After Sherrod, Virginia Group Offers ‘VORA’ Approach To Race

Category: News Briefs Published on Wednesday, 28 July 2010 16:46 Written by Chronicle Staff

Ezi Mecha, CEO of TrendKrafters, a Virginia-based project and resource management consulting group that has been promoting Black artists, authors and movie stars, is advocating what she calls a Values-Over-Race Approach (VORA) following the Shirley Sherrod saga.

Mecha, a former IBM consultant, says Sherrod’s incident at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which implicated the White House, is a strong reminder of the need to have an honest dialogue on race beyond the spin room.
“The Shirley Sherrod incident has given us another opportunity to properly dissect the race issue as we work towards fulfilling the dreams of our founding fathers,” Mecha said. “Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I want people everywhere to judge my three children, Emmanuel, Tiffany and John-Nathan, by their values, vision and vigor, not by the color of their skin.”

Sherrod is proposing a Values-Over-Race Conference (VORC) to dissect race and racism.