Jonah, the problem with the audience defense made by your e-mailers is that Sherrod told her listeners this before launching into the white-farmer story:

When I made that commitment [to stay in the South], I was making that commitment to black people, and to black people only. But you know God will show you things, and he’ll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.

So, the audience knew what the up-shot of the story was going to be. In a disservice to everyone, Andrew’s source clipped the video to exclude this key introduction, which would have only added about 20 seconds more in length, but an entire world in additional context.