It really doesn’t matter how many speeches President Obama makes on race. The truth is people always look at things in black and white; it’s crazy because this RACE thing has been going on for so long that it’s beaten into us from a young age whether it is voluntary or involuntary. In the case of Shirley Sherrod, an Agriculture Department employee who was asked to resign over racial remarks at an NAACP banquet in Georgia only to find out later the way we heard her comments were based on manipulative editing from right wing media outlet Breitbart.com. it’s no wonder why we are still lacking progress in race relations in the country, if we allow for the vicious media to control how we receive information.
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Racism, subtle or not so subtle, is a virus and it only gets contained from time to time, but never cured. We, as Americans, treat racism as a quick fix, it comes and it goes, but to be honest since the 2008 election it’s been the main focal point of the mainstream. In the past couple weeks race has dominated the mainstream media. From Mel Gibson telling his girlfriend ‘If you get raped by a pack of n*ggers it will be your fault’ to Rush Limbaugh saying George Steinbrenner made a lot of African Americans rich and Fox News covering the New Black Panther Party.
This is Glenn Beck and Van Jones all over again and sometimes I feel the only ones who are achieving change is the right wing. They’re the ones that got Van Jones to resign, they’re the ones that got Shirley Sherrod to resig and they’re the ones that organized the Tea Party to get Rand Paul elected.
So why do we continue to let them manipulate us and use us as pawns in their little chess game? Why are we the ones put in front of the firing squad? It’s simple, knee jerk reactions, and intimidation to the other side. In the case of Shirley Sherrod, a woman that was lied about, misquoted, and eventually lost her job she held in the US Department of Agriculture. Why did she lose her job? Why was Sherrod singled out? Because of knee jerk reactions from the Obama administration and the NAACP, because she was black? Either way, shame on both of them for reacting without knowing all the facts. They took Van Jones down on the same thing, watching him on video talking about the right wing.
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So where do we go from here? Well Ms. Sherrod spoke on Good Morning America and told George Stephanopoulos that;
“Because of all the publicity surrounding what happened…how would I be treated once I’m back there? I just don’t know…I would have to be reassured on that….When I accepted the position at rural development, always in the back of my mind was doing the very best that I could to have that be a good reflection on [Obama] and what he was trying to do.”
