One puzzle about the Sherrod episode is why, why was it so explosive, so radioactive? Why did the administration and NAACP react so quickly? Race is obviously part of the answer, but I'd suggest bureaucracy, specifically "faceless bureaucrats", is also part of the answer. [ed--gee that's a surprise.]
As I see it now, this is my best guess at what actually was happening in 1986 and then what happened last week.
What's the context? The NYTimes has an
article published Sept. 10, 1986, which provides some background. Essentially the Farmer's Home Administration (FmHA) of USDA had made lots of loans in the 1970's which, in the hard times for agriculture in the 1980's, had turned sour. Meanwhile the Reagan administration, not known for its enthusiasm about government programs, had tried to cut back on FmHA's programs. And GAO and the press had found a lot of instances of abuse of the programs. And finally 1986 was the first time there was an automatic cut in federal programs under
Gramm-Rudman. All this meant bad times for farmers. Although FmHA was trying to collect delinquent loans, as the Times article says, "The agency has been sued 55 times since 1981 by farmers saying its loan-collecting and foreclosure practices were unconstitutional. The agency lost 37 times...." My suspicion from Sherrod's statement is that the Federation had participated in one or more of the lawsuits and, perhaps, had obtained an injunction against FmHA's pressing its foreclosure actions.
To complicate the situation even more, in 1986 Georgia and the Southeast were suffering a historic drought as described in this
Times article. "In Georgia, Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin is predicting, ''We may lose up to 5,000 farmers over the cycle of the next 12 months.'' That would be 10 percent of the state's index of 50,000 farmers and ranchers, ''and of that 50,000, probably 25,000 are in financial trouble,'' he said."
From what we are told, in 1986 Sherrod was working for the
Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Land Assistance Fund, presumably as a counselor of some kind. Don't know how long she's worked there--the Federation seems to have originated in the late 60's. (In 1980 there was a
Times article about the Emergency Land Fund and its efforts to preserve black land ownership. The Fund merged with the Federation in 1985.)
Sherrod was about 38. In comes Mr. Spooner, who is her first white client. She assumes that he's not here of his own volition; he's not a walk-in customer like other customers (I'm assuming black farmers would often come to her first); he's been sent by USDA or GA Department of Agriculture. (I'd assume having him as a client means she becomes rather tense, more tense than usual. That would be my reaction, but maybe that's wrong, because she may be an extrovert people-person.) She's definitely on guard.
What's Spooner feeling? Sherrod says he eventually ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy so I'll assume he probably had FmHA loan(s) and was in trouble. We don't know why he tried the Federation--Sherrod's assumption that USDA had sent him might be correct. If FmHA was trying to foreclose, it might be a conflict of interest for them to advise Spooner on the best way to fight it. Referring him to a third party, like the Federation, would make sense.
Spooner is about 20 years older than Sherrod, so he's born in the early 1920's, in south Georgia when the KKK is riding high. We don't know what his opinions and feelings were in 1986; maybe he had evolved faster than other Georgians (who had elected Lester Maddox of pick-axe handle fame, then Jimmy Carter of the famous grain in earlier decades). In the interests of telling the story it's probably fair to say he's not happy about turning to a radical organization, which would have been the reputation of the [coop] and one which caters to blacks, but he needs to save his farm.
Again, we don't know if this is the first time Spooner is acting as the customer/client of a black, a situation where he is a supplicant. Let's say it is; almost certainly he's never applied for help on such an important matter to a black woman. So in addition to feeling trapped by his economic situation, he may well be feeling uptight from the situation--he's asking for help from a black woman. And it's a younger person
So, as Sherrod describes it, Spooner talks and talks. To her he comes across as trying to be superior. Maybe that's true, maybe not; maybe he's compensating for his helplessness.. Maybe he's telling his story from day 1 and trying to show that his predicament isn't his fault; maybe he's just anxious about getting help.
Back to Sherrod now: She says she's trying to figure out how much help she'll give him. There's an implication of games-playing here; he's trying to impress her, she's feeling her power. If she's bad, she'll turn him away. If she's good, she'll help him all she can. Somewhere in between is where she comes down, at least in her telling; she sends him to a white lawyer. I'm not clear why that's not the optimum solution. Sherrod isn't a lawyer and he's got legal problems, but maybe she thinks her advice would have been good. Or maybe she knows the lawyer isn't much good, as he turns out to be, and maybe that fact gives her a little malicious pleasure. It's definitely a situation with a lot of emotional currents. When the NAACP audience listens to it, William Saletan in his
analysis of their reaction only allows for one interpretation, but to me there's enough going on that likely different people picked up on different elements. Most of all, I suspect they were, as we do, empathize with her mixed emotions.
Now what about Sherrod's narrative strikes someone so strongly that they make the excerpt, someone adds text giving wrong information to the front, it gets played, and NAACP and USDA over react to it?
The first and obvious answer is racial. Breitbart's position now is that she's recounting an episode of discrimination and her audience is enjoying it. The idea is "man bites dog"--a black person has power and discriminates against a white. And, given the misframed excerpt, the idea which Vilsack and the NAACP was reacting to, the [wrong] fact she was a USDA bureaucrat when she did this. But humans tend to enjoy reversals: we love to see the powerful take a pratfall, so I don't think the racial element, by itself, was enough to account for its power.
I think there's another story here, a story which is symbolized by the conversion of "faceless bureaucrat" into an epithet. In part it ties into American anxieties about the power of the faceless bureaucrat. We don't like power; we tolerate powerful people if they don't rub our noses in it. But we're aware whenever we deal with a bureaucrat that they know the rules, we don't. They have the power, we don't. So the idea of a bureaucrat, like Sherrod, being arbitrary and capricious is frightening; it's particularly frightening if you represent people who usually sit across from the bureaucrat, like the NAACP, or if you manage a bureaucracy, like USDA, which has been called the last plantation.
So arbitrary bureaucracy is our bogeyman (a good old
Scots term, apparently) which has a scare power all out of proportion to its reality. That's why the excerpt had its power. And because it was powerful, Vilsack and the NAACP reacted too fast.
