7808: USDA Chief Diversity Officer…?

Is the USDA emulating Madison Avenue? Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack—and when’s the last time anyone ever thought about the country’s Agriculture Secretary?!—is backpedaling over his decision to dump Shirley Sherrod. To compensate for the unfair firing, Vilsack has offered Sherrod a position whereby she would combat racial discrimination within the agency. In other words, Sherrod would become the USDA Chief Diversity Officer. Brilliant.

From The New York Daily News…

Shirley Sherrod, USDA employee fired over bogus racism video, offered new job: unlikely to accept

By Aliyah Shahid, Daily News Staff Writer

Tom Vilsack has a new job for the woman he wrongfully canned just two days ago. So will Shirley Sherrod take it?

Probably not.

The agriculture secretary offered her some sort of civil rights position in the Office of Outreach at the Department of Agriculture, Sherrod told CNN.

“I need some time to think about it,” she said, adding that she wanted to see how willing the Agriculture Department was to tackle civil rights issues in the department.

She said on NBC’s Today show on Thursday that she was unlikely to accept the position, adding she “would not want to be that individual that…everyone is looking to to solve the issue of racism in the USDA.” Sherrod said she wanted to review all the details before making a decision.

Sherrod, the former Georgia director of Rural Development, was forced to resign under pressure this week after right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart published a video clip where she seemingly tells a group she did not help a white farmer as much as she could have.

Sherrod said her statements, which were given at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia in March, were part of a larger story about overcoming her own prejudices 24 years ago.

Since the release of the full video, the racist claims against Sherrod have been widely dismissed. Officials from the NAACP and the Department of Agriculture—who initially approved the dismissal—have since apologized.

While Vilsack said the decision to ditch Sherrod was not ordered by the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs also issued an apology on Wednesday.

But Sherrod contends the White House had a hand in the dismissal. She’d even like to chat with President Obama about it.

“I really would not want the president to apologize to me,” Sherrod said on the Today Show. “I would love to have a conversation with him though.”