From Back of the Bus to Under the Bus

The reward for overcoming your personal racism?

     Breitbart posted a video yesterday that has ended up costing USDA official Shirley Sherrod her job, and based on the what the video shows, rightly so. The problem is the video shows just a little too much, and reveals Breitbart's agenda. One that I find to be despicable and completely intolerable. I shared in much of the outrage yesterday when I first saw this video, but I couldn't help but notice that she seemed to be alluding to a greater lesson, that was abruptly edited out. Subsequently, I spent the following four hours searching for the complete video so that I might judge for myself just how racist this woman was. Normally when I search for a more complete version of something, I will at least find differing versions if not the complete on. Not this time, which I found to be very bizarre. Every search and every site came back with the exact same copy of this video. The lesson that was edited out referred to how Shirley had grown beyond her racist thinking to recognize the greater social injustice of poverty.

     I have problems with this on so many levels. First off, I am a conservative, and a Tea Party member. A great deal of what we are currently fighting for is the return of the liberties that have been usurped by our government, and a return to the founding principles of this country. The greater question I pose in this issue is this: Why are we fighting for liberty if we are content to re-subjugate ourselves to the same master of hate draped in a different flag? I have many "conservative" friends online that have jumped all over this story, celebrating the downfall of the racist. This mentality is the basis of my question, and the point to this writing. We do not deserve the Liberty for which we fight if we have been unable to learn the basic lessons which caused us to lose it in the first place. Primary among those being to think for yourselves instead of jumping on agenda driven bandwagons! Nothing in this issue disturbs me more than seeing soo many people jumping so quickly to hate and demonize this woman with such obviously incomplete information.

     Our movement is consistently under attack for being racist without much good cause. If we abandon our intellectual integrity to fly with the latest group of race baiters, we will give our opposition all the ammunition they need to effectively shut us down. We must be harsh on true racism, such as instances with the panthers, but we must be equally passionate about praising those who have overcome their own. It is too early to determine if  Mrs.Sherrod has truly overcome her early thoughts and actions in this matter, but we owe it to our own integrity to call for a deeper non biased investigation into the matter. Should she prove to have overcome, then we should be her most fervent supporters in getting her reinstated should that be her desire.

     As I have been writing, she spoke on CNN. Sherrod's comments on CNN

      Here is a much more in depth interview with Shirley, with her on camera, and with the farmers wife commenting over the phone. Better Sherrod interview with CNN