Obama administration stumbles on race again

WASHINGTON (AP):

The Obama administration, one of the most deliberative in recent United States history, has for a second time found itself politically embarrassed over a hair-trigger reaction on race.

While denying direct involvement in the improper firing of an African American Agriculture Department official, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs apologised on Wednesday under a blizzard of questions from reporters.

"A disservice was done and an apology is owed," Gibbs said.

As the first black president of a country with a deeply troubled racial history, slavery, a civil war fought largely over that issue and a long period of segregation, President Barack Obama has tried to play down the divisive issue, to present himself as the post-racial leader.

Gibbs denied that the president was overly sensitive to fears among some white Americans that his administration would show favouritism to blacks. Rather, he said, the forced resignation Monday of Shirley Sherrod was the result of action taken because of the administration's failure to "ask the right question."

She was serving as the Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia.

Although the administration has now apologised, Sherrod has said she was poorly used when quickly ousted by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and condemned by the NAACP, America's leading black civil rights organisation.

Obama has ordered Vilsack to talk the matter out with Sherrod, Gibbs said, and Vilsack offered her a "unique opportunity" for a new job. Sherrod said she was thinking it over.

Yesterday, Obama called Sherrod to express his regret over the incident.

"The president told Ms Sherrod that this misfortune can present an opportunity for her to continue her hard work on behalf of those in need," the White House said in a statement. "He hopes that she will do so."

The issue blew up after a conservative website posted truncated video remarks by Sherrod in which she said she had been disinclined to help a white farmer as much as she could have 24 years ago. At the time, she worked for a non-profit rural farm aid group.

Conservative Fox television quickly began reporting the incident, spreading the issue across the country. Other cable outlets finally reached the farmer and his wife who came to Sherrod's defence, declaring her responsible for saving their farm from creditors.

Omitted from the Web posting and the initial reporting was the fullness of Sherrod's remarks in which she said her initial feelings about not helping the white farmer led her to examine that reaction and to understand that the issue involved poverty, not race.

Racism lingers

Lingering racism bedevils the American national consciousness and some on the extreme right have used the issue in tangential attacks on Obama.

Those tactics have had their effect.

While the White House said Obama was not aware of the Sherrod case until after she was forced to resign, the administration at first said the president supported Vilsack's decision to fire her.

It has likewise now joined Vilsack in declaring the whole issue should be re-examined.

Obama had his first presidential stumble on the race issue a year ago this month. It involved arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, a black professor at Harvard University, by Sgt James Crowley, a white sergeant with the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department who was sent to investigate a possible burglary at Gates' home.

Although Crowley determined Gates was in his own home, he arrested Gates anyway after their encounter grew heated.

The charges were quickly dropped, but Obama's remarks at a news conference - he said the police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates - inflamed the debate. The president later said he should have expressed his concerns with different language.

That's when he invited Crowley, who steadfastly denied race was a factor in the arrest, and Gates, a friend of Obama's, to the White House to thrash things out, face-to-face, over a beer.

Ties cut

Conservative media outlets and bloggers have also been trying to win points against Obama with complaints about the Justice Department's handling of New Black Panther Party members who allegedly threatened voters at a Philadelphia polling place on the day Obama was elected.

A criminal investigation into the episode was dropped by the Bush administration, but the Obama Justice Department obtained a narrower civil court order against the conduct than Bush officials had sought.

The issue of racism dogged Obama through his historic run for the presidency, especially his relations with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama's Chicago church.

Obama finally cut ties with Wright after his incendiary remarks became an Internet sensation in the spring of 2008. At a National Press Club appearance in April that year, Wright claimed the US government could plant AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested Obama was keeping his pastor at arm's length for political purposes while privately agreeing with him.

Obama denounced Wright as "divisive and destructive" and later cut ties to the pastor altogether and left Wright's church. But he stood fast with his preacher for a long time, given that Wright's remarks were threatening Obama's campaign for president.

He did not stand by Sherrod by countermanding Vilsack's decision to fire her.

Gibbs said the White House would act differently going forward.

"One of the great lessons you take away from this is to ask all the questions first," the press secretary said.

But he sought an excuse in the nearly warp-speed of the American news cycle.

"I can't speak for everybody involved," Gibbs said. "But I think we live in a culture in which things whip around. People want fast responses."

The White House was embarrassingly too fast this time.