Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump

by Duchess Harris

  The letter mentioned Justice Stevens’ emphasis on the protection of civil rights, saying he should have been replaced with someone who held similar views. The letter was signed by Melanie Campbell (CEO of the NCBCP and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable, “an intergenerational civic engagement network”22) and 27 others. The letter came too late. The President announced Elena Kagan as his nomination the next day.

  Two days later, NAACP leaders and other legal groups met with Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett to discuss their concern about Kagan’s nomination. After the meeting, the Reverend Al Sharpton said Jarrett described how civil rights groups could be involved in supporting future solicitor general and district and appellate judge nominees.23 On his blog, CNN political analyst Roland Martin linked the lack of serious consideration of a Black female candidate and the role Black women voters played in Obama’s election to the discontent expressed at Kagan’s nomination. He pointed to the lack of prominent African-Americans at Kagan’s nomination unveiling (only Harvard professor Charles Ogletree, who taught the Obamas and worked with Kagan, and Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights president, were present) and the “lukewarm” press statements on the nomination announcement from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Urban League as further evidence of African-Americans’ general frustration with the Obama administration’s refusal to address race.24

  This was all for good reason. There were a number of qualified African-American women for President Obama to consider for nomination, in addition to the two who made the list of potential nominees, former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, and Judge Ann Claire Williams, the first African-American judge in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, nominated by Ronald Reagan . Sonia Nelson, founder and chair of the board of iask, Inc (I Am My Sister’s Keeper, an organization dedicated to supporting and encouraging professional Black women) provided a short list of a few women she thought should make the list:…Marian Wright Edelman, longtime president of the Children’s Defense Fund and the first black woman admitted to practice in the state of Mississippi in the 1960s; Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and who Obama supported while he was a senator; Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier , who, despite the controversy when she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be an assistant U.S. attorney general, is an excellent legal scholar; and Elaine R. Jones, formerly of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who has three decades of experience as a litigator and civil rights activist.25

  It is no wonder then that black women were frustrated with the President—especially so since Kagan’s nomination and tapping fell between two egregious instances of Obama neglecting to defend prominent Black women: Desiree Rogers, who resigned after the White House party crasher fiasco, and the firing of Shirley Sherrod, USDA’s Director of Rural Development for Georgia.

  Desiree Rogers

  An original “Obama woman,” appointed as White House social secretary in November 2008, Desiree Rogers was a New Orleans native, Harvard graduate, and a personal friend of Michelle Obama. The two met through Rogers’ ex-husband, John Rogers, Jr., who played basketball at Princeton with Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s brother. Rogers served as the director of the Illinois State Lottery, acted as the first Black president of Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas in Chicago, and ran a social networking site at AllState Financial before accepting the position with the White House. She successfully promoted what she called the “Obama brand”26 for a year, making the White House seem like a fun, welcoming place by planning events like an Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn, inviting local children to trick-or-treat at the White House, organizing a concert featuring Stevie Wonder, and hosting dinners with dance floors and music provided by bands like Earth, Wind, and Fire. She drew criticism for her expensive fashion choices, as well as for attending events like New York Fashion Week, but it was uninvited guests at a White House dinner that resulted in a media fiasco ending with Rogers’ resignation.

  On November 24, 2009, the Obamas held their first state dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur. During the event, Virginia socialite couple Tareq and Michaele Salahi slipped past security, even though their names appeared on no guest lists. The couple joined the party, posing for photographs with Vice President Joe Biden and even shaking the President’s hand. The security breach led to a Secret Service investigation and heavy criticism of Rogers. According to The New York Times, in planning the party, Rogers consulted and followed records from two of Laura Bush’s dinners, stationing someone at the East Portico of the White House to ensure guests were on the Secret Service list; at this dinner, however, no one was placed at an outer checkpoint as had been done in the past.27

  In the investigation that followed the dinner, the House Homeland Security committee invited Rogers to testify on the Tareqs’ security breach, even threatening a subpoena when the White House refused to make her available, stating their internal report would be sufficient. The White House also argued that permitting Rogers to testify would infringe upon the separation of powers. Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, on ABC News, said the White House felt its staff should be able to engage with the President without having to report to Congress,28 and during a White House briefing, Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, in response to a question regarding Rogers’ planning, said, “The first family is quite pleased with her performance.”29 When Rogers’ resignation was announced at the end of February, she asserted that she felt her work in creating a “people’s house” was complete that it seemed like a good time to examine her prospects in the corporate world (she was hired as CEO of the Johnson Publishing Company , which publishes Ebony and Jet , about six months after announcing her resignation) and that “the incident at the State Dinner was not a deciding factor… but it did show me a side of the job and of Washington that I had not seen before.”30 The Obamas, for their part, released a statement saying,We are enormously grateful to Desiree Rogers for the terrific job she’s done as the White House Social Secretary. When she took this position, we asked Desiree to help make sure that the White House truly is the People’s House, and she did that by welcoming scores of everyday Americans through its doors, from wounded warriors to local school- children to NASCAR drivers. She organized hundreds of fun and creative events during her time here, and we will miss her. We thank her again for her service and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.31

