White Farmer Says Former USDA Worker Not Racist [FULL Shirley Sherrod Video]
Shirley Sherrod was quickly accused of “racism” against a white farmer and lost her job with the USDA after a 2 minute, 36 second video clip surfaced on the Internet. But the full video of her speech wasn’t made available to the public until Tuesday. And statements from the farmer and his wife, Roger and Eloise Spooner of Iron City, Ga., tell a much different story than the storyline widely distributed by BigGovernment.com and other organizations.
What those media outlets did not initially tell the public was that the experience Sherrod was speaking of happened 24 years ago, in 1986, when she was working for a nonprofit, more than two decades before she was appointed to the USDA position she was removed from. And BigGovernment.com and other organizations did not initially show the full video of the entire speech, only the selectively edited video clip.
After the USDA asked for Sherrod’s resignation, which she gave, Sherrod defended herself against the accusations of “racism.” She said she was describing her experience working with Roger Spooner, the first white farmer she was asked to help. She said working with him was a learning experience of personal growth in which she discovered a larger lesson of racial reconciliation. She says she did not discriminate against Spooner, but helped him.
ABC News Tuesday asked Spooner point blank if Sherrod discriminated against him or his family on the basis of race. He said no, indicating that the true story was in fact the opposite of what had been portrayed. Spooner said if it hadn’t been for Sherrod’s help his family would have lost their farm. He said he never thought of racism while Sherrod was helping him.
“It never, never crossed my mind. Never crossed my mind. Me and the wife, we never, we never, we never saw that at all. Absolutely. It’s unbelievable. If we had not found her, me and my wife — we went checking here and yonder and everywhere — if it hadn’t been for her, we’d of lost. It was just a matter of a few months and we would have lost it,”
Spooner told ABC News Tuesday.
The full video of Sherrod’s entire speech is now available and can be contrasted with the selectively edited video clip that was distributed by BigGovernment.com and other organizations, groups and individuals. View, judge and compare for yourself which version of the video is more accurate, or shows more of the truth of what actually happened.
While comparing the two videos, it might be good to keep in mind a Sufi parable that tells the story of how different blind people tried to describe an elephant.
One touched the trunk, saying, “It appears to be a large snake.” Another wrapped his arms around one of the elephant’s legs, saying, “It appears to be a large tree.” One then held the tail in his hands, saying, “It appears to be a whip.” It was only after dialog comparing their partial understanding that the blind people arrived at a fuller understanding,
says the parable.
Full, Unedited Version of Shirley Sherrod Speech (43 minutes, 14 seconds) – Shown Above
Selectively Edited Video Clip, Selected Out of Context From Shirley Sherrod’s Speech (2 minutes, 36 seconds)
Note: It is unclear exactly who is responsible for creating the selectively edited video clip that cast Sherrod in a negative light, but the video itself indicates the clip first appeared on YouTube. Various news reports, as well as comments expressing both outrage and support on BigGovernment.com, indicate the video clip appeared early on a blog post by Andrew Breitbart on BigGovernment.com. It’s remains unclear exactly who or which organization selectively edited out the clip from Sherrod’s full speech, and then created the video clip version by professionally adding in written statements and video footage from Fox News of Geraldo Rivera asking NAACP Senior Vice President Hilary Shelton if the NAACP repudiates racism within its ranks.
