Would Shirley Sherrod's Full NAACP Speech Give a Different Impression?

(July 20) -- In the ongoing war over who is more racist -- the NAACP or the tea party -- the right has delivered a blow with revealing footage of a black USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, speaking at an NAACP conference and admitting to doing less than she could have to help a white farmer.

On Monday, Sherrod resigned. But she also sought to clarify the record, and her version jibes with the fact that the footage released by the website Big Government was cut off at just about the point where it appeared Sherrod was beginning to disown her own prejudice. She was starting to say how class distinctions trumped racial ones, and that poor blacks and whites should feel solidarity. Just before the segment ends, Sherrod tells the audience:

"That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor, versus those who have. It's not so much about white ... it is about white and black. But it's not, you know, it opened my eyes."

The Atlanta Journal Constitution adds more context:

But Tuesday morning, Sherrod said what online viewers weren't told in reports posted throughout the day Monday was that the tale she told at the banquet happened 24 years ago -- before she got the USDA job -- when she worked with the Georgia field office for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund.

Sherrod said the short video clip excluded the breadth of the story about how she eventually worked with the man over a two-year period to help ward off foreclosure of his farm, and how she eventually became friends with him and his wife.

"And I went on to work with many more white farmers," she said. "The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it's about the people who have and the people who don't. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race."

So now that the damage is done, a point scored, perhaps Big Government could post the speech in its entirety?