Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'Racism' Video That Led To Firing USDA Official Shirley Sherrod Lacked Critical Context

Mwaliumu Agbali, Obama apologists like to say that an ambassadorial position is a "cabinet position" to skirt his marginalization of Afrikans. That is simply nuts. The United States Constitution is very clear about what is or how to constitute a cabinet level position. Susan Rice is an ambassador; her position is NOT a cabinet level position. Period!!!

Let us be honest! Black folk must put Obama's feet on the fire, lest they end up with nothing. The guy is even comfortable appointing homosexuals and lesbians, not that anything is wrong with that, and will defend them to the hilt, but he is quite uncomfortable appointing Blacks in key positions. The record is very clear: Clinton gave us Black folk eight cabinet positions, Bush gave us three, and Obama gave us one. And in America, you have to have significant representation around the Big Table in the White House to get your share of the proverbial pie.

Some Black folk should also be honest and stop this yuki-yuki talk about "Obama is President of the US, and he does have to do anything for Afrika." This would be fine if the United States does not owe Afrika so much in many ways.

Whether some folk know/like it or not, many Afrikans expect some goodies from Obama. The following is an excerpt of the introduction of the paper I wrote for Obama and his folk when I was invited by his folk to a special meeting via the TransAfrica Forum to assess his policy toward Afrika and the Caribbean thus far. It is similar to a paper that will soon appear in the CODESRIA Bulletin and a chapter in a book on Obama in press.

"The son of Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas, and Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang'ome Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya, United States President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is considered by most Africans as one of their own. Thus, during the 2008 United States presidential election, many African groups and individuals in the United States and Africa donated handsomely to Obama's campaign. When he won the election, there was jubilation throughout the African continent. Africans were not celebrating Obama for the sake of it. Neither was President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya saying "we are proud of your roots" for nothing. Such joy was informed by a world of expectation that Africa would fare better under an Obama presidency (Kanu et al., 2008).

            Obama's victory brought optimism in Africa that the win signalled a turning point for Blacks everywhere, the largest percentage of who are located on that continent. The expectation of reparation and official apology for centuries of the slave trade, policy change towards the continent, and fair trade was sky-high (Kanu et al., 2008). Obama's electoral success inspired many young Africans to dream about what is achievable with hard work. Even Mwalimu Ali Alamin Mazrui, the doyen of African Studies, expressed optimism that Obama's message of change and his triumph would bring a great deal of optimism in Africa, particularly among the young (Butty, 2009). Many Africans were expressing optimism that Obama's presidency would mark a significant improvement in United States policies toward the continent and even further strengthen the ties between the people of Africa and the people of the United States. Many African stakeholders were optimistic about United States-sponsored freedom, rule of law and democracy on the continent. Africans were eager to see if Obama will truly "unclench the fists of those who cling to power," as he promised in his inauguration address (Biyyaa, 2009).

            Thus, in his second year of the presidency, it is only fair to ask about what Obama has done for Africa thus far. This question is addressed in the following section."

And about those who doubt my Pan-Afrikanist credentials, it suffices to say that they know very little about me. Muamar Qadhaffy, Abdoulai Wade, John Kufuor, and many others think differently.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Agbali
Sent: Jul 21, 2010 4:50 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'Racism' Video That Led To Firing USDA Official Shirley Sherrod Lacked Critical Context

