Until you hear the rest of the story.
What you never hear is the context of her comments. It had been part of a story she was telling, illustrating the raising of her consciousness. She goes on to say that later she learned and came to accept that she'd made a mistake, that she shouldn't have behaved in that way, that whites also deserved fair treatment and just because of past acts of badness (ie slavery in the US and everything up to the 1960s) she shouldn't take it out on whites today. (And indeed she and that farmer later became friends.)
Which is true. Just as whites can be racist until they learn better, so can blacks, and Asians, and every other race on this planet as well. That's just the way people are! All racist until their consciousnesses are raised.
Once they've had their consciousness raised, is it necessary to punish them for things they did 20 years ago? Just as Robert Byrd repudiated his membership in the KKK and went on to help people of all races, and was embraced by democrats (although the same courtesy was not extended to Trent Lott and his comments about Thurmond), just as people in all walks of life can grow as they grow older, did this woman really have to resign? At the very least, Rush and Hannity should give the full story.
USDA official resigns amid race controversy
Andrew Golis
An employee of the Department of Agriculture has resigned, after conservative media outlets posted video Monday of her describing a time in the past when she hadn't used the "full force" of her abilities to help a farmer because he was white.
In the video, Shirley Sherrod, who is black, recounts having been asked to help a white farmer avoid foreclosure. She says she was torn over how much to help him because so many black farmers were also struggling, and decided to do just enough to be able to say she'd tried:
I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough. ... So I took him to a white lawyer. ... So I figured if I would take him to one of them, his own kind would take care of him.
Sherrod spoke to CNN on Tuesday, explaining that she told the story of her actions — which, she said, occurred 24 years ago when she was working for a nonprofit, not the USDA — to illustrate how she has since realized that everything is not about race but "about those who have versus those who do not have." She says she later became friends with the farmer and his wife.
Even so, Sherrod resigned after conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart posted video of the story and Fox News picked it up. She told CNN that she tried to explain to USDA officials that the incident was in the past, but said "for some reason, the stuff Fox and the tea party does is scaring the administration."
In a statement quoted by CNN, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said of Sherrod's actions:
There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person. ... 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.
NAACP CEO Ben Jealous was also quick to condemn Sherrod's actions, though. In a statement Monday posted on Breitbart's Big Government site, he said:
Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man.
In response, Sherrod told CNN that it was "unfortunate that the NAACP would make a statement without even checking to see what happened. This was 24 years ago, and I'm telling a story to try to unite people."
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