Who's The Racist?

Racism

1.a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

2.a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

3.hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

There are a lot of misconstrued conceptions about what a racist is. The term is used today rather liberally to mean someone who doesn’t like another race or someone because of their race. That isn’t racism. It’s either hate or fear.

Based on this, one might question who indeed are the racists in this city. There is only one person in the public eye in this city who consistently pulls the race card and attempts cast racist aspersions on others. That person, of course, is Eugenie “Shanie” Shields, the Salisbury City Council representative from District One.

Winning to maintain her council seat by a single vote in the 2009 city elections (again with the help of the Tilghman machine), Shields has been the thorn in the side of many, and an embarrassment to not only the people of her own district, but of the whole city. Grunting, smacking and making sotto voce comments through one council meeting after another, rolling her eyes, and too often and too convincingly playing the comedic yet tragic illiterate fool, Shields has taken her chosen part as an anachronistic stereotype to a new level of performance art. And when she doesn't get what she wants or has been convinced by others that she wants, those who deny her become racists.

An alleged graduate of Salisbury's all-black high school, Shields has publicly declared that she wishes that schools were still segregated by color, that black children would be better taught by “their own” people. Although a self-described advocate for “her people”, Shields early on in her political career aligned herself with the likes of Barrie Tilghman and Gary Comegys, who, with the assistance of moneyed, LLC-protected friends, have their sights set not on the uplifting of the plight of the people of some District One neighborhoods, but the altogether elimination of those neighborhoods, followed by replacement with gentrified (i.e., owned by people with money) housing and small businesses. And, not coincidentally, it's being done with the taxpayer funds, funds that could be used to remove the blight but do it to protect and improve neighborhoods and the lots of those who occupy them.

Failing to have ever put forth an original idea of her own, Shields has ridden the “I'll take the crumbs” bus for her district from Day One. She has, and many say very lazily, preferred to take the scraps and leavings by voting with the crowd after being convinced by Tilghman and her puppets that there's a light at the end of the tunnel for District One, a light that will show itself soon. The Sassafras Meadows plan is a case in point. Shields' vote to approve was based on the promise of over two hundred units of affordable housing. When all was said and done, fewer than a third of that number were still on the drawing board, with the affordability itself in question, too, as an annual income of well over $40,000 was necessary to own one of them. Her recent vote to accept a strings-attached “gift” from a Baltimore property speculator on the North Prong is also a case in point. Shields was adamant in her double (and triple) negative-containing statements regarding how the acceptance of this property would “reduce blight” on the West Side and somehow promote a sea change in what she described as a barrier between east and west. When the mayoral veto was issued, she was quick to publicly call those who thought the transaction was ill-advised racists. It makes one wonder, given that Shields' literacy is somewhat questionable, if she knows what the word really means, or if she's just blindly using it (as many have) to rile the race-baiting contingent, of which she is certainly a member.
District One wants and deserves to be represented and represented well. Shanie Shields isn't doing the job. In fact, her laziness and casual attitude toward the business of the council is part of what is making the West Side what it is: a poverty-stricken, drug-infested and crime-ridden area, one whose lesser denizens threaten the economic and social health and well-being of the entire city. Her failure to even attempt to understand or want to understand the city's charter (hasn't read it), the budget (didn't read it, but voted for it, unread), the process of grant application and research (not a clue), the inner workings of any of the city departments, the failure to attend the meetings of boards to which she, as a part of her duties, is assigned (couldn't be bothered), and her overwhelming propensity to let others make the calls and do the work but then pull her dog-eared race card out (perhaps at the urging of certain other members of council, and certainly without complaint from them) when things didn't go her way have led District One down a path of destruction, both by internal and external influences. It will be years before District One once again has its opportunity to choose a representative with good leadership qualities, and, until then, that continued descent onto the path of destruction, partly led by a much lesser leader will continue to plague us all.