USDA official Shirley Sherrod has become one of the first targets of right wing news pundits after accusations of Tea Party racism. After Tea Party Express racist Mark Williams went too far and got himself and his group kicked out of the Tea Party, right wing bloggers started digging for a liberal to stick with the racist label. They found a video of Sherrod, who is black, describing an encounter with a white farmer back in the 1980s. A segment of the video was used out of context to portray Sherrod as not giving 100 percent to help the farmer facing bankruptcy.

Republican commentators discuss Shirley Sherrod

Shirley Sherrod, the USDA’s Georgia State Director of Rural Development, has resigned after remarks she made on video about race. Because Tea Party Express racist Mark Williams was left out, republican bloggers put the video up on display. Fox News picked up the story. It was shown by CBS News that the video was of a speech Sherrod made at the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet that was in Douglas, GA on March 27. The story talks about a man who was white and needed help with Chapter 12 bankruptcy. She said she struggled with the task because so many black individuals had lost their farms, and she was faced with having to help a white person conserve his land. She ended up referring him to a white lawyer.

Video gets in news- Sherrod quits

Shortly after Fox News and right wing pundits such as Tea Party Express fan Sean Hannity aired the video, the USDA announced that Sherrod had resigned. “There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a written statement. “We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.”

Sherrod with facts not in video

Sherrod argues the video clip is not in context of the whole situation. She argues, as outlined by CNN, that this video was way before she worked for the USDA. In 1985, Sherrod, who has a master’s degree in community development, served as Director of the Georgia State Office for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, which works to help family farmers retain and develop their property. She was only telling the story so people could see how she had moved on and to encourage them to move past race also. She “had to frantically find a lawyer who would file a Chapter 11 to stop the foreclosure,” since the white lawyer did nothing for this farmer. The family of the farmer became family friends of hers throughout the process.

More information available at these websites

CBS News
cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011026-503544.html
Sean Hannity
americanprogress.org/issues/kfiles/b91585.html
CNN
edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/20/agriculture.employee.naacp/#fbid=w2XX2duDWrt

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