Andrew Breitbart’s Character Lynching of Shirley Sherrod: The Tea Party Finally has Someone to Repudiate

Almost from its inception, the Tea Party has been accused of racism by its opponents.  Progressives say that Tea Party protestors uttered racial slurs and spit on the Congressional Black Caucus; no evidence has been produced to prove this accusation.  Occasionally some sign will appear at a Tea Party rally that might be construed as racist.   But the alleged racists are always nameless.  There has never been anyone specific for the Tea Party to repudiate, until now.

Last week conservative guerilla journalist Andrew Breitbart released a video clip of an African- American US Department of Agriculture (USDA) employee, Shirley Sherrod, apparently admitting that she discriminated against a white farmer who needed her help.  The video was broadcast on Fox News, Sherrod was condemned even by the NAACP,  and soon was asked to resign from her position at the USDA by the White House.   Except possibly for Breitbart who posted it, no one bothered to view the entire video before Sherrod was fired from her job and her reputation dragged through the mud on national television.   Shame on everyone, but especially Breitbart who, in a supposed defense of the Tea Party against the NAACP’s charges of racism, assassinated Shirley Sherrod’s character.

Shirley Sherrod’s full uncut speech is a story of American brutality, tragedy and forgiveness.  “Brutality” is an appropriate word to describe the way African Americans were treated from their importation as slaves up through the era of Jim Crow.  Sherrod’s personal story is testament to how far we have come.  In her speech she describes her girlhood in the south, a place where sheriffs routinely murdered African-American men and covered up for the crimes of the KKK.  Sherrod’s own father was murdered by a white racist.  After he was killed, the KKK found reasons to surround the Sherrod home.  Her mother appeared on the porch with a shotgun, declaring to the white racists that she knew their identities.  Other African-Americans soon showed up and drove the hooded thugs away.  None of this part of Sherrod’s story was released by Breitbart.

Years later Sherrod, while working for the USDA, was assigned her first white farmer, who was going broke and needed her assistance.  Breitbart begins the clip of Sherrod’s speech here.  At her meeting with the white farmer, Sherrod says that his language and posture told her that he sought to establish his superiority over her because she is black.  Having grown up with her particular set of experiences as a girl in the south, Sherrod recognized racial posturing when she saw it.  In her speech before the NAACP, Sherrod honestly admits that she did not want to help this farmer, that she did all that was required of her, but nothing more.  She chose not to do all in her power for a farmer who condescended to her in a racially tinged way.  Some in the audience of grey-haired NAACP members murmured their sympathy for the course of action she took.  They and Sherrod grew up in the same world of racial injustice.  Sherrod’s initial course of action was understandable and perhaps justifiable.  She sent the white farmer to “one of his own kind,” a white lawyer.    It is here that that Breitbart clip ends.

Sherrod, however, did not wash her hands of the matter with the white farmer.  In a later meeting with the farmer and the lawyer, Sherrod realized that the lawyer was cheating the farmer.  Sherrod felt a sudden solidarity with the poor white man that transcended race.  This was the whole point of her speech before the NAACP.  She stepped in to help the farmer, with whom she eventually established a long friendship.    It is a beautiful story that Breitbart has twisted into something ugly.  Tea Party activists now – after much baiting by their opponents  – finally have someone, Andrew Breitbart, whom they should denounce.