NORMAN — When Barack Obama was elected the first black president of the United States in 2008, it raised hopes Americans had suddenly become, if not color-blind, at least more open and tolerant when it comes to dealing with folks who don’t look exactly like us.
Sadly, that has not turned out to be the case.
Just about a year ago the president weighed in when black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by a white police officer responding to reports of a possible burglary at Gates’ home.
A neighbor called 911 after spotting Gates and a driver trying to open the jammed front door of Gates’ home. Gates was arrested on disorderly conduct charges and the incident exploded into a debate on race relations when the president said police had acted “stupidly” in arresting the professor.
Obama later invited both Gates and the arresting officer, Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley, to the White House Rose Garden to discuss the incident, and racial profiling, over a beer.
In a report issued earlier this summer, a panel commissioned by the Cambridge Police Department found Gates and Crowley equally at fault for the incident.
The president had earlier acknowledged his own role in ramping up the media frenzy following the incident.
Another media firestorm centering on race exploded this week on the president’s watch. This one surrounded former U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod, who is black.
In a March speech at an NAACP banquet, Sherrod told a story about the first time she was faced with trying to help a white farmer save his farm. In her speech she admitted to not putting all her time and effort into helping the farmer, instead referring him to a white lawyer.
‘’So I figured if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him,” Sherrod said.
Part of Sherrod’s speech was posted on the Web by a right-wing blogger. The firestorm surrounding her remarks led to her being forced to resign by the USDA, a move the USDA says came at the direction of the White House.
But what the blogger left out revealed Sherrod’s change of heart. When the white lawyer wouldn’t help the farmer, she did.
‘’Well, working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t. They could be black. They could be white. They could be Hispanic.”
When the entire video was made public, the USDA, the White House and the blogger all wound up with egg on their face. The USDA chief and the president have both apologized to Sherrod.
The blogger, Andrew Breitbart, said he didn’t release the video to target Sherrod, but to illustrate the fact racism exists in the NAACP. He was trying to counter arguments by the NAACP the Tea Party movement was racist.
There is racism in the NAACP, and the Tea Party, and virtually every other American civil and governmental entity. There is likewise ageism, sexism and every other rift-causing ism you would care to name.
It is not surprising the Obama administration is sensitive about race, so sensitive it grossly over-reacted to the Sherrod case without fully investigating the entirety and the context of her comments.
This is as much an indictment of the news media, which ran with the story without doing due diligence. Reporting a story without having all the facts is a cardinal sin in the news business.
Race will be at the forefront of another story next week when Arizona’s new immigration law, which seems to encourage racial profiling, takes affect.
We must get past race in this country. We all bleed when cut, we all shiver when cold, we all love our children and want a better life for our family. And when we sink back into the morass of racism, we all get smaller.
Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle. Garrison Keillor is taking time off to finish a screenplay and start a novel.
