Sherrod 'Needs to Think' About New Job Offer

Shirley Sherrod has been offered a new job by the USDA, but says she needs to think about it. “I’m not so sure that going back to the department is the thing to do,” she told CNN. She said the job was “something in civil rights with the Office of Outreach,” but that she “would not want to be the one person at USDA that’s responsible for issues of discrimination within the agency.”

In what seemed a somewhat barbed comment, she added, “I would want to weigh the seriousness of others and their commitment to once and for all ridding the USDA of the civil rights issues, the discrimination issues, that have been there for so long.” She said she’s heard from a lot of farmers who want her to return to her old job as director of rural development in Georgia, “but that’s not what the offer is.” (More Shirley Sherrod stories.)