Firing of black USDA official reassessed after right wing attacks

The conservative news media's sharp criticism of a black agricultural department employee leads to a quick firing. If you feel like you’ve heard a similar story before, you have: it happened to Green Jobs Advisor Van Jones last fall. And this week, it happened to the USDA's Shirley Sherrod. But now more has come out in the case - causing some to question the Administration's rapid action. Tanya Snyder reports:

TRANSCRIPT:

It all starts with the controversy over the NAACP’s resolution condemning racism within the tea party movement. Conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart went on the warpath, looking for evidence of racism within the ranks of the NAACP itself. And he thought he found it, in a speech given by USDA official Shirley Sherrod at an NAACP conference in March.

In the speech, Sherrod said she hadn’t given the “full force” of her effort to a white farmer who was being foreclosed on, since so many black farmers were struggling.

SHERROD: Everything that I did working with him helped me to see that it wasn’t about race, it’s about those who have and those who don’t.

Sherrod explained to CNN that she tells that story to show how she had gotten beyond race. The incident took place 24 years ago, when she was working for a nonprofit- decades before taking over as rural development director for the USDA in Georgia.

Brietbart posted a severely edited version of the video. FoxNews picked up on it, and within hours, the White House was demanding her resignation.

SHERROD They asked me to resign. They harassed me as I was driving back to the State Office from West Point, Georgia. I had at least three calls telling me the White House wanted me to resign. And the last one asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it.

And why did they demand this?

Sherrod told CNN what they told her:

“Because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

The NAACP initially condemned Sherrod’s actions as well, based on the FoxNews video, but quickly recanted, saying they’d been “snookered”, and they are now helped her clear her name.

Michael Fauntroy is a professor of public policy at George Mason University:

" Pressure is building on the administration to bring Sherrod back to her previous position. But at some level the toothpaste is already out of the tube. The White House has continued a pattern of being weak on the question of race, and I don’t think bringing her back is going to change that."

Fauntroy says President Obama hasn’t shown any inclination to have an open dialogue about race. Others agree, saying 18 months after the election of the first black president, the conversation about race in this country is more distorted than before.

Mark Potok investigates hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center:

“President Clinton did a better job of trying to discuss race openly in this country than in fact Barack Obama has done. The Obama administration is absolutely terrified of alienating large numbers of white people.”

And that’s been the point of attack for conservative groups and media pundits. By trying to show evidence of anti-white racism by members of the administration they promote fears that the federal government is an instrument of oppression against white people.

That’s what Peter Montgomery says. He monitors the right wing political movement  People for the American Way.

MONTGOMERY: Since even before the election of Barack Obama, and certainly since then, the political right has used every strategy they have to fan the flames of racial resentment as a really crass strategy to try to win back the white working-class voters they lost to President Obama.

Conservatives on FoxNews and elsewhere said Green Jobs czar Van Jones was a black radical and a conspiracy theorist – and he was forced to resign. Then they hit the roof over a Homeland Security report on the rise of right-wing extremism – which the Administration then retracted. They turned race-based voter intimidation on its head and accused ACORN of intimidating white voters – charges which Obama rejected- but he then put as much distance between himself and ACORN as he could.

Before Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, conservatives accused her of racism because of her famous “wise Latina” remark – but the Administration stood by her.

Michael Fauntroy says that one was easy:

“The difference was that he knew he had the votes to win. There was never any question but that Sonia Sotomayor was going to be confirmed. But these other two people were lower-level employees who could be thrown under the bus and not be worried about.”

Even Glenn Beck has said Sherrod shouldn’t have been fired.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs formally apologized to Sherrod in his press briefing Wednesday. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, whose decision it was to fire her, has now said he’s reviewing the decision. Sherrod first indicated she wasn’t even sure she’d take the job back if she couldn’t be assured she’d be treated fairly. But she seemed convinced by entreaties by the NAACP to continue her important work – if given the chance.

Tanya Snyder, FSRN, Washington.

Photo: Shirley Sherrod, as regional director of USDA, in Georgia

Photo credit: USDAgov