Tea Party racism accusations has made Shirley Sherrod after her resignation from USDA a huge target. Mark Williams, Tea Party Express racist, got himself and his followers kicked out of the Tea Party making conservative writers ask for an additional liberal to take his spot. Sherrod, who’s black, is shown in a video talking about a past experience with a white farmer within 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.
Shirley Sherrod targeted by right wing commentators
After making a video on race, Shirley Sherrod, USDA’s Georgia State Director of Rural Development, resigned. Because Tea Party Express racist Mark Williams was left out, republican bloggers put the video up on display. Fox news told the story. CBS News reports that Sherrod’s remarks were from a speech she gave at an NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet on March 27, in Douglas, Ga. In the video segment, Sherrod tells a story about a white man who came to her for help seeking Chapter 12 bankruptcy. She said it wasn’t something she wanted to do since she had to help him keep his land while many blacks were losing their land. She ended up referring him to a white lawyer.
Video gets in news- Sherrod quits
Shortly after Fox News and right wing pundits like 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.”
Truth about Sherrod video
Sherrod explains to every person that this short clip doesn’t have the whole story in it. She argues, according to CNN, that this video was way before she worked for the USDA. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund helps family farmers develop their property, and Sherrod served as Director of the Georgia State Office for the business after getting her master’s degree in community development in 1985. She said she told the story to make the point that people should move beyond race. She “had to frantically discover a lawyer who would file a Chapter 11 to stop the foreclosure,” since the white lawyer did nothing for this farmer. She wound up being friends with the farmer and his family.
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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
