SCORE BIG FOR SHIRLEY

A few weeks ago I defended United States Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod against charges of bigotry arising from a soundbite snippet of a speech she gave to a Georgia NAACP group that appeared to show her discriminating against a white farmer. It was clearly misleading and taken out of context. She was summarily fired, unfairly so, causing a red faced Secretary of Agriculture to publically apologize and offer her a new job.
While my defense of how Shirley Sherrod was treated still stands, there is more to the Shirley story.
In 1994, 400 Black farmers, mostly in southern states, filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA charging discrimination in receiving farm loans and other services from the Agricultural Department. Among the plaintiffs were Shirley Sherrod and her husband.
Well, the plaintiffs won and the Sherrods fattened their back account to the tune of 12.5-million from a taxpayer funded settlement, a million or so of that settlement was to assuage the Sherrod's "pain and suffering" from the discrimination.
But the lawsuit never went away. As the government doled out settlement dollars, the original 400 Black farmer-plaintiffs metastasized to an astounding 86,000-plus. And in February of this year, at the insistence of the President, the USDA quietly agreed to shell out 1.25-billion (that is billion with a "b") in taxpayer money to settle all claims.
Oh Shirley, oh Shirley, how can this be? Because the Census Department shows there are only 39,697 Black farmers in all of America. You do the math.
What may have originally been a legitimate grievance has become a scam - a scam that should be halted immediately. Not one more penny of payout should be made until the FBI and the Justice Department investigate the validity of each claim. Any of the 86,000-plus who are found to have unfounded claims should find themselves back in court, this time in front of a criminal judge.
Congress has rejected reparations. This settlement smacks of reparations and the funds being used by the USDA to pay claims should be temporarily impounded by Congress.
After a thorough probe is completed, whatever is still due Black farmers who actually suffered discrimination should be paid and any USDA employees who were complicit in that discrimination, still working for the department, should be fired and their pensions placed in jeopardy.
As for Shirley, she is an example of just how well pain and suffering pays.

REHIRE SHIRLEY SHERROD

Shirley Sherrod has, in the last 24 hours, become the face of a quandary that has confronted Americans since the Declaration of Independence declared "all men are created equal" in 1776.
What our laws declare is not what our hearts and minds have as readily accepted.
Bigorty, prejudice, racial division and racial hatred did not disappear with the publishing of those words in 1776. Those evils have stubbornly persisted, even to this day.
Shirley Sherrod did work for the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Until yesterday. That's when she was forced to resign by the White House.
Her firing is egregiously unfair.
Why?
Because she was victimized by a videotape of a speech she gave which did not tell, as Paul Harvey so famously said, the rest of the story.
Shirley Sherrod admitted to an NAACP group in Georgia this spring she found herself wanting not to help a white farmer who came to her 24 years ago seeking help to save his land from bankruptcy. She had seen too many black farmers lose their land. She admitted she did not give the white farmer's plight her full effort. That's where the videotape of her speech, played on the conservative website biggovernment.com, ends.
Here's the rest of the story.
Shirley Sherrod then did what good people do. They search their hearts, question their own motives, change their minds, and do the right thing.
Shirley Sherrod did help keep the white farmer out of bankruptcy and they became friends for life, according to his 82-year old widow, who is quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Shirley Sherrod has been victimized by a whiplash of racism charges being hurled recently by Democrats against the Tea Party movement, against critics of the Attorney General over the Black Panther voter intimidation fiasco, even emanating from the White House itself as a means of deflecting attention from vocal criticism of the President's policies and his plunging poll numbers.
Shirley Sherrod is an example of how each of us should deal with the quandary of racial equality in this nation, by allowing our hearts and minds to be opened to the right and just answers.
The firing of Shirley Sherrod was unjust and unwarranted. She should be reinstated immediately.
She also deserves an apology from our President, the Secretary of Agriculture, and from every American who viewed that videotape and judged Shirley Sherrod without knowing the rest of the story.