Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Sad And Mean

Working its way around the blogosphere today is this story:

A video was released by a Republican blogger of a black lady who works for the United States Department of Agriculture giving a speech to the NAACP (the Afro-American-interest U.S. civil rights organization). Her job at the USDA is to assist farmers in financial distress. In that speech, she talks about how, when assigned to help a white farmer, due to that farmer's race, she provided that farmer with less help than she would have if he had been black. The Republican blogger claimed that this was evidence of the racism that pervades the NAACP, to whom this lady was giving the speech.

The lady was forced to resign her job.

Now, it turns out that the excerpt of the speech in this video that shows this evidence of racism was part of a larger speech of redemption from her admitted racism: The event in question happened when she was working for a state agency, long before she was hired at the Department of Agriculture. She was using it as an example of how she overcame her own racism... a story of her redemption. (She eventually saw the error of her ways, worked with the white farmer to help save his farm for the next 2 years, and apparently is now considered a friend by that same farmer of whom she spoke.)

I always say that there are people out there who are paid to make you stupid. I should probably add that there are also people out there who are paid to make you scared, hateful, and bitter.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It appears that FoxNews published a highly selective portion of her speech in a film clip. Shame on them.

However,it was the Ag Dept. that sought her resignation.

"The Agriculture Department has a lengthy history with the official forced to resign Monday over a controversial YouTube clip -- it turns out she and a group she helped found with her husband won millions last year in a discrimination suit settlement with the federal government.

... in addition to the $13 million to New Communities, Shirley and Charles Sherrod would each get $150,000 for "pain and suffering."

Could it be "get even" time?

Mike Farrell
Cagayan de Oro

Anonymous said...

Apparently, the White House finally figured out their screw up.