Brody File
CAPITAL J
Christianity Today Politics Blog
CNN Belief Blog
Daniel Schultz
David Gibson
dotCommonweal
Faith and Reason
James Besser’s Political Insider
In All Things
NCR Today
Religious Connections
RD Blog: The Devil’s Advocate
Episcopal Café: The Lead
Talk to Action
Under God
Whispers in the Loggia
Shirley Sherrod’s speech to the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet is a moving testimony to the importance of rising above the interests of tribe and kind in order to help all people in need. That she should have been fired because it was clipped and trumpeted on the conservative noise machine is a sad testimony to the hypersensitivity not only of the Obama Administration but also of the NAACP to charges of reverse racial prejudice. Sherrod will doubtless be offered her job back, and I hope she takes it. Even more, I hope the video will be seen by lots and lots of white people fearful that people of color will use their ascendancy to get even. This is how black people in organizations like the NAACP actually talk among themselves.
Back in 1993, I did a story for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on how African-American farmers across the South had for decades been screwed out of USDA loans by the (all-white) loan boards. I traveled to Dewy Rose (birthplace of Ty Cobb) to interview a black farmer who was a case in point, and who earned particular disfavor for having been a leader in the local NAACP. So I am more than sympathetic to Sherrod’s initial lack of enthusiasm for helping her white farmer get relief. And more than impressed at how she was able to overcome it.
posted July 22, 2010 at 6:51 am
Yet no mention of how the NAACP audience expressed approval, shouted exclamations and applauded her, long before they knew she was attempting to describe how she over came her racism towards whites. They cheered believing she was boasting over discriminating against a white farmer. Face it, cast this event with a white person, talking about how he or she had deliberately discriminated against a black farmer, with a white audience expressing the same approval, and you know your response to this video would have been visceral.
Something else, Mrs Sherrod although making this a story about redemption, felt the need to paint that white farmer guilty of “acting superior” merely because he took a long time explaining his situation, when she later claimed to have become his friend. What came out on CNN, was it was the wife of that farmer who called in and leapt to Sherrod’s defense, saying how much she and her husband appreciated her and wanted to help. You could tell from what she said, that they weren’t racists, hadn’t been. Mrs. Sherrod still felt the need to exculpiate her own racism, by putting the onus on the white farmer.
We see Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP initially seem to castigate Mrs. Sherrod, and claim as a defense that he and the national had had no idea what had been said at the banquet, despite the fact that it was revealed that Ben Jealous had been in attendance at that very banquet.
What we see is a video, the same video I might add, that was sent to Andrew Breitbart, came from someone at the NAACP that had access to the very same video. It’s from the same footage, with the text added.. so, was it sent to Breitbart from an NAACP member who objected to what happened, or someone hoping to set up something in an attempt to make Breitbart look bad. What I see is the NAACP, and Mark Silk ignoring the racism on display in that NAACP audience, which included Ben Jealous.
Mr Silk, it wasn’t poor white farmers who sat on USDA boards, so you don’t get points from me for a cheap attempt at defense, and I don’t believe Christ would give you points for such a transparent attempt at excusing racism.
posted July 22, 2010 at 2:12 pm
“Jenny” has certainly bought into what is becoming the official Breitbart line, that “the NAACP audience expressed approval, shouted exclamations and applauded her, long before they knew she was attempting to describe how she over came her racism…”
Only problem with that notion is that Sherrod CLEARLY set up the story as a story of how she shifted from an emphasis on “helping black people” to “helping poor people.” She framed the story of working with Mr. Spooner with this paragraph:
Any audience reaction is similarly framed by that context–and it’s clear that the audience shares Sherrod’s knowledge that this was what she thought BEFORE recognizing that she was wrong.
Incidentally, there is not a single bit of “applause” or “cheering” at any point in Sherrod’s description of the 1986 events. See the section of the speech from 16:00 to 18:46 (the portion initially posted by Breitbart), and you will find nothing of the sort. True, there is some laughter at 17:30, when Sherrod says she was trying to decide how much help she was going to give him, but it’s hardly cheering or applause, and given her framing of the story as a narrative of how she changed her mind, it could also be seen as rueful laughter. If nothing else, the notion that the audience was gleefully celebrating a racist act against a white farmer is a fine example of filtering evidence through an ideological lens.
What I find disturbing about some of the right’s insistence that Sherrod must even now be condemned for her “racism” is that it denies the very Christian idea of redemption–even though Sherrod rejected her initial impulse and went on to help save the Spooners’ farm, she must forever condemned for having those initial thoughts at all. I thought Christians were about forgiveness.