As an old pro, though, I know that you don’t fire someone without at least hearing their side of the story unless you want them gone in the first place.

This woman has been a thorn in the side of the Agriculture Department for years. She was part of a class-action lawsuit against the department on behalf of black farmers in the South. For years, she has been operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN.

I think there were those in the Agriculture Department who objected to her being hired in the first place.

Plus there was the politics. If you are running for election in south Georgia, you don’t want to have to explain someone like Sherrod.

But I have to add that the overreaction of the White House once again underscores Obama’s own problem with race.

This president has carefully crafted his image, and it hinges on his not being seen as a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton, as a flack for the NAACP or the Urban League.

In other words, he does not want to be seen as a “black” president. He wants to be seen as a president who happens to be black.

That mind-set permeates his administration. Anytime there’s an issue that is clearly “black,” the Obama people do not want to be associated with it in any fashion.

We saw it first in his distancing himself from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and to a lesser extent in the dust-up between police and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. And now this.

Obama has come in for considerable criticism from a number of respectable and important black people. He has a Latino issues adviser. He has an adviser on gay rights. He has an adviser on senior issues, on labor – but there is no African American issues adviser. There has been no big black cultural celebration at the White House.

There’s only one black in his cabinet. Even George W. Bush had more blacks in positions of power than Obama.

She may not have deserved what happened as a specific result of her NAACP speech, but she seems to be the type who had it coming. This woman was a dirt-bag race-monger from the beginning, and it didn’t take much provocation for her to let loose.

It’s like charging a criminal with one crime for which he’s innocent and having him admit to a different crime while on the stand. Breitbart’s off the hook, so far as I’m concerned, and this woman needs to be put back on it.

Edit: I’ll add this, from a comment I made earlier in the day, regarding the strategy that those of us who favor a color-blind society should use when facing bigots like Sherrod:

We need to show that if everyone were held to the standards of speech that conservatives are held to, most people can quite easily be called racists. We need to illustrate that there is a fairly widespread us-vs-them mentality in the black community that is lethal poison to a color-blind society, and that we will no more tolerate racism and racial discord from non-whites than we tolerate it from whites. And we need to show that we care enough about ending racial discord that we’re willing to call people to the mat over it.

Erick Erickson (whose name always makes me snicker) has some thoughts on this:

. . . Andrew Breitbart promised he would do to the left what the left has been doing to the right for years. He is gathering quite the collection of leftwing scalps and will forever warm the hearts of the right for the ACORN takedown alone. I’m glad he is on our side.

That said, I think Shirley Sherrod has been unfairly characterized as a racist. . . .

The left has used race as a weapon for a very long time. They have devalued what racism means – which is a terrible shame if you actually care about stopping real racism or remembering it in our history. The word now connotes disagreeing with the left instead of what it actually means.

Had Ms. Sherrod been white, she’d be vilified in the press, fired, and probably have trouble thereafter seeking work. The NAACP would be passing a resolution condemning the Department of Agriculture as racist. This is what we have become in politics because of the unrepentant race-baiting on the left. It has become a tit for tat war of retribution.

We see that on the Journolist as reported by the Daily Caller today. When Jeremiah Wright was in the news, the leftwing reporters on Journolist plotted to change the subject by declaring various figures in and around the Bush White House, including Karl Rove on the inside and Fred Barnes on the outside, “racist.” They wanted to scream racism not because the people to be attacked were in fact racist, but because it would be a useful way to change the subject.

That war has casualties on both sides. Ms. Sherrod is the latest. It is not fair. But that’s how the left plays and the right must fight on offense or not fight at all. It disgusts me to have to say it, but that is so very sadly where we are. As long as the left gets a pass on this all too easy game, the right has to fight back.

Ultimately, I’m with Erickson. Too many people I respect have been unjustifiably labeled racist for me to shed more than a couple of tears for Ms. Sherrod. The aim at this point is to make the Racist War so mutually damaging that we all agree to ignore it. This can’t end until the race hucksters and shamsters pack up and go home.

“Too many lives were sacrificed. Too much blood was shed. Too many tears were shed. We can’t turn back now.”

Is that in response to being denied the right to vote? Or is it in response to a county government deciding to stop forcing white kids and black kids to take lengthy bus rides each morning to distant schools so that the classroom aesthetics jibe with some bean counter’s notion of diversity? Or is it in response to being told that it’s 10:40 and McDonald’s stopped serving breakfast 10 minutes ago?  Or is it in response to your date not putting out? Who cares: When you’re with the NAACP, the same lines work for every situation.

“You’re dealing with people who are professional race baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history,” Williams said.

Jesus H. Christ, that’s strong.

I’ve been called a racist on numerous occasions, and I’ve made lots of comments about how overuse has almost completely robbed the term of all its power. The sooner the Left stops calling people racist for opposing racial preferences, etc., the better this country will be.

Is the approach illustrated above a way to achieve that end? In traffic, I’ve found that if someone starts honking his horn at me, if I lay on mine and give him a mean look, he’ll stop pretty quick and believe that he did something wrong. When I next get called a racist, I think whoever does it will be quickly labeled “a hateful race-baiter just looking to make a buck.” If enough people start honking, we’ll all just tune out the noise and things will be like they were if no one was honking at all. Then, eventually, we’ll just agree that driving in quiet is preferable and stop the damned honking altogether.

Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they’re also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.

There was, of course, nothing about hair or skin color in what the governor said.* If Milbank would get out of his Beltway bubble, where most “Mexicans” are in fact Guatamalans or Salvadorans with very dark skin, he’d know what those of us in the southwest know, which is that a very large number of Mexicans are not dark-skinned at all. A couple of hours watching Telemundo would leave you to believe that Mexicans are as white as the king of Spain. Certainly there are tons of Mexicans here in Austin who, at the end of a Texas summer, are whiter than me.

Mexico is a racially diverse country, ranging from tall and pale people of pure Spanish decent to short, dark people of unbroken Mayan lineage. Arizona and Texas border the northern, whiter regions of Mexico – except for their, um, different driving style, it is difficult to tell these people from native Texans. In large part, because there’s very little difference. Those of us who have daily interaction with actual Mexicans fully understand this, and don’t stereotypically think of them as “dark-skinned.”

That’s just the editorial overlay of a jackass east coaster who thinks so poorly of his countrymen that he believes opposition to illegal immigration simply must come from a bunch of racist bumpkins. Few things so greatly display one’s ignorance as to incorrectly presume the ignorance of others.

*Indeed, she claimed that bodies were being found without heads, so we would have no clue what color hair they had. But a good journalist should never let details get in the way of a race mongering cheap shot.

Anytime a Democrat accuses Tea Partiers of terrorism, any reporter worth his salt should ask the following: “In light of your concerns about domestic anti-government terrorism, would you now criticize Barrack Obama for maintaining a lengthy relationship with admitted domestic anti-government terrorist Bill Ayers?” Or perhas simply, “What, other than competence, was the difference between the president’s friend Bill Ayers and executed terrorist Tim McVeigh?”

Perhaps as a follow-up, “I can cite to three proven instances of violence by Democrat activists against Tea Partiers; can you cite me three proven instances of violence by Tea Partiers against their political enemies?” “I can cite a proven instance where Democrat activists went to a Tea Party and beat up a black guy while shouting racial epithets at him; can you cite a proven instance where Tea Partiers have done the same?”

Unfortunately, reporters would rather keep being stenographers for politicians who say stupid crap rather than asking questions about the stupid crap politicians say.

Crackers get to vote too.

Apollo