In speech to USDA on race relations, Thurmond talks of going from 'suspicion to recognition'

By Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON -- Just weeks after the Shirley Sherrod race scandal rattled the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Georgia Labor Commissioner and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Michael Thurmond walked into a USDA employee training session on civil rights and diversity with a confession:

He used to be "suspicious" of white people.

Thurmond, an African-American, had good reason to be wary of whites, he explained. He said he never even spoke to a white person until his all-black high school near Athens was consolidated with an all-white school when he was 18.

"You know why I was suspicious? It's because I never had a conversation with white people before -- because I didn't know any of them," Thurmond said Tuesday in a keynote speech at the USDA's Civil Rights Diversity and Conflict Resolution and Management Conference. "The only white friend I had was on TV -- Beaver," as in "Leave It to Beaver."

Thurmond, 57, said his suspicions receded as he came to know more white people during his last year at Clarke Central High School in Athens. Just like Sherrod, the former Georgia USDA official who was improperly fired after an out-of-context clip of some of her remarks was distributed by a conservative blogger to make her sound racist, Thurmond characterized his own experience with white people as a lesson on race relations.

"I went from suspicion to recognition," said Thurmond, who is running against Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson this year. And eventually, he added, the kid who had never talked to white people grew up and got elected to Georgia's General Assembly, becoming the first black politician in the South to be elected in a white-majority district.

"That's evolution," Thurmond said.

The USDA's two-day race and diversity conference comes as it is grappling with criticism over its handling of race issues such as the Sherrod case and a class-action lawsuit in which black farmers accused the agency of discrimination in its allocation of farm loans in the 1980s and 1990s.

Clearly, the agency and many of its employees are still skittish when it comes to talking about race.

After first opening the race and diversity conference to the media, USDA officials suddenly closed it to the press less than an hour before Thurmond was set to deliver his remarks. A camera crew from C-SPAN was turned away, as were other journalists. After first being asked to leave, an AJC reporter was allowed to listen to Thurmond's speech but was ushered out immediately after his remarks.

Stephanie Chan, a USDA spokeswoman, said the meeting was closed to the press so USDA employees could feel more comfortable about discussing issues of race and diversity.

Even so, most of the USDA employees in attendance were reluctant to participate when Thurmond asked them questions involving race. Many stirred uncomfortably when he brought up the subject of Sherrod.

"Don't go there," one woman shouted when he brought up Sherrod.

Thurmond, the son of a third-generation Georgia sharecropper, said he personally knew Sherrod and had talked to her in advance of his speech Tuesday.

"My intent was to go there," he said later. "I had no choice but to go there, because you have to go there if people are going to address" issues about race.

Not unlike Sherrod, Thurmond said his one-time suspicion of white people holds a lesson on race relations.

Thurmond's earlier suspicions of whites, he acknowledged, were a reflection of the same sorts of racial conflicts that Sherrod spoke about in a speech about her dealings with a white farmer in Georgia years ago.

While pointing out that the USDA and other government agencies still have race relation problems, Thurmond praised the agency for addressing them.

"We can say the USDA has got a race problem ... but what's different about the USDA?" he said. "The difference is that it's one of a few federal or state agencies that's having a conference that's trying to do better than [it] did in the past."