In the last few days, the Obama administration over-reacted to a video on the web and is blaming it on a blogger.
The video showed Shirley Sherrod addressing the NAACP’s 2010 Freedom Fund Banquet. She related a story of how, years ago, she had not done all she could to help a “white” farmer. At that point in the video, the audience responds favorably to that remark. That is, they seem to approve of Shirley Sherrod’s handling of this farmer.
Now, when this video was posted by a blogger, Obama administration folks saw it and fired Shirley. They didn’t take the time to find out the context of what she said in her address to the NAACP audience and assumed that Shirley Sherrod was behaving in a racist manner in her position as an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That assumption was incorrect.
Had she actually behaved as suspected as a U.S.D.A employee, she should have been fired, but she was relating a story from years ago when she did not even work for the U.S.D.A. and the story she told was intended to show how she had grown as a person and put racist things behind her. It “… opened my eyes …” she said. Inspiring stuff.
The Secretary of Agriculture fired Shirley Sherrod without getting the facts. That’s not the fault of the blogger.
The blogger who posted the video is accused of “taking her words out of context.” That’s nonsense. The video he posted is not about Shirley Sherrod. It’s about the audience reaction to her statement that she did less then she could have to help a white farmer.
The NAACP, you see, claims to be free of racism. The blogger noted that the NAACP had made unsubstantiated claims of racism against the Tea Party movement. The blog post was about the NAACP and the context is perfectly clear to anyone watching the video in the context of the blog post.
As the blogger wrote: “Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement.” That’s all the context necessary to make his point.
That he included the later part about how the incident had opened her eyes was going beyond the point he needed to make. When the Obama administration chose to ignore the point he was making, it chose its own context.
Lest I too ignore the point that the blogger was making, I would point out that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) claimed that two members had gone into a Tea Party crowd and been subjected to fifteen (15) instances of “the ‘n’ word” from fifteen separate people. The point of the accusation was that the Tea Party movement is racist.
Despite having found four videos of the incident, none of which include the ‘n’ word in the audio portion, and despite having been challenged to substantiate their version of the incident, the NAACP continues to use this alleged name calling as “proof” that the Tea Party movement is racist.
So, in case you missed it, the blogger’s point is that the NAACP are the real racists for alleging racism where there is none and for their apparent approval of giving a white farmer less than all the help Shirley Sherrod could have given him.
Another interesting note about this story: the Secretary of Agriculture told Sherrod that he had received pressure from the White House to fire her. The White House said that the secretary fired Sherrod on his own and it learned about the incident only after the fact. Once the Obama administration reversed itself on Sherrod’s firing, it was the agriculture secretary who took the blame.
Ironically, Shirley Sherrod is now some kind of poster child for… something, I’m not sure what, and this former racist is being pressed into service fighting racism within the agriculture department. She’s also thinking about suing the blogger.