A former chairwoman for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights slammed the Obama administration on Wednesday for caving in to conservative news outlets in the Shirley Sherrod case.
Mary Frances Berry, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and led the commission during the Clinton administration, accused the Obama administration of overreacting by firing Sherrod, who left the USDA after video of her comments at an NAACP dinner — remarks later shown to be distorted — surfaced.
“We now know for sure that the Obama administration fears Fox and right-wing media more than making sure they have the facts,” she said in POLITICO’s Arena. “We can also see clearly why, though an African-American president is a symbolic boon to blacks, he is unwilling to focus on the joblessness which disproportionately affects African-Americans. To do so risks being labeled racist.”
Berry also urged Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to rehire Sherrod, who was the USDA’s rural development director in Georgia, “if she is willing.” Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, said Wednesday that he is reconsidering Sherrod’s firing.
Though the agriculture secretary has come under fire for Sherrod’s abrupt dismissal, a longtime Iowa political columnist defended Vilsack’s attempts to oversee a department that has a “long, sad history of racial prejudice.”
“I also know he can have a short fuse at times,” wrote David Yepsen, a former columnist for The Des Moines Register, in the Arena. “So, in this case, what could have been seen as a decisive decision comes off as hasty,” wrote Yepsen, now director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University
No comments:
Post a Comment