USDA worker quits over racism charge from video
(AP) – 2 days ago
ATLANTA — A black federal worker has resigned from a Georgia agricultural job after a video clip showed her saying she had not helped a farmer as much as she could have because he was white.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement Tuesday he had accepted the resignation of Shirley Sherrod. Vilsack says the USDA has no tolerance for discrimination.
Sherrod told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution she was forced out of her job as the USDA’s rural development director for Georgia. She said the two-minute, 38-second video posted online Monday misconstrued her message.
Sherrod’s taped remarks were from a local meeting of the civil rights group NAACP.
National NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous welcomed the resignation because the group opposes racism of all kinds.
By BEN EVANS (AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — The Obama White House is back to a teaching moment on race, once again playing the student.
This time, it tried so hard to steer clear of a black-white controversy that it wound up planting itself firmly in just that kind of a spectacle.
Now, President Barack Obama is trying to fix things with a mea culpa — offered through his spokesman — to ousted Agriculture Department worker Shirley Sherrod. But the incident proves that nearly halfway through his term as the nation’s first black president, Obama is still struggling to strike the right balance between taking a stand on race and leading the country past it.
The Sherrod firestorm dragged Obama into an ill-timed debate this week that overshadowed what was supposed to be a high moment for him: signing a significant legislative accomplishment, Wall Street reform, into law. And the incident reinforced the damaging perception that his White House caves too quickly to criticism from the political right.
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