Jeffrey Lord’s Embarrassing Attack on Sherrod

It is frustrating that instead of targeting Obama with clear and honest criticisms, some commentators are using race to stoke the opposition.

It is frustrating that at a time when President Obama needs to be the target of clear and honest criticism that some commentators are irresponsibly resorting to racial issues to stoke the opposition. The most recent example of this is a piece that Jeffrey Lord has penned in the American Spectator about the speech Shirley Sherrod gave to the NAACP in Georgia. The piece is entitled “Sherrod Story False” because his argument is that Sherrod is a liar.

In her NAACP speech, Sherrod spoke about her relative Bobby Hall being lynched by Claude Screws, a white sheriff in the 1940s. Lord argues that since the U.S. Supreme Court (comprised of all white men and at least one Ku Klux Klan member) never said Hall was lynched in its 1945 decision overturning Screws conviction that the lynching never happened and Sherrod had lied about it. This line of reasoning is preposterous; lynching was a common occurrence during this time and white judges often didn’t punish their white brethren for the crime.

But this isn’t the most offensive part of Lord’s writing. He also attacks Sherrod’s motives for telling the story and argues that she “concocted this story. . . to add glamour to a family story.”

Lord mockingly tries to suggest that the Democratic Party Sherrod aligns herself with today was responsible for the murder of her father and for her career at the Department of Agriculture. Lord reminds readers that Sherrod’s father was murdered in Baker County, Georgia in 1965 and that Sherrod said in her speech that “the murder of black people occurred periodically, and in every case the white men who murdered them were never punished.” Lord also reminds readers that then Senator Richard Russell of Georgia was a Democrat who repeatedly blocked civil rights legislation, and supported agricultural projects. He invites Sherrod to tour the Senate Russell Building and remember that it is named after a racist Democrat who was responsible for her father’s death.

Lord concludes that since Sherrod wanted to stay in Georgia and help black farmers that she is no different from the Dixiecrats who used to work there. Lord writes “Down scale a bit---a [black] bureaucrat is not the same as a [white] Senator or a Justice—but still finding herself on the same scale nonetheless.”

As America’s first black president, Obama was going to get dragged into discussions on race whether he liked it or not. But with pieces such as “Sherrod’s Story False” being written, I can see why he and the White House are loathe to engage in the discussion.