THE SHIRLEY SHERROD SAGA
There are interesting things to learn from the saga of Shirley Sherrod.
She’s the federal Department of Agriculture employee who was fired this week after a video turned up in which she said that she didn’t do her best to help a white farmer because of his race, that she, rather, referred him to “one of his own.”
The video popped up, the White House called for her head, and she was forced to resign.
Then more of the video came out, and it turned out that her larger point was that she was wrong to discriminate, and she became a media hero.
The White House press secretary apologized. The secretary of agriculture apologized and offered her a new job. She has been on every news show there is.
Some have vilified the website that released the video, some have attacked conservative media, some have faulted the president for not looking before he leaped.
But nobody has looked honestly at this matter and pointed out the insights it offers, or the lessons that might be learned from it. They have pretended to, and then repeated the politically correct but fundamentally false assumptions about race in America. But nobody has really said what this incident teaches.
Nobody has pointed out, for example, that Shirley Sherrod lied.
I’m not criticizing her, and she seems – when all of this matter is understood – to be a good-hearted and honorable person.
But she did lie.
And that lie, and the reaction of the people she told it to, are informative.
Shirley Sherrod used her opportunity to speak at a Georgia NAACP dinner to talk about her evolving belief that race doesn’t matter. That might not seem like a bold revelation, but given Shirley Sherrod’s cultural and personal background as a middle-aged, poor, rural, Southern black, it took not just wisdom but forgiveness.
As she made her point, she told about being approached more than 25 years before by a white family in danger of losing its farm.
She first stated that the family’s father dealt with her in a racially superior way, talking to her in a fashion that she interpreted as being intended to put her in her place. As she recounted this, there was antagonism in her voice.
It seems likely that her reaction to him was determined more by her racial attitudes toward him than his toward her. It seems likely, based on what we’ve since learned about the man and his family, that she took racial offense where none was given or intended.
That’s one lesson to learn.
Another can be learned from the lie.
And the lie has to do with how Shirley Sherrod dealt with the white family. To her NAACP audience, she said that she didn’t do all she could, that she was there to help blacks, not whites, and that she referred the whites to “one of their own” who would take better care of them.
None of that has turned out to be true.
There’s no way to know what Shirley Sherrod thought about or felt toward this particular family, but the record shows that she actually went above and beyond her normal responsibilities to be of assistance. She personally went with them some significant distance to a government office three separate times to help them file and walk through their paperwork.
She didn’t refer them, she didn’t short them, she was an angel to them.
She was so helpful, respectful and kind that more than 25 years later the family still remembers her, thanks her and loves her. And even after Shirley Sherrod’s videotaped comments made the father of the family out to be a racist, both he and his wife sang her praises with sincere and unabashed gratitude.
Again, in her heart, Shirley Sherrod might have recoiled from these white people because of their race. But in her actions and dealings with them, there was none of that.
So why did she tell the NAACP something different?
And why as she did, did the NAACP clap and cheer?
Was Shirley Sherrod speaking to that audience in a way that would curry its favor, and did that audience react to her in a way that reveals its racial attitudes? Shirley Sherrod’s audience reacted positively and happily when she said she discriminated against whites.
If there is racism in this incident, that is where it’s found. Not really in her words, but in their reaction.
And the apparent fact that she knew her words would elicit that reaction, and the possibility that that is why she used them.
Maybe that’s a second lesson to learn.
Maybe sometimes in the casual conversations of some African-Americans there are racial attitudes, stereotypes or expectations that are, if we are honest about it, racist.
Put another way: It’s hard to see the crowd’s reaction to her comments about white people as anything other than racist.
Now, to the reaction to the video.
The guy who posted the video on the Internet was not wrong to do so unless he knew that it had been edited to twist what Shirley Sherrod really meant to say. That said, even though Shirley Sherrod’s intent was to say that black-on-white racism is wrong, the video still had news value because of the crowd’s reaction.
Also, edited out of context or not, Shirley Sherrod didn’t help herself very much by the way she spoke at the NAACP meeting. Hearing her words as spoken it is hard to sense anything other than animosity toward whites.
Was FOX News wrong to play the video?
No. It was a legitimate piece of video that seemed to be complete.
Was the White House wrong to call for her to be fired?
Probably not. The video did seem to be pretty clear, and pretty offensive, and there’s nothing wrong with the president sharing a judgment that untold millions of Americans have also made.
Was the national NAACP wrong to condemn her?
No. It actually showed, given the evidence it had, a pretty color-blind approach to the matter. The swift condemnation by the head of the national NAACP showed strength, not weakness.
So who was wrong?
Probably the local NAACP group that hosted the dinner, and the people who attended.
The people who heard Shirley Sherrod’s speech in person, her hosts and listeners, knew what she had said and what she hadn’t said. They knew that, actually, Shirley Sherrod had come in there and almost scolded them. She had said that, in spite of the discrimination some in that room had themselves faced, a race-based approach to life wasn’t right or wise.
They knew that that video clip was edited and incomplete. They knew that it was inaccurate and unfair.
And for two days, as the matter raged nationally, involving the president and the national NAACP, no one seems to have said anything. Not any of the leaders or the president of the local NAACP, or any of the socially prominent people who listened to Shirley Sherrod.
Further, the local NAACP had a recording of the entire talk, which vindicated Shirley Sherrod, and inexplicably dragged its feet for more than a day before giving permission for the video company to release it.
They knew the truth, but didn’t speak it.
And Shirley Sherrod twisted in the wind, and some feel the president got egg on his face.
But this matter really doesn’t end up being about finger pointing. It ends up being about lesson learning.
And not just the lesson about rushing to judgment and the power of video editing. Rather, it’s about some of the cultural uniquenesses of rural, Southern blacks, and how we don’t always speak honestly about race, even when talking to people of our own race. There were racial expectations and attitudes at play here, by blacks and whites, but they weren’t necessarily intended to be sinister.
Shirley Sherrod gave a talk this spring. She made her point to her audience in the way that she apparently thought would be most effective.
Some of us who weren’t in the audience got to peek in, and it didn’t make any sense to us.
Which doesn’t mean that it didn’t make any sense.
Because if you listen to the whole tape, including the part where she makes her point – that it’s not about white and black – you notice that the audience reacts then, too. It reacts with approval.
So she got her point across, and in the audience there were at least some who agreed.
Which is heartening and good.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010
