NYT columnist Maureen Dowd thinks Obama's administration "is too white" due to a lack of black advisers with extensive knowledge of the Civil Rights movement. But white people need to know Civil Rights history too.
So the Shirley Sherrod situation happens and the White House freaks. USDA thinks it has beef over Sherrod's misunderstood comments and its Secretary Tom Vilsack fires her. Sherrod says the call came from on high, though-from Obama himself. Both Vilsack and Obama have since apologized and offered her job back, but Dowd says this would have been prevented if only the black president had more brothas and sistas around him.
"But unlike Bill Clinton, who never needed help fathoming Southern black culture, Obama lacks advisers who are descended from the central African-American experience, ones who understand "the slave thing," as a top black Democrat dryly puts it," wrote Dowd in her July 24 column.
Her next column presumably will be about how L.A. Reid's Def Jam offices are too black and need more white people.
No seriously, while it's commendable that Dowd cares so much about Sherrod, and about the hue of those surrounding Obama, it's mighty white of her to think that only black people should understand "the slave thing." Slavery, after all, dehumanized many races of people in America, especially white people who profited from it and the white lawmakers who enabled them. This is American history, and the onus is not on black people alone to know the history of slavery, civil rights or even Sherrod herself.
Meaning, all of the white advisers around Obama who helped him drop the ball on Sherrod should have known who they were dealing with. Saying that Obama should have had more black advisers, and assuming that's an automatic solution, absolves white people-white policy makers-and sends the message that they don't need to learn about civil rights figures, much more respect them.
Not to mention, Dowd is wrong about having not enough black people in his circle. Lisa Jackson, Eric Holder, Hilda Solis, Christina Romer, Susan Rice, Melody Barnes ... Michelle Obama-these are people in Obama's Cabinet and who head his advisory councils, and they all have African-American and civil rights experience (Solis is the daughter of Nicaraguan and Mexican immigrant parents). Dowd failed to mention any of them.
But again, even if they were all white, this shouldn't exonerate them from fumbling race relations in America.
"Colored" people are complaining because of their social reality, history and experience! The fact that Obama is president for all people has not healed the wounds of the "Black Experience" in the past or the present inequities which are endured daily by Blacks. The whole Sherrod affair was a keen reminder of how things have not changed! Progress is very relative when you have been the primary social outcast and scapegoat for over 400 years!
Reply
Reply