Unreconstructed Lying

When the Shirley Sherrod story broke, I was in the middle of attending freshman orientation with my daughter at a state university in Georgia, and so I came in on what seemed to be at the time the tail-end of the story: a tape of Ms. Sherrod's speaking at an NAACP dinner had been edited to suggest that she was a racist; it had been published on Andrew Breitbart's website; after Breitbart and his ilk created a firestorm, administrative officials panicked and fired Ms. Sherrod without researching the truth. It was finally revealed that the tape had been edited to grossly mislead (and that Brietbart had had it in his possession for several weeks before posting it).

I learned that, at first, Breitbart and other far-right bloggers yelled foul over Ms. Sherrod's words, claiming that here was a prime example of an African-American woman in a position of power (USDA's Georgia state director for rural development) who admitted to failing to help a white farmer. It was a nice story to use to claim the equivalency of black racism and white racism in this country, that there was no foundation for criticizing all those white Tea Party people showing up with racist signs. Only that was a lie. Now Breitbart is claiming that he posted the video not because it reveals Ms. Sherrod's racism (racism which the unedited tape clearly refutes) but because it reveals the racism of the NAACP members listening to Ms. Sherrod and clapping at times in her speech when she is describing her previous attitudes. Only that's a lie, too, now that I have listened to the whole damn tape, to five sections that Breitbart has now posted on his website, probably believing that most people won't take the time to listen to it. And as there are only 8 comments on that site (as of 2:00 p.m. today), I think it's safe to say that most of Breitbart's loyal listeners and readers will not view the entire tape and will accept Breitbart's continued unreconstructed lying.

What Ms. Sherrod does in her speech is put one of her past actions in context. First, she tells the crowd about her father being murdered by a white man and the family never receiving justice. Anyone who knows anything about the African-American experience, especially in the South, will know that it was not unusual for a white man to murder a black man and not suffer any legal consequences. In addition, Ms. Sherrod describes a time when a bunch of white men showed up at her home and burned a cross on the front yard. Her mother--then a widow--was home alone with the baby boy born just weeks after his father's murder--and a couple of other children. The family was in danger, but several neighbors--all African-American men--showed up with their shotguns. They didn't fire a shot, and they allowed the white men to leave, but their show of unity prevented further violence. This background puts everything else into context.

Ms. Sherrod describes how she had wanted to leave the South, with its terrible memories, but that she finally decided to stay to help create change, and so, long before her tenure as a government official with the USDA, she worked for a non-profit to help farmers. But she said that when she "made that commitment [to stay in the South and to create change], [she] was making it to black people, and to black people only...But you know," she went on to say, "God will show you things and he'll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people." [Here the silence is broken by affirmative responses: "all right, all right."] And that's her preface to the story of when her attitude changed. In the edited tape, these words are missing--Ms. Sherrod's indicating to her listeners that she was to change her mind about helping "her own" alone. The audience did not clap when she said that her first intentions were to help black people alone. There were no "amens" there. So Ms. Sherrod tells the story that most people have heard totally out of context, of how a white farmer came to Ms. Sherrod for help and how when he had spent a great deal of time showing he was superior to her, she wasn't inclined to help him as much as she should have, so she referred him to a white lawyer because she figured he could get help from "his own." When the white farmer came back to her and told her that the lawyer had not helped him, she realized that she had been wrong. Sherrod then helped the white farmer get what he needed, and she goes on to say some really inspiring words:

I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate.... I've come to realize that we have to work together. And it's sad that we don't have a room full of whites and blacks here tonight 'cause we have to overcome the divisions that we have. We have to get to the point where, as Toni Morrison says, 'Race exists, but it doesn't matter.' We have to work just as hard. I know it's, you know, that the vision is still here, but our communities are not going to thrive, you know, our children won't have the communities that they need to stay in, to live in and have a good life if we can't figure this out, you all. White people, black people, Hispanic people--we all have to do our part to make our communities a safe place, a healthy place, a good environment.

After viewing this entire tape, it's clear to me that the folks in that room were receptive to Ms. Sherrod's message. They weren't applauding her racism; they were applauding her altruistic ideals to overcome racism and to make the world a better place. As Ms. Sherrod says, the problem is poverty; the problem is the haves and have-nots; the problem is that those in power want to keep power, and they keep that power by dividing us. In posting the edited video and in continuing to spew lies, Andrew Breitbart and others like him are counting on perpetuating those divisions.

[After writing that last sentence, I came across this video of Anderson Cooper's interview with Ms. Sherrod. Breitbart himself might not be racist, but he is using racism to make a political point (albeit, unfairly, and with lies), and he certainly doesn't care one iota about who gets hurt. His cynical manipulations, however, are no better than racism. And he needs to be called out on this!]

More Here:

• "Some Find Irony in Shirley Sherrod's USDA Incident," by Krissah Thompson, Washington Post, 23 July 2010.
  
  
• "Amen Canard," by William Saletan, Slate, 23 July 2010.