| What
struck me and many other people about the case of USDA official
Shirley Sherrod was how easily the mainstream media, the
White House, and even the NAACP got "hood-winked"
by the Andrew Breibart video attack. The manner in
which the Breibart video manipulation was used in order
to suggest that a current Black official of the US Department
of Agriculture was anti-white was amazing in its audacity.
But what was even more amazing was the lack of any immediate
fact-checking with the release of the story before actions
were ordered.
What
disturbed me was the failure to question the accuracy of
a video compiled by a known right-wing blogger. In
addition to a failure to question there was the willingness
to engage in any action against Ms. Sherrod on the basis
of this flawed and misconstrued video. To believe
that a Black, experienced USDA employee would make a public
address announcing an anti-white farmer view should have
immediately set off bells and whistles as to whether this
was factual in the first place.
So,
here are a few lessons that immediately jump out from this
incident:
(1)The
danger of Internet releases: The lightning pace in which certain news stories move
at this moment in history is breathtaking. No media
outlet wants to be found sleeping at the switch, so there
is a tendency to jump onto something irrespective of whether
the facts have been checked and whether it passes the straight-face
test. As a result, misinformation is regularly posted.
In addition to this, there is an assumption by much of the
public that if something happens to be posted on the Web,
for instance, it must be true. Thus, for example, when
there emerged a proliferation of Internet-based stories
concerning allegations that President Obama was supposedly
not born in the USA, the fact that there were so many stories
led many people to automatically believe them to be true.
The Sherrod case was just another example of the Internet/Web
gone wild.
(2)The
mainstream media runs scared of the political Right:
This is true generally, but it is especially true in times
when the political Right has a certain amount of momentum
and when progressive forces are complacent or on the retreat.
The political Right is never constrained by the truth and,
therefore, feels very much at ease repeating, time and again,
certain views that lack substantiation. The allegations
of so-called weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's
Iraq is certainly a case in point. The Right is able
to succeed at this, however, because of their use of "echo
chambers," that is, a process through which right-wing
commentators around the country, in a coordinated fashion,
repeat certain themes in print, on the radio, on TV and
on the Web. When the Right engages in this, they are
able to create momentum and the perception of accuracy irrespective
of whether it happens to be the case. When that takes
place, the mainstream media tends to cower.
(3)One
more example of an active campaign by the Right to promote
the myth of an alleged anti-white racism by Blacks in authority:
The current situation is reminiscent of attacks that took
place during the Reconstruction period (1865-1876) where
white supremacists actively worked to overthrow governments
led by Blacks and poor whites. Central to their campaign
was the notion that Blacks were out of control, corrupt,
and exercising a tyranny over good white people. In
the current era, this theme has been played time and again
by the Right since early 2009. Every time that the
issue of race emerges, the Right jumps in to undermine the
discussion with stories of alleged Black racism. In
the Sherrod case, Breibart overreached, and may have set
his own cause back. But we should not assume that
these attacks will stop. This is a point that progressives
need to get. The nature of the right-wing attacks
on Obama and on Blacks in authority for allegedly being
anti-white are aimed at scaring an already fearful white
electorate into closing their eyes and voting Republican
as a way of holding off the mobs of people of color who
are portrayed as preparing to destroy white America.
The
Sherrod case should be used by progressives in order to
launch a counter-attack on the Right. Laughing at
Breibart's stupidity is fine for thirty seconds, but what
is really necessary is a broader campaign that aims to accomplish
several things, not the least being, debunking the myth
of anti-white Black racism and, needless to say, standing
up to the efforts at intimidation by the Right.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar
with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president ofTransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path
toward Social Justice (University
of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized
labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher. |
Jul 29, 2010 - Issue 386
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