Racism in the NAACP

It's a stupid question first of all. Unless you're going to claim one race is inherently lazier than another. How do you quantify the cumulative opportunities afforded a white man's family from West Virginia whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents and great great grandparents have had unfettered access to the political, educational, and financial systems in this country with the opportunities afforded a black guy's family from Alabama whose parents attended segregated schools, whose grandparents lived through Jim Crow, whose great grandparents were slaves, etc. I think it's safe to say that white family has had every opportunity to succeed or fail on their own merits. There's been no 200 year conspiracy against their family.

 

After the ACORN fiasco I learned that it's best not to respond to basso posting BreitFART videos because that guy is a f***ing liar. I also learned that once evidence of the bullshiat comes out, he won't back down or admit BreitFART was wrong...no he'll dig a deep FOXhole and give us all the finger while he gets shelled by the truth. So why bother?

 

very difficult to understand the reasons why. the video was what about a story from 1987??? and how she has changed. my lord what a joke.

 

I don't think you understand what I am saying.

I don't disagree that many of the blacks who are poor today are the progeny of those who indeed were targeted by racism. But that targeting is mainly in the past.

The problems the poor face mostly comes down to this: being born poor. If you are born to middle class, you are most likely to end up middle class. And if it's poor, you are more likely to end up in poverty.

When you are poor, things like getting the education and creds necessary to succeed in life is really hard. Uneducated parents rarely are able to ensure that their kids get a great education, even if they apply discipline.

Doesn't matter if they are black or white. For the few that manage to get good grades despite these hurdles but still are at a disadvantage compared to wealthier students...it's quite impressive actually. I think it demonstrates immense potential.

Barack Obama is in himself a demonstration of what the toughness that comes from a poor background can do.

So I do think poor students and the poor in general should get help in getting into colleges and universities, and getting job training. That's Affirmative action, but it's no longer race based.

By the way, I'm surprised you'd consider me a conservative. Moderate maybe...but c'mon, just ask the other conservatives here!

 

basso you must be incredibly embarrassed now that the unedited video is out.

 

Hasn't it become clear over the years that basso is incapable of feeling shame?

 

Whoops!

 

Now that it has come out that Sherod's comments were clearly taken out of context and that she did help out the white farmer quite a bit does anyone think she should be rehired?

 

Isn't this changing the topic? Do you at least acknowledge that the video you posted at the beginning of this thread was highly misleading?

 

In that case then should appointees from the last Admin. who disparaged political opponents also have been dismissed?

 

who in the obama admin casually calls their opponents racist?

 

you go basso, way to turn a republican weakness into a strength!!!!

 

It's episodes like these that have earned basso his reputation as the most intellectually dishonest poster here. And what's really mystifying, is that he somehow thinks stuff like this helps his cause.

It's really hard to understand this mentality.

 

I'm starting to think he's a bot.

 

I am hoping Shirley Sherrod gets her job back, or at least is offered it back if she won't accept it. And I think she is owed an apology by Vilsack.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38321920/ns/us_news-life?Gt1=43001

usted USDA official: I'm not sure I'd take job back
Black employee who was forced to resign for purported racial bias: 'No one would listen'

The woman ousted from the Agriculture Department over racially tinged remarks that sparked a firestorm in the media said she was uncertain if she would return to her job if invited back.

On Monday, Shirley Sherrod resigned from a senior position with the USDA in Georgia after edited video clips surfaced appearing to show her admitting to racial bias toward a white farmer.

However, when the full video of her speech at an NAACP event was made public, the civil rights group retracted a previous statement condemning her for acting in a racist manner, and said she had been treated unfairly. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack then said in the early hours of Wednesday that he would reconsider the USDA's decision to ask for her resignation.

"I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner," Vilsack said.

But Sherrod, who said on Tuesday that she was pressured to resign, said on NBC's TODAY show that she might not want her job back.

"I am just not sure how I would be treated there," she said, adding that she couldn't get coworkers to listen to her side of the story about a speech she made in March, edited clips of which were recently shown on a conservative website.

Sherrod said her comments were part of a larger story about learning from her mistakes and racial reconciliation. They were not racist, she said, and were taken out of context.

"That's not my message. That's not me," she said on TODAY. "If you look at my life's work, you would know that that's not me."

NAACP was 'snookered'
On Tuesday, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said that the group was "snookered" into believing that Sherrod expressed racist sentiments at a local NAACP meeting in Georgia earlier this year. After initially supporting her ouster, Jealous changed his mind and said she should keep her job.