Seriously, am I missing something here? Is the US UN Ambassador a cabinet level position. I know all the secretaries of different departments are, including the Vice President and the Attorney general, but it is my first time of hearing that the US UN Ambassador is a cabinet level position.    The last time I browsed through a booklet of American immigration on naturalization, this did not seem to be the case. I realized that since then what had changed was the inclusion of the secretary of the Homeland Security, as a cabinet position.  I recently glanced this was not the case, as there was no indication of such,  at least evidentially in the most obvious manner?   The cabinet advises the President essentially about the government. Now, does the American UN ambassador advise the President in an independent manner from what the Secretary of State does?   The political scientists, policy scholars, American studies folks help me out here. Am I missing something here, or I simply am ignorant of what a cabinet level position is within the American government, or changes therein?  I would like to learn. --- On Wed, 7/21/10, Pius Adesanmi <piusadesanmi@yahoo.com> wrote: From: Pius Adesanmi <piusadesanmi@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'Racism' Video That Led To Firing USDA Official Shirley Sherrod Lacked Critical Context To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com Date: Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 2:06 PM Moses: Don't mind Abdul. He thinks he has found a reason to take a swipe at those who were irritated by his Massaphilia (apologies to Maazi Biko) during the campaign. I find his version of pan-Africanism entertaining though. It is the younger brother of Kwabena's give me back my black dolls pan-Africanism. Abdul's is what I call spelling bee pan-Africanism. Add "k" and every other thing shall be added. Once Obama starts talking about his "Afrikan policy", Mwalimu Abdul will call him the best thing to happen to the continent after Nelson Mandela. Pius --- On Wed, 21/7/10, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote: From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'Racism' Video That Led To Firing USDA Official Shirley Sherrod Lacked Critical Context To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com Date: Wednesday, 21 July, 2010, 17:31 Abdul, your childish gloating is in very poor taste. It shows just how bitter you are that Obama actually won the election, in spite of your Uncle Tomish campaign against him. Bolaji is absolutely right about this issue. But I guess you must be a prophet and must have predicted that there would be a hate-mongering tea party movement that emerged precisely because of the election of a black man as president, regardless of what their leaders say. You also must seen ahead of time how the tea-party would make race baiting a central motif of their opposition to Obama. And, you must have also seen this particular incident in your crystal ball. The Obama admin makes the mistake of being goaded by right-wing mischief makers into dismissing one MID-LEVEL black appointee without reviewing the context of her pronouncement and, by your twisted logic, that makes Obama a KKK/Hitler incarnate to be feared and loathed by all Africans and people of African descent. What a logic! And by the way, since you only count Eric Holder as Obama's only high profile black appointee, I guess Susan Rice, a holder of the cabinet level office of UN ambassador, must not count as a black person in your book. Or Ron Kirk, the US trade representative. Or the Surgeon General. Or his other high-level black appointees. You're incorrigible, Abdul. I've never seen a black person loathe his own kind like you. But I know where your anti-Obama bile comes from. You revealed it here on this very forum. So I am not surprised. Obama's engagement with Africa leaves much to be desired, but as I remind people, he is president of the USA. He owes nothing to Africa. The significance of his presidency to us is only symbolic. Judging him by another standard is ludicrous--and mischievous. On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 8:24 AM, Abdul Karim Bangura <theai@earthlink.net> wrote: Ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaa....He, he, he, heeeeeeee.....---:) When I, a member of the Democratic Party Executive Committee, predicted all this in 2008, I was called all sorts of unsavory monikers on this forum: "Sell Out," "Closet McCain-Nut," "Uncle Tom," etc. Let's face it, Obama is failing Afrikans on the Motherland and in the Diaspora. His token appointment of Eric Holder in his cabinet for an agency that had lost most of its bureaus and power when Homeland Security was launched is a slap in the face of our Afrikan ancestors. The guy even prefers nominating gays to national positions and take the heat than to appoint Afrikans. And as we say in America, "I told you so." -----Original Message----- From: Mobolaji ALUKO Sent: Jul 21, 2010 2:51 AM To: USAAfrica Dialogue , NaijaPolitics e-Group , NIDOA , naijaintellects , OmoOdua Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'Racism' Video That Led To Firing USDA Official Shirley Sherrod Lacked Critical Context     Dear All:   This is ridiculous.    Obama might give her her job back, but Ms. Shirley Sherrod should not take it back, tut rather should sue the Obama administration for wrongful dismissal.  How can a feeling she expressed 24 years ago as a non-government employee be manipulated by wicked conservative media against her today to force her out of a job?  The rush to judgment without the context was trigger-happy and completely un-professional, and shows an administration too jumpy about race in this case and too ready to please the budding racists in the country, probably with an eye to the November mid-term elections.   It is bitterly disappointing.       