TheLoop21.com

By: Shanon D. Murray | TheLoop21 (Add to your loop)
Thu, 07/29/2010 - 00:00

NAACP President's Award winner Van Jones with Chairman Benjamin Jealous and former Chairman Julian Bond

The Shirley Sherrod saga did a whole lot more than just create another inflection point for the media and others to feel more comfortable discussing race. In fact, the whole shameful situation exposed a dirty little secret: Blacks disrespecting Blacks is the standard state of play in corporate America and in many other workplaces - including the White House.

The readiness of the Obama Administration, NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous and Black journalists like Roland Martin to jump on the bandwagon and castigate Sherrod without bothering with the facts – her controversial comments about her work with a white farmer were not racist but actually above measure for any public servant – was unfortunate, but not at all surprising. Criticizing each other is the best and quickest way to demonstrate that we can be “fair.”

Blacks have always comforted themselves with the notion that whenever there is a Black person in the room where decisions are made, all foolishness – like unjustly firing someone without due process – would stop. But that scenario only works when “the Black person in the room” isn’t trying to curry favor with others in the room.
 

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Many of us have experienced the dark side of corporate America: As an African American trying to advance on the job, you can’t appear too sympathetic to Black issues or Black people. You have to know how to take a little racist joke now and then to be part of the team. And your trustworthiness among others grows if you readily demonstrate your willingness to cut down a brother or sister.

I’m not even talking full-blown sabotage, but an unkind word here or there would do it, or better yet, some simply ignore the other Black people on the job. This Black-on-Black disrespect in the workplace is all part of the bizarre thought process among some African Americans that there can only be one successful Black person on the job. And so they go to great lengths to make sure they are not confused with the “rest.”

President Obama has been at the center of Black-on-Black dissing quite a few times during his short time in office. And not just on the receiving end. In several instances, if his Black nominees were deemed too outspoken and draw the fire of Republicans, the Tea Party, or conservative commentators, they have been either forced to resign or their names are withdrawn. Before Sherrod, there was Erroll Southers, a top official with the Los Angeles Airport Police Department that Obama had tapped to lead the Transportation Security Administration. And before Southers, there was Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs czar who resigned under a bevy of attacks – some since proven untrue – by Glenn Beck.

The problem is Obama, and many others Blacks like him in workplaces all around the country, don’t want to be “that guy” who is always defending Black people to others.