Shirley Sherrod should not have been fired. This from Stephen Spruiell at National Review Online tells the story:

I’d encourage you to watch the video for yourself, but the summary version is as follows: After experiencing some hard-core white racism in the segregated South (her father was murdered by white men who were never convicted), Sherrod made a commitment to help black southerners in bad situations. “When I made that commitment,” she said, “I was making that commitment to black people and to black people only. But you know, God will show you things… you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.” She then proceeded to tell the story featured in the clip that Breitbart published (he says he received the clip in its edited form). A white farmer came to her for help, and because she perceived him to be like the others, she fobbed him off on a white lawyer — “his own kind.” But the lawyer didn’t help the farmer, and that is what led Sherrod to revise her previous biases against whites and to resolve to assist all economically distressed farmers, white or black, who came to her for help.

Love me some Breitbart, but here’s the thing: gotcha journalism (and we bloggers are wildly susceptible to this kind of thinking) leaves you open to this kind of thing. When you do your best to catch someone screwing up--showing weakness or hypocrisy--you aren’t actually engaging their ideas. There’s nothing wrong with exposing bad behavior--in fact, we have an obligation to do just that--but we should do it while critically considering the context and the evidence. The things that were said by the left during the Bush years were often the worst sort of gotcha journalism and, like her or loathe her, the treatment of Sarah Palin has often ignored her thoughts in favor of digging for personal attacks.

Ms. Sherrod wasn’t treated well by anyone in this situation. As easy as it is to view bureaucrats as sort of inhuman, the truth is that the loss of her job and the comments about her character could have serious repercussions in her life. It’s something she didn’t deserve.

Sherrod shouldn’t have been fired (and certainly shouldn’t have been fired before the context was considered) and she is owed an apology by everyone who ran with the story. Earlier today, the NAACP referred to this as a teachable moment and I agree. The lessons we need to learn are about how we handle political differences these days and how we handle racial politics these days. It’s not a very pretty lesson at all.

View the video here.

Update: You might also want to consider what the Anchoress has to say on the subject.