Bolaji Aluko       ---------------------     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/20/shirley-sherrod-agricultu_n_653329.html   'Racism' Video That Led To Firing USDA Official Shirley Sherrod Lacked Critical Context BEN EVANS and MARY CLARE JALONICK | 07/20/10 09:42 PM | Shirley Sherrod Resigns From USDA Post After Racism Controversy   WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is standing by its quick decision to oust a black Agriculture Department employee over racially tinged remarks at an NAACP banquet in Georgia, despite evidence that her remarks were misconstrued and growing calls for USDA to reconsider. Shirley Sherrod, who until Tuesday was the Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia, says the administration caved to political pressure by pushing her to resign for saying that she didn't give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago when she worked for a nonprofit group. Sherrod says her remarks, delivered in March at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia, were part of a story about racial reconciliation, not racism. The white farming family that was the subject of the story stood by Sherrod and said she should keep 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, 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." The NAACP, which initially condemned Sherrod's remarks and supported Sherrod's ouster, joined the calls for her to keep her job. The civil rights group said it and millions of others were duped by the conservative website that posted partial video of her speech on Monday. "We have come to the conclusion we were snookered ... into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias," said the statement from NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said President Barack Obama was briefed on the matter after Sherrod's resignation and stands by the Agriculture Department's handling of it. The website, biggovernment.com, gained fame last year after airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend. It posted the Sherrod video as evidence that the NAACP, which recently passed a resolution condemning what it calls racist elements of the Tea Party, condones racism of its own. 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 Associated Press 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." 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 different version of events. Agriculture Secretary Tom 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 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. "There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA," Vilsack said. "We have a duty to ensure that when we provide services to the American people we do so in an equitable manner." USDA is sensitive to the issue because the agency has for decades faced charges of discrimination against black farmers who said they could not get aid that routinely went to whites. The department agreed to a final $1.25 billion settlement earlier this year in a class-action suit that has been pending for more than a decade. The payout of that settlement is pending in Congress, and Vilsack has made fixing past wrongs over civil rights a top priority. The current controversy began Monday when biggovernment.com posted a two-minute, 38-second video clip in which Sherrod describes 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 that 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. 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." Sherrod said Tuesday the incomplete video appears to intentionally twist her message. She says she became close friends with the farmer and helped him for two years. In the full 43-minute video of her speech released by the NAACP Tuesday evening, Sherrod tells the story of her father's death in 1965, saying he was killed by white men who were never charged. She says she made a commitment to stay in the South the night of her father's death, despite the dreams she had always had of leaving her rural town. "When I made that commitment I was making that commitment to black people and to black people only," she said. "But you know God will show you things and he'll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people." Sherrod said in the speech that working with Spooner, who she does not name, changed her entire outlook. "She's always been nice and polite and considerate. She was just a good person," Eloise Spooner said. "She did everything she could trying to help." ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________   http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100720/pl_yblog_upshot/usda-official-resigns-amidst-race-controversy/print [POST UPDATED, SEE BOTTOM] An employee of the Department of Agriculture has resigned, after conservative media outlets posted video Monday of her describing a time in the past when she hadn't used the "full force" of her abilities to help a farmer because he was white. In the video, Shirley Sherrod, who is black, recounts having been asked to help a white farmer avoid foreclosure. She says she was torn over how much to help him because so many black farmers were also struggling, and decided to do just enough to be able to say she'd tried: I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough. ... So I took him to a white lawyer. ... So I figured if I would take him to one of them, his own kind would take care of him. Sherrod spoke to CNN on Tuesday, explaining that she told the story of her actions — which, she said, occurred 24 years ago when she was working for a nonprofit, not the USDA — to illustrate how she has since realized that everything is not about race but "about those who have versus those who do not have." She says she later became friends with the farmer and his wife. Even so, Sherrod resigned after conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart posted video of the story and Fox News picked it up. She told CNN that she tried to explain to USDA officials that the incident was in the past, but said "for some reason, the stuff Fox and the tea party does is scaring the administration." In a statement quoted by CNN, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said of Sherrod's actions: 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. NAACP CEO Ben Jealous was also quick to condemn Sherrod's actions, though. In a statement Monday posted on Breitbart's Big Government site, he said: [NAACP HAS NOW RETRACTED ITS CRITICISM, SEE UPDATES BELOW] 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. In response, Sherrod told CNN that it was "unfortunate that the NAACP would make a statement without even checking to see what happened. This was 24 years ago, and I'm telling a story to try to unite people." Watch her interview with CNN here:   UPDATE: Sherrod has now come forward and said that the White House forced her to resign. The wife of the white farmer has also come forward to defend her. Read our update here. UPDATE: The NAACP has now retracted its criticism of Sherrod, saying it was "snookered" by conservative media. Read our latest update here. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________   -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin. For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue- unsubscribe@googlegroups.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin. For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue- unsubscribe@googlegroups.com -- There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed. ---Mohandas Ghandi -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin. For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue- unsubscribe@googlegroups.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin. For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue- unsubscribe@googlegroups.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com