled when it’s politically advantageous, and sometimes not even then.The left and right are both guilty of this. They’re all looking for political expediency at the expense of truth.

For all the “blowback”, (Sherrod) did act in an official capacity, in the employ of the government, in an explicitly racist manner, and then later did she decide she needed to fight a class war over a race war.

In the middle of the white farmer story, she makes an aside to discuss the importance of class struggle. She almost says that it’s not about black and white, but she corrects herself and states “it IS about black and white” but that it’s also about the poor vs. “those who have” (at 18:36). This is NOT a story of overcoming racial bias, but of adding class animosity, and giving it primacy over racial concerns.

I applaud her candor in her admission of at one point applying institutional racism as an act of revenge against whites. She almost had her career ruined for this bit of honesty.

The NAACP is a Race-Based advocacy organization. Until they disband, they can never claim to be working toward a post-racial society.

UPDATE (still no time signature for when she disavows racial thinking):

The narrative arc for this story has been
1. she was racist in a video excerpt.
2. She was post-racial once the full video was released.
I didn’t watch every second of the unexcerpted video, so maybe I missed her “come to jesus” moment when she disavows thinking in terms of race. I DID see the part where she said she DID still see the world in terms of “blacks and whites”.
Breibart is being accused of all kinds of mischief, but it seems that he took a 40+ minute speech and excerpted a section as long or longer than would appear in most news stories.
No television station would show the full speech (c-span maybe?).
No newspaper quotes full speeches when making commentary.
No radio station plays full speeches.
(There are obvious exceptions, such as State of the Unions addresses by the president).
Looking into Huffpo’s recent defense of the woman ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/barack-obama-the-national_b_657183.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=815208,b=facebook ) , I see that she’s a lifelong “black activist”. They play up that she has helped whites, but all of her CV seems to point that she works for her “own kind” (to use her words). Just because you’re willing to work alongside whites for the benefit of blacks, doesn’t mean you’re “post-racial”.
Two people have attacked my criticisms by saying that I’m demanding too much from her, but the narrative is that she is “past race”, but the only evidence I can find is that she is NOT. Part of that evidence is her explicit statements.

UPDATE 2 – SOMEONE LOOKS AT THE DAMN VIDEO!

My respect to Bruce P. who ACTUALLY looked at the video and used his critical faculty and looked at the source material to respond to me!

Bruce Press No wonder nobody has the story straight. She’s a lousy speaker. Who can stand to listen to her tell a story?

The “come to Jesus” moment is around 25:00 minutes in the original version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9NcCa_KjXk

I believe she realized something, that I happen to agree with. We are far more prejudiced against other socio-economic classes than we are against race. It isn’t that a middle-class white professional can’t relate to an impoverished black mechanic, it’s that he can’t relate to an impoverished ANYBODY. We have struggled mightily to overcome racial barriers in the last 50 years. We haven’t even begun to overcome wealth barriers.

It just so happens that in this country, there is a fair amount of correlation between race and economic status. Is this a result of historical racial prejudice? Quite possibly. I think this is where Sherrod is coming from. The problem, as I said earlier, is that she’s a suck public speaker who damages her position by standing behind a microphone

And I followed this with:

Bruce, I give you respect for the followup. I’ve posted this a number of times and places and every time it’s been met with silence, straw men, or digressions into other areas. It’s easy to bash “Faux News” or tell me that I’ll just “hear what I want to hear”, but I haven’t been asking for opinion or who has the snarkiest or most clever commentary. I’ve been asking people to look at the source material that all this hubbub is about, and you are the only person who has followed up….

I agree with you that her speech is a mess, and we could probably discuss possible motivations and the Pigford lawsuit, the problem of “collective guilt”, etc. I would take issue with the idea that we haven’t struggled to overcome “wealth barriers”, but this whole brouhaha is about the video and what was said on it, and I don’t wan’t to digress into what could be a whole seperate and sprawling discussion.

I hadn’t noticed until reviewing it now, but one comment points out:

“This is NOT the full video, it has been edited at 20:59. What is the NAACP trying to hide?”

And I have to agree with this question. If it’s a matter of the “full video” providing proper context, we still have not seen the full video. What we see instead, is them fade from one scene to another where she’s received a good deal of restrained laughter. This fade is right at the story of the white farmer being sent to the white lawyer. One can only imagine, but I won’t comment on what I haven’t seen.

Besides the statement affirming a continued racial view at 18:36, she again qualifies her coming equalitarian sounding statements at 25:20 by saying “it’s not just about black people”.

So I think her story is like that of the Bible and God she clings to – some parts contradict the other. I think her need to make the two qualifying statements noted above alone betray the idea that she doesn’t hold racial views that prejudice her in favor of blacks.

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