Firing of USDA official now under review; case highlights larger political problems involving race
By Karen Tumulty and Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
A fuzzy video of a racially themed speech that prompted the ouster of an Agriculture Department official this week has opened a new front in the ongoing war between the left and right over which side is at fault for stoking persistent forces of racism in politics.
By early Wednesday, as the full context of the video became known, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he would review his decision to ask the official to step down.
Shirley Sherrod, a black woman appointed last July as the USDA's Georgia state director of rural development, was forced to resign after a video surfaced of her March 27 appearance at an NAACP banquet. In a speech, she described an episode in which, while working at a nonprofit organization 24 years ago, she did not help a white farmer as much as she could have. Instead, she said, she sent him to one of "his own kind."
The video was posted Monday on the Web site of conservative activist Andrew Breitbart as a counterattack on the NAACP, which passed a resolution last week accusing the "tea party" movement of having "racist elements."
(More here.)
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
A fuzzy video of a racially themed speech that prompted the ouster of an Agriculture Department official this week has opened a new front in the ongoing war between the left and right over which side is at fault for stoking persistent forces of racism in politics.
By early Wednesday, as the full context of the video became known, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he would review his decision to ask the official to step down.
Shirley Sherrod, a black woman appointed last July as the USDA's Georgia state director of rural development, was forced to resign after a video surfaced of her March 27 appearance at an NAACP banquet. In a speech, she described an episode in which, while working at a nonprofit organization 24 years ago, she did not help a white farmer as much as she could have. Instead, she said, she sent him to one of "his own kind."
The video was posted Monday on the Web site of conservative activist Andrew Breitbart as a counterattack on the NAACP, which passed a resolution last week accusing the "tea party" movement of having "racist elements."
(More here.)
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