{"id":39,"date":"2010-07-21T10:21:55","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T10:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html"},"modified":"2010-07-21T10:21:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T10:21:55","slug":"shirley-sherrod-testifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html","title":{"rendered":"Shirley Sherrod testifies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shirley Sherrod&#8217;s speech to the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet is a moving testimony to the importance of rising above the interests of tribe and kind in order to help all people in need. That she should have been fired because it was clipped and trumpeted on the conservative noise machine is a sad testimony to the hypersensitivity not only of the Obama Administration but also of the NAACP to charges of reverse racial prejudice. Sherrod will doubtless be offered her job back, and I hope she takes it. Even more, I hope the video will be seen by lots and lots of white people fearful that people of color will use their ascendancy to get even. This is how black people in organizations like the NAACP actually talk among themselves.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<object height=\"385\" width=\"480\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/E9NcCa_KjXk&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/E9NcCa_KjXk&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"385\" width=\"480\"><a style=\"left: 455px ! important; top: 155px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"dvakvwuhczlcrwfsrzxz aobjdnpjzmoxfukehqct\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/E9NcCa_KjXk&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1\"><\/a><a class=\"dvakvwuhczlcrwfsrzxz\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/E9NcCa_KjXk&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1\"><\/a><\/object> <\/p>\n<p>Back in 1993, I did a story for the <i>Atlanta Journal-Constitution <\/i>on how African-American farmers across the South had for decades been screwed out of USDA loans by the (all-white) loan boards. I traveled to Dewy Rose (birthplace of Ty Cobb) to interview a black farmer who was a case in point, and who earned particular disfavor for having been a leader in the local NAACP. So I am more than sympathetic to Sherrod&#8217;s initial lack of enthusiasm for helping her white farmer get relief. And more than impressed at how she was able to overcome it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shirley Sherrod&#8217;s speech to the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet is a moving testimony to the importance of rising above the interests of tribe and kind in order to help all people in need. That she should have been fired because it was clipped and trumpeted on the conservative noise machine is a sad testimony to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Shirley Sherrod testifies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Shirley Sherrod testifies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Shirley Sherrod&#8217;s speech to the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet is a moving testimony to the importance of rising above the interests of tribe and kind in order to help all people in need. That she should have been fired because it was clipped and trumpeted on the conservative noise machine is a sad testimony to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-21T10:21:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Shirley Sherrod testifies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Shirley Sherrod testifies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"Shirley Sherrod&#8217;s speech to the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet is a moving testimony to the importance of rising above the interests of tribe and kind in order to help all people in need. That she should have been fired because it was clipped and trumpeted on the conservative noise machine is a sad testimony to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html","og_site_name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-07-21T10:21:55+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html","name":"Shirley Sherrod testifies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-07-21T10:21:55+00:00","dateModified":"2010-07-21T10:21:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/shirley-sherrod-testifies.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Shirley Sherrod testifies"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}