Recently, Shirley Sherrod pops up in news after a NAACP Speech video posted on the Internet and that result in her resignation from the Obama administration. This video appeared to show her making racist statements about a white farmer who sought her help after his farm was about to be foreclosed upon. Read ahead the Shirley Sherrod Wikipedia info.
Shirley Sherrod is African American employee of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). In 1999, the plaintiffs settled with the government. Under the consent decree, all African American farmers would be paid a “virtually automatic” US$50,000 plus granted certain loan forgiveness and tax offsets. This process was called “Track A”. On the other hand, the affected farmers could follow the “Track B” process and seeking a larger payment by presenting a greater amount of facts as the legal standard in this case was to have a preponderance of evidence along with proof of greater damages.
When the case was settled, it was expected there would be in the area of 2,000 to 3,000 claims. As with most estimates involving government handouts that number was dolefully short of the mark. For "pain and suffering", Sherrod and her husband Charles Sherrod got personally $150,000 each.
About Shirley Sherrod's posted video:
Andrew Breitbart, conservative commentator released the video on the Internet on July 19, 2010. In this video, an African American woman appeared to be making racist remarks.
In the video the woman looks to be saying the following:
"You know, the first time I was faced with helping a white farmer save his farm. He took a long time talking but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing. But he had come to me for help. What he didn't know, while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me, was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him."
"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland. And here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land, so I didn't give him the full force of what I could do."
"So I took him to a white lawyer that had attended some of the training that we had provided because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm. So I figured if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him."
According to Sherrod's own account, in the video the story is about a farmer named Roger Spooner, who was the first white farmer to come to her for help in 1986. She narrates that "the land was being sold, and had in fact already been rented out from under him." At first, she felt that he had a superior attitude toward her causing her to recall her life in the South including the murder of her father, but further states that "I didn't let that get in the way of trying to help." She also states, "I didn't discriminate ... If I had discriminated against him, I would not have given him any help at all because I wasn't obligated to do it by anyone ... I didn't have to help that farmer. I could have sent him out the door without giving him any help at all. But in the end, we became very good friends, and that friendship lasted for some years."
Regarding the full force remark, she states that it has to do with rallying other farmers' support: "I didn't know of any black farmers who would come out and try to support a white farmer at that point. ... I wasn't really sure of what I could do because at that time, I thought they [white people] had the advantages. I learned that was not the case."
According to her, she had done her job, and took him to a white lawyer. She says that "if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him ... but that lawyer failed to help ... I did not discriminate against ?(the farmer). And, in fact, I went all out to frantically look for a lawyer at the last minute because the first lawyer we went to was not doing anything to really help him. In fact, that lawyer suggested they should just let the farm go. The second attorney (was able to help the farmer) file Chapter 11 bankruptcy to help the family stay on the farm."
Sherrod was required to resign from her post after the video surfaced. In accordance with Sherrod, she was called three times as her drove home by an official who had called her after prompting by the White House. The official so forced that she resign immediately that Sherrod pulled over to the side of the road to resign by email.
In the instant result of the video, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack stated, "There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person... We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously".
Sherrod refused any claims that she was racist and stated that the incident "helped her learn to move beyond race" and that "she told the story to audiences to make that point". She told that the White House forced her to resign while she was "on the road" from West Point, Georgia.
According to her, she was called by the Department of Agriculture three times and every time insisting that she resigns. In the year 2009, she had guided a group that won a $13 million settlement in a longstanding discrimination suit against the USDA known commonly as the "Pigford Case". The suit stated the USDA racially distinguished against black farmers by not giving them fair treatment when they applied for loans or assistance. The case was settled in 1999 and at the result of the case; there are more than $1 billion in compensation payments from the federal government and for this "pain and suffering", Sherrod and her husband Charles Sherrod also personally got $150,000 each.
The White House refused any claims that they forced Sherrod for a resignation with a statement that said that "They were not involved in pressuring for a resignation: The White House did not pressure her or USDA over the resignation. It was the Secretary’s decision, as he has said”.
A professor at Princeton's Center for African American Studies, Imani Perry said: "I think many white Americans are fearful that with Obama in the White House, and the diversity in his appointments, that the racial balance of power is shifting. And that's frightening both because people always are afraid to give up privilege, and because of the prospect of a black-and-brown backlash against a very ugly history. Some liberals have long maintained that racism requires power, and so black people can't be racist. Obama's election undercut the first argument and made the specter of black racism appear more threatening."
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