Charging a person or organization with racism is a serious charge. If that individual or organization is really racist, then so be it. But we need to remember just how serious a charge of racism can be as we sling these charges back and forth.
The reality of the Sherrod case is that nobody snookered the NAACP, the Obama White House, or the USDA. They snookered themselves in a long, drawn out process that includes the attacks on groups like the tea partiers and now, as we’re learning, by a group of journalists who cooperated in attempting to bury the Reverend Wright story and labeling Obama opponents as racists. These groups have brought the race issue to the forefront of our national discussion with motives that are at best questionable. Note that there is absolutely no excuse for any act of racism by people at Tea Party events, nor any excuse for the attempts that have been made to frame the Tea Partiers as racists.
Breitbart’s handling of the Sherrod video was at the very best poorly executed and probably a violation of journalistic ethics. Nonetheless, his was merely the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Note: I see no excuse for his actions. What we can learn (if we are open to learning from the Sherrod case) is that calling somebody a racist, wrongly, can be almost as harmful as acts of racism. And, just as We the People must say “absolutely no” to racism within our nation, we must also say “no” to these witch hunts.
We the People are really merely people. We are flawed. We make mistakes. We need to remember this simple fact of being merely human because we live in a society where race is still a hot issue, and it is an issue that can explode at high cost to the reputations and perhaps even the lives of innocent people. The memory of hard core racism in our nation is still very strong and very powerful. We have only recently elected our first African-American president. Many people, including yours truly, have memories of the Civil Rights movement. Many people alive today remember the Civil Rights movement because they participated in it. There are even people that are alive to this day that have talked with people who were slaves or who fought in the Civil War.
Because the issue of race remains sensitive we need to be careful throwing around false accusations of racism whether at a white, black, Hispanic, or any other person. False accusations of racism are almost as wrong as racism. There is no other way to look at it. It is wrong.
That is what we can learn from Shirley Sherrod.
A special note to Shirley Sherrod: Speaking as someone who saw from the very beginning that you who were not making racist statements, I would like to ask you to consider finding a role in our society where you can teach of your experiences both overcoming your own race challenges (what you felt in dealing with that farmer 25 years ago was a race challenge but hardly true racism) and dealing with a false and unjustified accusation of racism. You Ms. Sherrod have the unique perspective of being on both sides of our nation’s racial challenge, and I hope that you will continue to help We the People grow through your experiences.
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I’m about to rant, because this story has made me angrier than any in recent memory. I am not forgiving the administration’s handling of this or the NAACP being quick to condemn. I happened to see the video in the waiting room of my doctor’s office and had the same exact reaction. The administration should be ashamed of themselves for jumping to conclusions. I know I would have been all over the Bush administration if they had done the same thing. That said, let’s not forget the people who put Sherrod in this position in the first place. Brietbart’s handling was not “at very best poorly executed and a violation of journalistic ethics.” Breitbart is not a journalist, he is a provocateur. He puts things on his pages that are not true, made up or, like the video, deliberately shaded. He was the source for the WSJ on the “Jornalist” controversy, which, according to information released yesterday, should not be a controversy. Ezra Klein and those who signed the letter have never made any appearance of not being liberal columnists. However, there was a lively debate in the group as to whether they should go public and in the end only a small number of the much larger group did. If I remember correctly, quite a few people were annoyed with Stephanopoulos for the questions he asked, which were trite and dealt with issues that really had no bearing on leadership. But Breitbart and the WSJ chose to publish without checking. On the Sherrod story, Brietbart hasn’t accepted blame and even those conservatives who apologized yesterday (O’Reilly) did so and then qualified their apology.
I’m glad there are people like you who look at the world from both sides, and lord knows, the liberals have their own problems. But I don’t find myself having to debunk hateful, untrue emails from liberals. I do from conservatives. I don’t find myself having to discuss false, misleading edited videos that liberals post, because they don’t post them. I’m all for the discussion. But I won’t tolerate deliberate falsehoods for political gain, especially those which slander an innocent person like Shirley Sherrod.
Thanks for giving me the forum.