Perspectives…
IN THE U.S over the past week, the Shirley Sherrod racial scandal broke. Last Monday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired Shirley Sherrod, a Black senior functionary within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), for making alleged racist remarks at a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) banquet in March this year. Quote: ‘The Shirley Sherrod scandal remains a grim reminder of a tragic constant in American race relations; where African Americans continue to see themselves as ‘strangers in their own homes’; this is happening because powerful racist forces are stacked against African Americans’

The ultra-conservative right-wing bully, Andrew Breitbart’s aggressively-edited online video footage (edited from 43 minutes to two and a half minutes) showed Sherrod saying that she gave sub-par aid to a farmer for the reason that he was White; one day after the firing, the White farmer came forward to disprove the charge of racism against Sherrod. The Agriculture Secretary later offered to rehire Sherrod at the USDA, since the Obama Administration felt that it rushed to judgment.

The Shirley Sherrod scandal remains a grim reminder of a tragic constant in American race relations; where African Americans continue to see themselves as ‘strangers in their own homes’; this is happening because powerful racist forces are stacked against African Americans.

It was African American and Harvard-trained Sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois who coined the term ‘strangers in their own homes’ which began as a fact of slave life. For Du Bois, African Americans carried a double consciousness, where they depicted themselves as Americans and simultaneously saw themselves through the eyes of the White majority (White lens), as a people cast aside and segregated by colour.

Notwithstanding this double consciousness, Du Bois noted African American struggles to free themselves from the White lens to live their lives as both African and American. And successes have come from African American struggles to reduce the fissure between their ideals and the harsh and racist reality of the historical moment. Undeniably, the Obama Presidency represents a highpoint of African American struggles against slavery and the shackles of a colour-conscious society.

The Shirley Sherrod’s case marks the second time in 19 months that the Obama Administration faltered on race; about one year ago, Obama said that a White police sergeant in Massachusetts “acted stupidly” when he apprehended a Harvard professor in his own house; the President later engaged all the parties on the White House lawns in a ‘beer summit’ to atone for that awkward observation. Then last Thursday, he again did some atonement by apologizing to Sherrod.

The Obama Administration’s stumbling on race matters raises questions as to what President Obama’s line on race is in America. The answer lies in Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’ speech on March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia when he was a Presidential candidate. Let me present some highlights of Obama’s speech.

He believes that race matters must not be swept under the rug, and to use race for stereotyping and magnifying the negative misrepresents the reality of America. He believes that a sense of this reality would come from the history of racial injustices; a history that shows how inequalities between African Americans and the wider American community evolved from slavery and Jim Crow.

Obama noted that after more than 50 years, that Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation, the consequences of America’s segregated school system still linger, especially as segregated schools are inferior; this unfinished business further explains the achievement gap between White and Black students. Then there was and still is de jure discrimination, sustaining the wide disparity in income and wealth between Whites and African Americans vis-à-vis denial of access to loans, mortgages, etc. He added that  inadequate economic opportunities, too, among African American men accompanied by indignity and aggravation worked toward an erosion of Black families.

In the 2008 speech, Obama believed that some African Americans obtained a piece of the American Dream, but many did not achieve the prize because discrimination defeated them. Today, the new generation of African Americans is heir to this legacy of defeat that engenders anger and bitterness. He felt that Whites also carry their burden. They also show anger because they believe that their race provided no privileges for them; and they came to America as immigrants and started with nothing.

Apparently, then, Obama’s line on race matters is for African Americans to address the racial injustices, but not to allow these injustices to become a burden; and in the end, the right path toward a perfect union would be for African Americans to connect their injustices with the desires of all Americans; these desires would include things that both groups cherish: education, health, etc. But whose lens, in Du Bois’ language, would determine the type and nature of African American injustices that need redress? Would African Americans see their grievances through White lens or through their own lens? And whose values would drive the redress? Let me return to the Sherrod scandal to attempt an answer to these questions.

Sherrod’s firing took place within 24 hours after the Administration got wind of the ultra-conservative bully’s online video; and the firing occurred without appropriate verification of the footage; for that reason, it would be hard not to conclude that the Obama Administration is very uneasy about comments coming from conservatives, or the Administration has no apposite stratagem to handle despicable items coming from the conservative movement.

Consequently, it is clear that White majority values and diktats (mainstream America) remain pivotal to determining remedies for African American injustices. The White majority diktat also wrongly determined the origin and course of the civil rights movement, possibly a useful parallel to the Sherrod scandal. The bottom line is that the White majority values and interests are the defining mechanisms for decision making that matters; whether the decision is incorrect is irrelevant, providing White mainstream values rule the roost.

There is evidence that the White majority was in a snooze about the origins of the civil rights movement. According to Harvard University’s Charles Willie, this happened because most Americans including African Americans focused undue attention to scholars favored as ‘mainstream’. For that reason, Americans overlooked the scholarly works of African American social scientists as, W.E.B. Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, Charles S. Johnson, Ira DeA. Reid, Kenneth Clark, Ralph Bunch, John Hope Franklin, Abram Harris, among many others.

In this way, this ‘mainstream’ analysis saw race relations solely through the White lens paradigm. And Meyer Weinberg noted that the most significant growth within the African American struggle since 1940 was the civil rights movement; yet ‘mainstream’ America only saw it as beginning in the 1960s.

This ‘mainstream’ or White majority’s failure to identify the early birth of the civil rights movement from 1940 not only neglected to give credence to African American interests and values; but refused to accept diversity in the society, since ‘mainstream’ America continues to see ‘mainstream’ only as ‘White’; and that is the problem in American race relations; the ultra conservative media are merely the handmaiden and messenger of a
more powerful elite. For that reason, tinkering with the mass media will not touch the roots of American racism. And as long as the White majority race paradigm persists, African Americans will remain ‘strangers in their own homes’. (Feedback: pmperspectives@aol.com themisirpost.wordpress.com)