Fired USDA official sees fresh chance to discuss race

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

July 30, 2010 12 AM PT

Reporting from San Diego — Shirley Sherrod, the African American federal Agriculture Department official who was forced out of her job after a conservative blogger posted a heavily edited video of a speech she had made, said Thursday that she believed her experience provides a fresh opportunity for a discussion of race issues in the nation.

“If the suffering I’ve endured and the joy I’ve felt gets that discussion back out there, we’ve got to deal with it,” Sherrod said at a panel discussion, Context and Consequences, at an annual convention of the National Assn. of Black Journalists in San Diego.

Sherrod’s forced resignation as director of rural development for the Department of Agriculture has touched off a highly charged discussion nationwide about journalism, race and politics. She was fired July 19 after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a 2 1/2-minute video clip of a speech Sherrod had given before an NAACP audience in Georgia four months ago.

In the video, Sherrod appeared to indicate that she would not help a white farmer as she would a black farmer. In reaction, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People condemned her, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ordered her resignation.

But when the full speech was made public, it was clear that Sherrod was delivering the opposite message: the need to transcend race and to help all poor people.

Those revelations brought Sherrod an apology from the White House and a job offer from Vilsack. Sherrod said that the new job would be with the agency’s Office of Advocacy and Outreach, but that she has many questions about the position and wants to make sure there is a budget attached to it before making a decision.

Sherrod, 62, who appeared calm and poised during the panel discussion, said Thursday that she would sue Breitbart. She said he has not offered her an apology, nor does she want one.

“I knew it was racism when it happened to me,” she said. “No one had to tell me that.”

She also repeated her invitation to President Obama to accompany her on a tour of rural Georgia landmarks of the civil rights movement. She and her husband, Charles, were active in that cause.

“Saying that many Americans, black or white, don’t know much about the height of the civil rights movement a half a century ago,” Sherrod said of Obama, “I need to have him down there so I can take him around and show him some of that history. He should come and see and hear that firsthand.”

Obama, speaking at a National Urban League convention in Washington on Thursday, said he spoke to Sherrod about the episode and criticized what he called “a bogus controversy.”

“She deserves better than what happened last week,” the president said. “Now, many are to blame for the reaction and overreaction that followed these comments, including my own administration.”

Responding to questions in San Diego, Sherrod said she believed the White House was allowing vocal conservative journalists and bloggers “to decide how to govern.” She said she bore no ill feelings toward the NAACP, which condemned her before seeing the entire video, nor Vilsack.

“It’s not about me,” she said, “It’s about us and all we have to accomplish.”

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