Taking serious note of forced ouster of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, President Obama has directed the officials concerned to be more patient and refrain from drawing quick conclusions. It’s learnt that Obama phoned Sherrod to regret over the entire row that has brought the government officers and Cabinet ministers under scanner. Obama also acknowledged that Sherrod’s racial remarks during her speech to an NAACP audience was misinterpreted by the media. He also said that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "jumped the gun" in sacking veteran Georgian federal worker.
A new leaf of controversy was opened when a conservative blogger's postings of certain section of Sherrod’s speech hit the web. In the posting, Sherrod asserted that she didn’t give much attention to the pleas for financial aid by a poor white farmer some 24 years ago. The blogger, Andrew Breitbart, however defended himself, saying his intention was to highlight racism within the NAACP.
The incident prompted the Agriculture Department to sack Sherrod, who repeatedly pleaded not guilty. "One of the things I shared with Ms. Sherrod was the fact that the stories that she was telling about her own biases and overcoming them, those were actually good leasons for all of us to learn, because we all have our own biases," Obama told ABC in an interview. "I wrote this in my own book. There was times when I had stereotypes, both blacks and whites, that you had to work through, and you had to admit to yourself," he said. "We should acknowledge the enormous progress that we've made since the time Shirley Sherrod was a child in the Jim Crow South. I'm sitting here as a testament to this myself, as president."
