SubscribeAnd the truth shall set you free
The last couple of days have been a whirlwind for Shirley Sherrod, the former USDA rural development director, who has gone from being vilified as a racist to being hailed as selfless public servant. All because of a manipulated video clip that went viral on the Internet.
Sherrod’s story illustrates the importance of telling the whole truth and of not being so quick to judge when we hear something negative about a person. Whether on the Internet or in a church parking lot, one clear message for this incident is that lies and half-truths cause injury. Cable news pundits and fast-finger bloggers condemned Sherrod after viewing a diced-and-spliced video tape of Sherrod speaking at a Georgia NAACP branch banquet in March.
Neither her boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who demanded her resignation without allowing her to explain nor the NAACP, which wanted to show it did not tolerate racists in their midst, gave her the benefit of the doubt in those first few hours of seeing or hearing about the video. Everyone it seems believed that it must be true — there was evidence, of course. There she was captured on video tape at the podium talking about how she hesitated to offer a white farmer the full force of what she could do to help him save his farm.
What surprised me most is that neither her boss nor the NAACP asked her side of the matter before rendering their punishing disapproval. They just assumed the videotape was true. Why? What does that say about them and the rest of us who were so eager also to believe as true what we see on the Internet? Editors, reporters and bloggers took the bait without reporting out the story or considering the context for her remarks? Are we all so jaded? Is it this country’s crazed obsession with race? Or our inability to listen and seek understanding from each other in matters of race?
When I viewed the edited video posted by a conservative blogger, I rushed to judgment too, not going as far as to think that Sherrod was a racist but thinking in a flash that she was not very smart to get herself caught on videotape revealing how she really felt. I shook my head knowing that this was just the start of another race-and-politics-in-America media circus, and then I moved on to another story on the web page I was viewing.
Fortunately, the truth did come out and Sherrod was freed of the false accusations. The NAACP apologized, the White House apologized, Bill O’Reilly apologized and Vilsack offered her a promotion. The white farmer spoke out on her behalf. And I came to realize what a smart and courageous woman Shirley Sherrod is.
What happened during the course of today is instructive, a teachable moment someone said. Sherrod got the opportunity to tell her story on several media outlets and what a powerful story it is of transformation and redemption. Her father was killed by a racist white farmer, another relative was lynched, and she witnessed racism and discrimination first-hand during the civil rights movement. Listen to her full speech here.
Sherrod credits God with helping her to overcome some very strong resistance to helping the white farmer. “I know that I could not live with hate,” she concluded.
Now that’s a message that should go viral, a truth that all of us should consider spreading.
What do you think about what happened to Shirley Sherrod? The doctored videotape? Telling the whole truth?
“Life is a grind stone but whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.” — a saying Sherrod used to conclude her March speech.
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