  Despite this statement from the first couple and Rogers’ given reasons for her departure, it is difficult to believe that the White House dinner party did not play a greater role in her resignation, especially considering news of her resignation began leaking before she planned to make it known,32 and the speed in which her replacement, Julianna Smoot, was announced (Rogers’ resignation was announced on February 26, and Smoot was confirmed as her replacement later the same day).

  Writing for The New York Times, Peter Baker said that trouble for Rogers began before the uninvited couple crashed the White House dinner. She met with Senior Advisor David Axelrod after her May 2009 appearance in WSJ Magazine. Axelrod reprimanded her both for referring to the President as a brand and for her lavish dress and jewelry in the spread during an economic recession. Baker says “her profile was deliberately lowered,”33 with the White House canceling a photo shoot featuring Rogers in an Oscar de la Renta gown and the First Lady’s new chief of staff paying closer attention to Rogers’ public appearances. After the White House security breach and the following public scrutiny of Rogers, she felt that no one in the White House did much to defend her or correct the record, said Baker, quoting unnamed sources. He continued:After the Salahi incident, these associates said Ms. Rogers was barred by the White House from testifying before Congress or giving interviews or even answering written questions. She was told she could not attend the Kennedy Center Honors, a major annual Washington event. And even her decision to finally resign leaked before she could sec
ure a new job.34

  Despite Rogers’ and the Obamas’ parting statements regarding the social secretary’s resignation, the White House’s refusal to allow Rogers to testify about the events that lead to the security breach, the leaking of Rogers’ resignation news, and the swiftness with which she was replaced suggested that her departure was not solely about making her next career step, as she insinuated in interviews. Considering her success in planning White House activities—in 2009, she organized 309 events, while there were only 231 events during Bush’s final year35—and the friendship she had with the Obamas, the lack of defense from the President and Mrs. Obama was both surprising and disappointing. Yet upon comparing the Desiree Rogers incident with Obama’s overall record on African-American women within his administration, and race in general, the surprise is diminished. In fact, the reaction just seems standard.

  Shirley Sherrod

  On March 27, 2010, Shirley Sherrod, USDA’s Georgia Director of Rural Development, gave a 40-minute speech at a NAACP event. During the speech, she shared her background with the audience, including the murder of her father in 1965 by two white men who were never indicted. She continued by relating an anecdote from her time working as the director of a nonprofit that aided black farmers. She spoke frankly about how Roger Spooner, a white farmer, came to her for assistance and at first she was unenthusiastic about helping him, directing him to a white lawyer so it would at least appear that she tried to help him. She then went on to explain that when the lawyer ultimately failed to assist Spooner, she called everyone she could think of to find someone who could help her with the case (this took place over the course of two years). Sherrod said working with Spooner taught her an important lesson and made her realize that class played as much a role as—if not more than—race in discrimination. She commented:Well, working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t, you know. And they could be black, and they could be white; they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people -- those who don’t have access the way others have.36

  Four months later on July 18, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a 2-minute and 38-second clip of Sherrod’s speech on his Web site, BigGovernment.com. Breitbart (also responsible for the edited videos that resulted in the anti-poverty group Acorn’s loss of government funding) edited his Sherrod tape so it sounded as though Sherrod ended her aid to Spooner when she sent him to the white lawyer, because she wasn’t going to do all she could do for a white man. He also misrepresented the story as taking place while Sherrod was in her position at USDA. Breitbart used this doctored video, taken out of context, as proof that the NAACP —who had recently criticized the Tea Party, an extreme right wing movement, for racism among its followers—was itself a racist organization who approved of their guest speaker’s unfair treatment of a white man.