The Obama administration's move to reconsider her employment was a reversal on the position just hours earlier, when a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said President Barack Obama had been briefed on Sherrod's resignation after the fact and stood by the Agriculture Department's handling of it.

However, the white farming family that was the subject of the story came to Sherrod's defense and said she should stay in her job.

"We probably wouldn't have (our farm) today if it hadn't been for her leading us in the right direction," said Eloise Spooner, 82, the wife of farmer Roger Spooner of Iron City, Ga. "I wish she could get her job back because she was good to us, I tell you."

She told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she considered Sherrod a "friend for life," saying that "the federal official worked tirelessly to help" them hold onto their farm as they faced bankruptcy in 1986.

"Her husband told her, 'You're spending more time with the Spooners than you are with me,'" Spooner told the Journal-Constitution. "She took probably two or three trips with us to Albany just to help us out."

As people came to her defense and Sherrod reached out to media to plead her case, the administration faced criticism that officials, nervous about racial perceptions, had overreacted to her comments and made her a political sacrifice amid dueling allegations of racism between the NAACP and the "Tea Party" movement.

In the clip posted on BigGovernment.com, Sherrod described the first time a white farmer came to her for help. It was 1986, and she worked for a nonprofit rural farm aid group. She said the farmer came in acting "superior" to her and she debated how much help to give him.

"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land," Sherrod said.

Initially, she said, "I didn't give him the full force of what I could do" and only gave him enough help to keep his case progressing. But eventually, she said, his situation "opened my eyes" that whites were struggling just like blacks, and helping farmers wasn't so much about race but was "about the poor versus those who have."

The full video of Sherrod's speech showed that while she took some shots at conservatives and spoke of continued racial inequities, she focused on encouraging blacks, particularly the younger generation, to do more to help themselves.

"We have to overcome the divisions that we have," she told the audience. "Change has to start with us. ... Our young people, I'm not picking on you, but y'all gotta step up to the plate. ... You are capable of being those doctors and lawyers."

ACORN prostitute video
The two-minute, 38-second video clip posted Monday by BigGovernment.com was presented as evidence that the NAACP was hypocritical in its recent resolution condemning what it calls racist elements of the Tea Party movement.

The website's owner, Andrew Breitbart, said the video shows the civil rights group condoning the same kind of racism it says it wants to erase.

BigGovernment.com is the same outfit that gained fame last year after airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.

The Huffington Post said after Breitbart posted the YouTube video of the speech, it was then aired on Fox News and Sherrod's resignation came shortly after.

Jealous said Breitbart deceived millions of people by releasing only partial clips. He said the full video makes clear that Sherrod was telling a story of racial unity.

"The tape of Ms. Sherrod’s speech at an NAACP banquet was deliberately edited to create a false impression of racial bias, and to create a controversy where none existed," Jealous said Tuesday afternoon. "This just shows the lengths to which extremist elements will go to discredit legitimate opposition."
Newsvine: Was USDA official unfairly forced out?

Sherrod said she was on the road Monday when USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook called her and told her the White House wanted her to resign because her comments were generating a cable news controversy.

"They called me twice," she told the AP in an interview. "The last time they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and submit my resignation on my BlackBerry, and that's what I did."

'It hurts me'
Sherrod said administration officials weren't interested in hearing her explanation. "It hurts me that they didn't even try to attempt to see what is happening here, they didn't care," she said. "I'm not a racist ... Anyone who knows me knows that I'm for fairness."

The administration gave a slightly different version of events.

Vilsack — not the White House — made the decision to ask Sherrod to resign, said USDA spokeswoman Chris Mather. She said Sherrod willingly resigned when asked.

In a previous statement, Vilsack said the controversy surrounding Sherrod's comments could, rightly or wrongly, cause people to question her decisions as a federal employee and lead to lingering doubts about civil rights at the agency, which has a troubled history of discrimination.

The decision by the NAACP Tuesday afternoon to support Sherrod was in stark contrast to its initial reaction to the incident Monday night in a statement: "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."

In that statement, Jealous said the organization was "appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers."

"Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man," he said.

However, the NAACP reversed its position after seeing the full video of the speech.

 

Off the top of my head I can't recall them calling them racist but they certainly did slander political opponents.

 

I love the title of the video. Real objectivity there basso.

Also, I think it's hilarious that Repubs are trying to brand HCR as "Obamacare." Do you not realize that as people come to see their HC choices improve and the ability of companies to screw them reduced that you are helping establish a brand that will cede the health care issue to Dems for a generation?