What Digby Said

One of the reasons I started blogging is that some small part of me wants to someday write as well as the folks who have been doing this for years.  One of those exemplars -- and I mean that word in both the literal and connotative senses -- is Digby.  Today she continues to put our Washington media to shame with such a well-written and evocative observation on the cruel belittling of Shirley Sherrod's life experiences by the Noise Machine on the right that it actually gives me hope.

Forgetting about the implications for the administration, I've been struck for some time about the apparent need among a fairly large number of Americans to pretend that racism is ancient history with which we no longer need to be concerned (at least as it pertains to racial minorities.) The fact is that Shirley Sherrod lived during the great cataclysm of the civil rights movement and paid a huge personal price for standing up against the forces that killed her father. But that wasn't the end of it. She has spent the rest of her life trying to fight other insidious forms of racism like these discriminatory loan practices that continue to this day. I suspect that somebody forgot to send her the memo that the whole thing is over and that she just needs to move on. Indeed, it's been made crystal clear that the fight isn't over. (The fact that she was targeted for statements about racial reconciliation is even more galling.)

Do yourself a massive favor and go read the whole thing.   "She's one of the good ones" fails criminally to describe her impact, and as much as that pertains to Digby, it pertains doubly so to one Shirley Sherrod.