Blogoland

Just had a chance to watch the full tape over at the NAACP's site (it's also on YouTube). First, it's clear (as many suspected) that her tale about not helping the white farmer to her fullest was, in fact, a story about how she eventually concluded that she was wrong to have thought that way, and in fact, she needed to overcome her own biases. She goes on to describe how she personally intervened to help save the farm when the original lawyer for the farmer had decided to throw in the towel. Here are some quotes from various points in the talk:

I have come to realize that we have to work together. And it’s sad that we don’t have a room full of white and blacks here tonight. Because we have to overcome the divisions we have. We have to get to the point where – as Toni Morrison said – race exists but it doesn’t matter.

AND

"But you know God will show you things and he'll put things in your path, so that you'll realize that the struggle is really about poor people."

AND

"Working with him [the farmer] made me see that it's really about those who have vs. those who do not. And they could be black, they could be white, they could be hispanic. and it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people -- those who don't have access the way others have."

First things first:

1) Breitbart is a race huckster of the lowest kind -- a liar, a hypocrite and completely depraved. But we already knew that.
2) Ditto for Fox News
3) The NAACP should be ashamed of itself. They've since apologized. They should publicly apologize to Sherrod if they have not done so already.
4) Tom Vilsack should be ashamed of himself and should resign.
5) If what Sherrod has said -- that pressure was applied by the Obama administration USDA to fire her -- then they are a bunch of spineless nitwits who deserve all the vitriol being hurled at them.

UPDATE:

Here's a transcript I've roughed out:

[16:45]

But you know God will show you things and he'll put things in your path, so that you'll realize that the struggle is really about poor people.

The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm -- He took a long time talking, but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I knew what he was doing. But he had come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to help him.

I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland. And here’s I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough so that when he – so that when I assumed that the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me –[unintelligible] the Georgia Department of Agriculture –

And he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him. So I took him to a white lawyer that had attended some of the training that we had provided. Because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm. So I figured if I took him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him. That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor vs. those who have. And not so much about white – it is about white and black – but it opened my eyes. Because I took him to one of his own. And I put him in his hand, and said ‘OK, I’ve done my job.’

But during that time we would have these injunctions against the Department of Agriculture, so they couldn’t foreclose on him. And I want you to know that the county supervisor had done something to him that I had not seen yet, that they had done to any farmer -- black or white. And what they did to him caused him not to be able to file Chapter 12 bankruptcy.

So everything was going along fine, I’m thinking, he’s being taken care of by the white lawyer. And then they lifted the injunction against USDA, in May of ‘87. For two weeks – and he was one of thirteen farmers in Georgia who received the foreclosure notice – he called me. I said, ‘Well go on and make an appointment at the lawyer, let me know when it is, and I’ll meet you there.’

So we met at the lawyer’s office on the date they had given him. And the lawyer sat there – and he had been paying the lawyer, ya’ll, that’s what got me – he had been paying the lawyer since November, and this was May. And the lawyer sat there and looked at him and said, ‘Well ya’ll getting old, why don’t you just let the farm go?’ I could not believe he said that. So I said to the lawyer I told him ‘I can’t believe you said that.’ I said it’s obvious to me if he cannot file a Chapter 12 bankruptcy to stop this foreclosure, you have to file and11. And the lawyer said to me, ‘I’ll do whatever you say -- whatever you think,’ that’s how he put it. But he was paying him, he wasn’t paying me any money. So the lawyer said he would work on it.

And then about 7 days before that man would have been sold at the courthouse steps, the farmer called me and said the lawyer wasn’t doing anything. And that’s when I spent time there in my office calling everybody I could think of to try to help me find a lawyer who would handle this. And finally I remembered I had gone to see one 40 miles away in [unintelligible].

[gap]


[LATER]

I have come to realize that we have to work together. And it’s sad that we don’t have a room full of white and blacks here tonight. Because we have to overcome the divisions we have. We have to get to the point where – as Toni Morrison said – race exists but it doesn’t matter.