Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 18:06:56 -0500
Subject: Re: We Rise:The Courage to Hope: How I Stood Up to the Politics of Fear� by Shirley
From: batiste.f@bteks.com
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My comments added at "askfmb.com"
"The Courage to Hope: How I Stood Up to the Politics of Fear" by Shirley Sherrod with Catherine Whitney
Shirley Sherrod's Story, a life that is familiar to 90% of all Blacks
If your a smart person who value others for their individual idiosyncrasies that separate that person from all other human beings on earth..., it won't matter if your black and you lived in America anytime during the 1900s.
Shirley Sherrod's life story didn't come to be known until she found herself being victimized, yet again, by an act of racism, and the subsequent reactions by those that did not know her heart, where the typical reactions of people who respond to ignorance with ignorance.
Yet, Shirley has shown that her individual spirit is based on her individual heart, and those with strong individualism, don't need to prove to the world, who or what they are.
Racism in American History, was a harsh instrument, used like a leash, to control and restrict blacks physiologically, psychologically, and conscientiously.
To have lived in those times and have lived in the cage of racism, provides distinct memories, and truths, for those who were victims and all who were the wielders of racism.
Fortunately for us all, the winds of change is here, and those who have suffered, will rejoice that much more, as this nation's racist past becomes a "once upon a time" story that,
perhaps some honest whites may feel strong enough to openly discuss with blacks, who know those tales well.
The Next 100 Years of American History will bring changes that will possibly prove to be a reversal of history for some, but a future that is better for us all
ASK FMB
I just added a article on the subject of: American Past Racist Ways, will never repeat the same results of the past.
Take a look....,, we have a very bright future if we recognize that we have already turned the corner.
> we must rise above economics, fear, politics, and race alone. it is called
> justice, dignity and respect for the human condition.
>
> important: read the last line of the article below.
>
> lawrence
>
>
> "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps
> to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is
> really cooperating with it". __Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
>
> "In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the
> silence of our friends" -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
>
>
>
>
> Subj: The Courage to Hope: How I Stood Up to the Politics of Fear� by
> Shirley Sherrod with Catherine Whitney
>
>
> Nov 02, 2012 10:29 PM EDTThe Washington Post
> (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-courage-to-hope-how-i-stood-up-to-the-politics-of-fear-by-shi
> rley-sherrod-with-catherine-whitney/2012/11/02/a0b7d5fc-0bf4-11e2-bd1a-b868e
> 65d57eb_story.html#license-a0b7d5fc-0bf4-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb) Published:
> November 2
>
>
> _http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-courage-to-hope-how-i-stood-up-t
> o-the-politics-of-fear-by-shirley-sherrod-with-catherine-whitney/2012/11/02/
> a0b7d5fc-0bf4-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html_
> (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-courage-to-hope-how-i-stood-up-to-the-politics-of-fear-by-s
> hirley-sherrod-with-catherine-whitney/2012/11/02/a0b7d5fc-0bf4-11e2-bd1a-b86
> 8e65d57eb_story.html)
> By Kevin Boyle,
>
>
>
>
>
>
> In the summer of 2009, the U. S. Department of Agriculture named Shirley
> Sherrod its director of rural development for the state of Georgia. It was a
> routine appointment, one of thousands the Obama administration made that
> year, except for two things. Never before had an African American held the
> position. And Sherrod had spent 40 years working on behalf of Georgia’s
> rural poor, sometimes in opposition to the very programs she would be running.
> That made her selection an audacious act, a sign â€" small as it was â€" of
> change.
> Thirteen months later, she was very abruptly, very publicly fired.
>
>
>
> (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-courage-to-hope-how-i-stood-up-to-the-politics-of-fear-by-shirley-sherrod-with-catherine-whitney/2012/11/02
> /a0b7d5fc-0bf4-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_allComments.html#comments)
>
>
>
> (Atria) - ‘The Courage to Hope: How I Stood Up to the Politics of Fear’
> by Shirley Sherrod
>
>
> The triggering event was a video posted by the late conservative blogger
> _Andrew Breitbart_
> (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/andrew-breitbart-dies-at-43/2012/03/01/gIQAklYPkR_blog.html) , featuring a tiny
> fraction of a speech Sherrod had recently given to a local branch of the
> NAACP. _The clip _ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_xCeItxbQY) seemed to show
> her bragging about having turned away a white farmer who’d come to her for
> help, a blatant case of reverse discrimination. Within a few hours the story
> was all over Fox News. In response, the NAACP denounced her actions as “
> shameful.� And the White House insisted that she tender her resignation.
