Black Conservatives Reject "Color-Coded Politics"

WASHINGTON - In the wake of the Obama Administration's controversial firing of Shirley Sherrod at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a new video -- available in it's entirety -- is casting her husband, Charles, as someone harboring radical racialist sentiments.

Deneen Borelli, a Project 21 fellow and Fox News Channel contributor, said: "Professor Sherrod's racist comments add another chapter to the ongoing debate about racism in America. Sherrod's use of color-coded politics has no place in today's society and it's especially disappointing that his twisted logic was communicated at an educational institution."

Charles Sherrod, a former civil rights-era Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist and current Albany State University professor, gave the keynote address at the University of Virginia Law School's "50 Years After the Sit-Ins" conference on January 30, 2010.

In a speech that is available in its entirety on YouTube athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m22eXuYNbkY, Charles Sherrod speaks about the need to "find a way to leverage the $900 billion we spend on consumables each and every year." He ends this discussion on this topic with a radical challenge to the audience:

Find a way that we can trust each other so that our monies can work for our total liberation. We have ideas, inventions [and] athletic talent, but our labors and our monies and our contracts usually end up in the white folks' hands and pockets. When will we trust our own? When will we feel responsible to save ourselves?

He then becomes conspiratorial about elections and uses racist terms about blacks who do not adhere to an undefined black agenda:

[W]e must stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections. We must not be afraid to vote black. And we must not be afraid to turn a black out who votes against our interest. We've got to stay tough...

"Shirley Sherrod, the former Department of Agriculture employee, can't be held responsible for what her husband says, but you can't help wondering about the kinds of conversations these two might be having in private about race issues," said Project 21 member Joe Hicks, host of the "Hicks File " at PJTV.com and the former executive director of the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "Since liberals are 'sensitive' about black people being labeled bigots, let's put Charles Sherrod's comments into 'context.' They were captured from a speech given earlier this year. Sherrod, a long-time activist, said 'We must stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections.' Okay, there is no 'context' imaginable that makes this kind of racial garbage acceptable. Imagine a Klansman making a reverse version of this comment and one will quickly understand the double standard that often gets applied in these circumstances."

Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992.