"In Sherrod's Wake".

In Sherrod's wake

Most of the principals in the Shirley Sherrod debacle have done the right thing, however belatedly.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has apologized and taken responsibility for hurriedly demanding Ms. Sherrod's resignation before he even sought the full story behind the doctored video used by a reprehensible blogger to defame her. President Obama has called her, and he, too, apologized. She has been offered a new job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Benjamin Jealous, national president of the NAACP, acknowledged that NAACP officials made the same mistake as Mr. Vilsack and condemned Ms. Sherrod without having the most salient facts.

Ms. Sherrod seems likely to come out OK after what started out as a really bad week. Indeed, if the administration and the NAACP are smart, we'll be hearing more from Ms. Sherrod. Far from preaching racial division and hostility, as right-wing bloggers and Fox News first claimed, she has a powerful message of reconciliation and understanding. The country could stand more of that.

This is not, however, a tale whose moral is “all's well that ends well.” The episode lays bare much that is disturbing on both sides of the political divide.

First, of course, there is the unmistakable evidence that some conservatives and right-wing activists are working furiously to stoke white resentment with the absurd fiction that white people are suffering racial victimization during the administration of the nation's first black president. The sliming of Ms. Sherrod recalls previous charades to set up and misrepresent the community organizing group ACORN or the silly characterization on Fox of the minuscule New Black Panther Party as a serious and ominous force. And, of course, it can get much worse even than that — with paranoid suggestions that the President is allied with Muslim terrorists or, as the Republican Senate candidate in Nevada has said, that armed resistance to the American government may become necessary.

It is unfair to suggest that most Republicans, or most supporters of the tea party movement, are racists. It is entirely appropriate, however, to insist that they denounce the extremists in their midst and terminate their associations with them. Forty years ago, there were left-wing splinter groups that espoused radical beliefs and sometimes practiced violence in the name of political change. No mainstream Democratic politician took up their cause. Today's Republicans should follow that example.

For their part, the President and his administration, which really did seem to fear what bloviator Glenn Beck would say about the Sherrod case, have once again been too timid. That's the case in frequently failing to counter brazenly false arguments from right-wing adversaries. (Remember the White House's slow response to claims that health care reform would lead to “death panels”?) But the administration's overly hasty condemnation of Ms. Sherrod was also an example of its reluctance to back up an African American caught unfairly in controversy. That happened last year, for example, when Mr. Obama distanced himself from a speech by Attorney General Eric Holder that employed one unfortunate phrase but justifiably deplored the country's reluctance to confront racial problems.

This administration has a brain, and it has a heart, but it needs to search further for a spine.