>
>
>
> Only later did anyone bother to listen to _the rest of Sherrod’s speech_
> (http://www.naacp.org/news/entry/video_sherrod/) . It turned out that the
> incident she’d described had taken place not during her tenure with the USDA
> but 23 years earlier, when she worked for a nonprofit organization. It was
> true that when the white farmer first came to her, she’d tried to pass his
> problem off to a white lawyer, thinking that “his own kind would take care
> of him.� When that didn’t work, though, she got him the help he needed.
> “Well,� she’d explained in a segment Breitbart had left on the
> cutting-room floor, “working with him 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 â€" those who don’t have access the way others
> have.�
> The most powerful portion of Sherrod’s new memoir, written with Catherine
> Whitney, fleshes out the story she sketched in her NAACP speech. She is
> herself the product of a farm family, born and raised in the fiercely
> segregated world of southern Georgia in the dying days of Jim Crow. Her experience
> with the system’s terrible power was deeply personal: In 1965, when she was
> 17, her father was murdered by a neighbor who, because he was white, was
> never held accountable for his crime. The tragedy could have shattered her
> family. Instead it pushed them into activism. The summer after her father’s
> death, her mother and sisters joined the first mass marches in their
> county; that autumn they played a major role in desegregating the local schools.
> It was through their activism that Shirley met Charles Sherrod, who had
> come to Georgia four years earlier as a field secretary for the Student
> Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the vanguard organization of the civil
> rights revolution. When they married in 1966, Shirley Sherrod married the
> movement, too.
>
>
>
>
> - Over the decades, her commitments expanded. For 17 years, from 1968 to
> 1985, the Sherrods ran a cooperative farm that they hoped would be a model
> for democratic economic development in black communities. When that venture
> collapsed, because of the USDA’s refusal to give the couple a desperately
> needed loan, Shirley took a position with a nonprofit that helped African
> Americans hold on to their land. But white farmers started showing up at her
> office, too. Through those encounters, she says, “I [began] to see that the
> greatest struggle for farmers was poverty, and it didn’t matter what color
> your skin was.� By the time the Obama administration came calling, Sherrod
> had spent two decades working on behalf of the rural poor, black and
> white.
> None of that mattered to Breitbart, who latched onto Sherrod’s speech not
> to attack her personally â€" by all accounts he had no clue who she was â€"
> but rather to retaliate against liberal criticism of the tea party’s racial
> dynamics. Thus was she sucked into the mire of Washington politics, her
> reputation, her livelihood, her career all shattered by a few minutes of
> manipulation.
>
>
>
>
> But Sherrod refused to remain a victim. The morning after her firing she
> went on CNN to deny that she’d discriminated against the farmer she’d
> mentioned in her speech. So did the farmer, _Roger Spooner_
> (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/07/21/DI2010072105162.html) , who
> said that in fact she’d saved his land. With that, Sherrod’s response
> rocketed around the media. Rachel Maddow picked it up, as did The Washington
> Post, the New York Times, “Good Morning America,� “Today,� even “The View.�
> The president of the NAACP apologized for his rush to judgment. President
> Obama called to express his regrets. And the secretary of agriculture
> offered Sherrod a new, more powerful position, which she refused. It was time,
> she said, to move on.
>
>
>
> That she has done. Last year the Sherrods bought an abandoned plantation
> close to where their cooperative farm had been. They plan to turn it into a
> conference center for racial reconciliation, dedicated to the ideals that
> have shaped their lives. It’s a noble vision, a stirring way to end a sorry
> episode. But it also obscures a profoundly troubling aspect of Sherrod’s
> story.
> Breitbart’s cynical maneuver, and the administration’s panicked response,
> had driven her out of government service. Maybe in the grand scheme of
> things, her position wasn’t all that important. But the fact that she was in
> it â€" a woman raised in the Georgia countryside, steeped in the struggle for
> racial justice, deeply committed to the plight of the poor â€" mattered. It
> also matters that she’s gone: another sign of change, of hope, destroyed by
> the brutal spectacle we call politics.
> _bookworld@washpost.com _ (mailto:bookworld@washpost.com)
>
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