The New York Times. The Hill/Getty.
The New York Times has stuck with new technology editor Sarah Jeong despite a long list of racist tweets. The Hill. Jeong was hired on Wednesday but tweets by her that were blasting white people were found. The Times defended the hire saying the tweets were in the past and were in response to "harassment". Conservative media and pundits pounced and called both Jeong and the Times racist and hypocritical.
My Comment:
At the same time as this the media is blasting the Trump administration for calling the news media (at least the fake news media) an enemy of the people. It's hard to argue against that when the most prestigious and long standing newspaper in the country hires someone like Sarah Jeong who said some horrible things about the largest racial group in the country. It's hard to interpret this as anything other than trying to inflame racial tensions. And it is going to do nothing to alleviate concerns of bias at the New York Times.
Do I think what she said is racist? Yes. Obviously. It's very easy to see if someone replaced every incident of the word "white" in her tweets and replaced it with "black", "Muslim" or "Asian" that person would be beyond fired. It wouldn't even be a question that someone who said that about any other racial group in the country would be gone. Saying that about white people isn't excusable.
I have never bought the social justice warrior definition of racism. They have always said that racism is prejudice + power and I have always said that racism is hating someone based on the color of their skin and not anything else. But even by their definition Jeong is now a racist. She's obviously very prejudiced and given she's now an editor at one of the most powerful news organizations in the world, she has some very obvious power. I can't see how you can't call her racist unless you just think that racism isn't something an Asian woman can do, which is stupid, but is something I think the other side honestly believes.
I also think that this was a deliberate move by the New York Times. There are hundreds of journalists that they could have hired that would have similar abilities and politics that wouldn't have the Twitter history that Jeong had. Many of them might have thought the same things that Jeong was saying but would have never said it, saving the Times a headache. Hiring her anyways shows that either the New York Times didn't think anyone would care, which means they are totally out of touch, or that it's a deliberate middle finger to everyone that would be offended (ie half the country).
My guess is that it is the second option. The fact that the New York Times has kept her on and all the usual suspects on Twitter are defending her makes me think that they knew there was going to be an outrage and continued anyways. I think that the agree with her and want to use her as a test case so they can be as openly racist as she is. The fact that I haven't seen to many of the usual suspects doing anything but defend her isn't helping the case any.
Despite all of this do I think she should be fired? No. I really don't like outrage mobs getting people fired and if we are to have free speech we need to defend even the most odious of people. I did support the James Gunn firing because I think there is a decent chance that he is both a pedophile and child molester which isn't really a free speech issue, but outside of that I don't support any of the firings on either side of the political spectrum. I'd rather have a world were both Rosanne and Sarah Jeong have a jobs than a world where anyone who says anything racially controversial gets fired.
Unfortunately we don't live in that world. Right now were are in a full blown culture war and since scalps are being taken it would be foolish to expect that the right would just lay down and die without fighting back. If Rosanne can get fired I am not going to feel bad if Jeong does as well. It's a bad situation all around but I honestly don't know how we stop this from continuing.
I also have to say that Twitter seems to be a huge contributing factor. Though Twitter is a great place to learn about breaking news or promote your company, it's also an absolute garbage fire for anything else. It incentives bad arguments and saying stupid stuff. Jeong probably would have said similar things in real life or even on other social media websites, but only Twitter allowed those tweets to reach a massive audience. Had she not been trying to get Twitter attention this would have been a non-issue. And without a bunch of her followers reinforcing her beliefs, she probably would have never said it in the first place.
My personal belief when it comes to Twitter is that I don't censor myself, despite the danger. I may say some controversial stuff on there sometimes but I'm also a tiny account and semi-anonymous. I also don't pick fights on the platform at all and if anyone does I simply block and move on. Doing so has greatly improved my twitter experience compared to the people getting burned by it. That being said, if it wasn't for the purposes of promoting this blog and breaking news I probably would have deleted my account years ago. It's the main culture war battlefield and nobody should visit it without realizing the danger. If Twitter were to disappear tomorrow the world would probably be a better place.
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