Georgetown Professor Says Obama Admin. Scared of Tea Party; Cornell West Says Real Race Issue Is Poverty
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JIMMY SOO
Sensational accusations of racism propagated by the far-right are depriving America of the chance to talk about more substantial issues like poverty and education, prominent racial scholars said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"The Obama administration has been intimidated by the far-right wing, which is addicted to a kind of paranoia of race that then leads to paralyzing racial conversation," Rev. Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown University and an author of many books on African-American issues, said. "There's no word from the White House that's positive about the issue of race."
The debate over the Shirley Sherrod controversy - in which the former Agriculture Department official was forced to resign after conservative blogger Andrew Breibart posted an out-of-context video of her commenting on race - is distracting from high joblessness among young black adults and a disproportionate number of African-Americans in prison.
More on the Shirley Sherrod story:
He added that the Tea Party movement has subjected President Barack Obama to absurd scrutiny over his birth certificate and portraying him "as an African witch doctor," and that the far-right is an opposition that has "no interest in principled dialogue."
But Abigail Thernstrom, the vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, disagreed with Dyson's view of the Tea Party.
"A Gallup poll has shown the Tea Party movement is completely representative of America," Thernstrom pointed out.
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