Obama administration drawn into racial controversy

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration appears to have blundered into an unnecessary racial controversy after U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired a black woman over remarks made 24 years ago that were made to appear discriminatory on a politically conservative website.

Shirley Sherrod, who was the Agriculture Department’s rural development director in Georgia, was asked to resign on Monday after the broadcast of video from a March speech in which she described a decision to not fully help a white farmer when she worked at a non-profit group in 1986.

Sherrod’s hasty dismissal has been widely condemned, however, after it emerged that the video of her speech had been heavily edited. In fact, her anecdote was part of a larger narrative about the need for racial tolerance when dealing with poor people – white or black.

The incident has left Vilsack and White House officials facing accusations they bowed to conservative outrage for fear of being branded as reverse racists – without ever getting Sherrod’s side of the story.

Vilsack, in a statement early Wednesday, said he now plans to review his decision to demand Sherrod’s resignation.

"I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner," Vilsack said.

In the edited video of a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Sherrod said she wrestled with helping a white farmer, Roger Spooner, save his farm and sent him to "one of his own kind" for help.

"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land – so I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough," said Sherrod, whose own father had been murdered by a white man.

The 2 1/2-minute video was posted on a website run by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. It became the focus of coverage on Fox News, whose hosts widely condemned Sherrod and cast the controversy as an example of radical activists working for President Barack Obama.

But that version of the story began to unravel within hours. The wife of the farmer Sherrod’s struggled to help surfaced to describe her as a close friend and said she was thankful for the assistance she provided.

"She’s the one I give credit for helping us save our farm," Eloise Spooner told CNN on Tuesday.

Then the NAACP, which itself initially condemned Sherrod, released a longer, 43-minute version of the video overnight Tuesday.

In it, Sherrod explains she long ago reached the conclusion "there is no difference between us" and that racial bias is wrong. She also details how she ultimately intervened to provide additional help to the white farmer.

"God helped me to see that it’s not just about black people. It’s about poor people. I’ve come a long way," she says in the video.

Prior to her firing, Sherrod said she was told by a superior that the White House was furious about the controversy and wanted her gone because it would be a major topic on a highly rated Fox show hosted by Glenn Beck.

The White House denies it was involved in Sherrod’s dismissal. Officials initially said Obama was aware of Vilsack’s decision to fire Sherrod and supported it. On Wednesday, the White House said it supported Vilsack’s review.

Sherrod told both CNN and ABC News on Wednesday that she was not sure if she would return to the Agriculture Department if she was offered her old job back.

"You know, my first reaction was I am just not so sure I don’t know," she said.

Racial issues have re-emerged as a central source of controversy in American politics in recent weeks. The NAACP last week accused the conservative Tea Party movement of being a racist organization driven by antipathy toward America’s first black president.

Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, responded by charging that the NAACP makes "more money off of race than any slave trader." Williams was then forced to resign when, in an attempt at satire, he wrote a blog adopting the persona of a "colored" person and said emancipation from slavery should be reversed.