Over the weekend, John Hawkins of Right Wing News posted an interesting observation on race on Facebook:

Irony: People who view everything through a prism of race are perpetually accusing people who don’t of being racist.

I’m cutting Bruce a little more slack than he did himself due to the limitations of this medium.  I know from our (all all too) infrequent communications that he has been very busy with work and yet remains very eager to blog.  It is no wonder he jumped on the Shirley Sherrod story.  As he put it: “(My one attempt at a lame excuse is that my “window” to blog comes and goes and it just happened to open up when the Sherrod video was first going viral).”

With a more flexible schedule than he (and delighted in the distraction of blogging/internet surfing as I struggle with the outline for the next chapter of my dissertation), I have more time at my disposal to flesh out stories.  (When I recognized there might be more to the story, I joined the Anchoress in wanting to see more of the story before passing judgment.)

So, Bruce’s is more than an attempt at a lame excuse.  Unlike the folks in the MSM, the NAACP or the Administration, we lack staffs to assist us in looking into these matters.  What he calls a “lame excuse” is in fact a very real acknowledgment of the nature of blogging.

To be sure, I would that Bruce had said something about wanting to see the rest of the video (when he first posted it).   That said, as quickly as we can get thing out there, we can retract and/or apologize for them.  And Bruce did that as soon as he became aware of the nature of his error.

The head of the NAACP, by contrast, who had more ready access to the full video (than did Bruce or Andrew Breitbart) (as well as to people, you know, members of the organization he heads, who attended the confab where Mrs. Sherrod spoke), doesn’t, as Ann Althouse puts it, “acknowledge this personal responsibility.”   (more…)

Like the Anchoress (whom I quoted when I addressed the matter), I wanted to hear more before rendering judgment on (former) USDA official Shirley Sherrod before passing judgment.  Once again, that blogress pretty much expresses my feelings on the matter:

In my post yesterday, I was pretty clear that the Breitbart tape wasn’t sitting well with me. Ms. Sherrod–still not a great speaker–clearly was on her way to relate a tale that indicted her own understanding, when that tape ended.

Then, she goes on to put the story in a larger context:

There is absolutely nothing simple about the matter of race in America; there is a ways to go before content of character will finally overcome color of skin. But I am not sure if further progress toward a truly color-blind society can be made until the manufactured cry of “raaaaacism”–by people who know that their are merely fanning flames or manipulating movements–has finally been rejected by both the right and the left. Race-baiters must be made to understand that their cheap tactic will no longer bear weight among fair-minded people, who are horrified by genuine racism but tired of its weaponized unreasonable facsimile.

In a nation that has come far enough to see African-Americans hold its highest offices, and wield enormous power–power given to them by people of all races and backgrounds, who can and will take it back at their own pleasure–the overplayed charge of “racism” among the chatterers is not only toxic, it is self-revelatory: it betrays their own tawdry cynicism, and their own racial fixations.

Read the whole thing.  Via Instapundit who has a great roundup.

Our reader ILoveCapitalism makes a good point that the extended video reveals that she hasn’t let go of her groupthink mentality: (more…)

While, on its surface, the video that Bruce posted earlier today presents pretty strong evidence of the NAACP welcoming the racial attitudes of an Obama Administration official, like the Anchoress, “I want the rest of the story before I start passing judgment on it“:

I want to see the rest of the tape. I cannot believe Sherrod ended on “I took him to one of his own.” Either she said something much worse after that (which we would have seen) or she said something much better.

If it was something “better” then we should have seen that, too.

Via Instapundit.

That said, with the attitudes of the Department of Justice toward the Black Panther case as well as this woman’s initial attitude toward a white man in need, we have considerable evidence of racial attitudes in the Obama Administrations, attitudes that the mainstream media is all but ignoring while dwelling on the NAACP resolution and a few isolated racially-tinged signs at Tea parties.

It seems that whenever I have gone to the gym these past few days, I look up to see something on CNN about the NAACP resolution; the “news” network almost always features the same stock footage of four, maybe five signs, only two clearly racist, one likely a fabrication of a Tea Party crasher.  (Wonder if CNN investigated the phenomenon of Tea Party crashers.)

Now, I wonder if the NAACP has been harping on the alleged racism of the Tea Parties, basing their resolution, in large part, on unsubstantiated charges, in a desperate bid to make the organization relevant in an age when most Americans increasingly see race an increasingly irrelevant and warm to Dr. King’s dream that his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  Well, maybe not so desperate given the makeup of the MSM today. (more…)

Whoa baby. When Breitbart is on fire… he is ON FIRE!

We are in possession of a video from in which Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, speaks at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia. In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions.

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

I love Andrew because he, like me, hates hypocrisy and has a nose to find it.  Sniff away, Breitbart!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)