  Breitbart posted his video at 11:18 AM on July 19, 2010.37 In the following hours, FOX News ran the video, posting it online and calling for Sherrod’s immediate resignation. Conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly taped his show that afternoon, discussing the “news” revealed in the video. By the time it aired that evening, Sherrod had resigned after receiving three phone calls in her car from Cheryl Cook, deputy undersecretary at USDA. Sherrod said on the third call, Cook asked her to pull over and submit her resignation via her Blackberry, because Sherrod was going to be on Glenn Beck that evening.38 Even the NAACP didn’t pause to ask questions about the source of the video. That evening, President Ben Jealous said on the online social forum, Twitter, “Racism is about abuse of power. Sherrod had it at USDA. She abused a white farmer because of his race. NAACP is appalled.”39

  By the next day, it became apparent that Sherrod had been wronged. In an interview with CNN, she explained that the story she told in the video took place 24 years ago and that she had worked with the Spooners to save their farm. When asked why she didn’t tell the USDA this when they called her, she said, “I did… but they, for some reason, the stuff that Fox and the Tea Party does is scaring the administration.”40 That evening, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN that she had listened to the entire tape and that it had been taken out of context. By Wednesday afternoon, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack apologized, admitting that he had acted too quickly in ordering Sherrod’s resignation. He asked her to return to USDA in a new position, but she demurred, saying she did not want to be entirely responsible for solving the department’s race problems. (Vilsack later offered her a different, outreach position at the USDA, but she again declined, saying the events that led to her resignation left “a sour taste.”41) The NAACP also issued a statement, saying that it had been “snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart.”42 President Obama called Sherrod on July 22, 2010, to personally apologize. President Obama said that he thought Vilsack was being sincere both in his apology and his job offer. In interviews, Sherrod had expressed her belief that she deserved a call from Obama, but did not think he owed her an apology. She remarked:I’d like to talk to him a little bit about the experiences of people like me, people at the grass-roots level, people who live out there in rural America, people who live in the South…. I know he does not have that kind of experience. Let me help him a little bit with how we think, how we live, and the things that are happening.43

  What Sherrod said here emphasized a key issue that came into play in her forced resignation: Obama and his staff either lacked the experience and point of view of African-Americans, or the courage to consider that experience and say anything about it. In an op-ed column, Maureen Dowd suggested that anyone with knowledge of the civil rights movement would have recognized the name “Sherrod”; the Reverend Charles Sherrod was a civil rights leader who co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He is Shirley Sherrod’s husband. Dowd quoted South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, who said he didn’t think a single black person had been consulted before the decision to fire Sherrod was made, and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton , who said, “The president needs some advisers or friends who have a greater sense of the pulse of the African-American community, or who at least have been around the mulberry bush.”44

  Sherrod’s forced resignation brought to mind Lani Guinier’s and Dr. Joycelyn Elders ’ snubs by the Clinton administration. Sadly, years later, little had changed, even under America’s first Black president . Granted, Obama was not directly responsible for Sherrod’s expulsion. He only spoke with Sherrod on Thursday, two days after the full story was revealed, because he could not reach her Wednesday evening. Nevertheless, by missing several opportunities to fill his administration with a balanced group of people who could provide key insight in real time, Obama suffered the appearance of being out of touch with his core constituency in political skirmishes that should have been child’s play to any Democratic President, like why it might be unwise to so hastily dismiss someone based on a video publicized by a man who had previously used falsified evidence to support a right wing agenda. So who in Washington did come to Sherrod’s defense? Donna Brazile—a black woman. Perhaps if a few more black women were in decisive positions within the Obama administration, Shirley Sherrod could have been spared the shoddy treatment she received, and the only embarrassed parties would have been the pundits at FOX News.

  Following his campaign, Obama tried to avoid any discussion about race, creating the space for the right to not so subtly play on the country’s racist sentiments (who can forget Rush Limbaugh playing Barack the Magic Negro?). Bob Herbert wrote in a column about the Sherrod incident, “…President Obama seems reluctant to even utter the word black.”45 CNN political analyst Roland Martin discussed the Obama administration’s avoidance of race conversations in his blog post on Kagan’s nomination, saying “…[Obama’s] White House has been especially scared of touching anything dealing with race” because the President can’t be perceived to favor African-Americans.46 The fear is obvious when we look at how quickly
Sherrod was pushed out of her job as a result of the accusations of racism from the conservative media. Said author and professor Ricky L. Jones, “If anything, [Obama’s] horribly detached, ‘I’m above it all’ approach to race emboldens the mean-spirited xenophobes who long for the ‘purity’ of antebellum America.”47 Again, the Sherrod case proves this point—were conservatives not so aware of the Obama administration’s reluctance to address race, would Breitbart have made such an impudent move? In her column, Dowd said,The president appears completely comfortable in his own skin, but it seems he feels that he and Michelle are such a huge change for the nation to absorb that he can be overly cautious about pushing for other societal changes for blacks and gays. At some level, he acts like the election was enough; he shouldn’t have to deal with race further. But he does.48