Well, the New York Times is standing by its hiring of Sarah Jeong as its head tech writer. Jeong’s repugnant character was revealed in a bunch of anti-white tweets—tweets ardently defended by Leftists (see also here) who pretended that they weren’t racist because, of course, privileged Asian women, even if they went to Harvard, can’t be racists no matter what bigotry they display. After all, their skin isn’t white.
This is a sad chapter in the history of American Leftism, and I feel that this is some kind of turning point. Either it will create a sea change in the Left by showing how ridiculous they look when holding double standards on racism, or it will become one more piton in mainstream media’s climb to full-blown identity politics. I hope it’s the former, but, given the Control-Leftward movement of progressive mainstream media like the Times, I think it’s the latter.
The defense of Jeong by Mushbrain Leftists has taken two forms: either she was responding in kind to trolls (no evidence for this has yet been presented), or she was merely making jokes and we don’t understand her humor. Both are pathetic excuses. There’s also the excuse proffered by Zack Beauchamp, a senior reporter for Vox, whose conflation of racism with “the expressive way anti-racists and minorities talk about ‘white people'” must be some kind of nadir in the modern history of left-wing doublespeak.
https://twitter.com/zackbeauchamp/status/1025034038472531969
And none of these excuses hold water in light of the continuing revelations of Jeong’s bigotry and hatred, which now encompass not just white people, but the police, men, and Rolling Stone magazine for retracting its University of Virginia rape story about “Jackie” at the University of Virginia. You may remember that a student, Jackie Coakley, made up a tale that she was raped by fraternity members at a U. Va. party as part of their initiation ritual. The story, written by Sabrina Erdely, got front-page coverage in Rolling Stone, but the magazine could not verify the facts (other journalists and bloggers, particularly the Columbia University Journalism Review, called attention to the story’s problems). It turns out that Coakley made up the story. Rolling Stone issued a retraction, the police dropped the investigation, U. Va. apologized, and Erdely was found guilty in a defamation suit and ordered to cough up $2 million.
But Jeong didn’t like the retraction, and continued to insist that Coakley was raped, managing to get in a few more licks at white people along the way. Here are some of her tweets about that. Note that December 5, 2014, was the day Rolling Stone issued its retraction.
Note that Jeong was hired by the NYT as a journalist, but here she’s denying a journalistic investigation by Columbia and a journalistic retraction by Rolling Stone (as well as the U. Va. admission that the story was wrong) to buttress her own preconceptions, and once again demonize white people.
This cannot be satire, not does it appear to be countertrolling or “the expressive way minorities talk about racism”. This is just plain social justice pig-headedness in the face of the facts, mixed with toxic racism. Did the Times not know this? Isn’t it their responsibility to vet their reporters’ social media profiles before hiring them?
I’m somewhat amused by Matt Galanty’s take on Jeong’s heel-digging:
Here’s Jeong’s take on the police, with one including a gif that showed a cop being attacked by cartoon characters. Note that she says “cops are assholes”, “cops suck”, and shows her joyful hatred by imagining a cop killed by a rock or a molotov cocktail. She also broaches the idea of banning the police. Jokes? I don’t think so.
There are also plenty of sexist tweets against men, but you can find them yourselves by using Google. I’ll pass on to the following article in Areo by Iona Italia (click on screenshot) which is definitely worth a read. While Italia, like I, defends Jeong’s right to tweet what she wants and the Times‘s right to hire whom they want, she examines the reasons why the Left continues to defend Jeong:
I’ll examine two of the most common arguments presented by those who maintain that Jeong’s tweets were not racist. First, that racism towards white people is justified because of the historical and structural inequalities which have benefited white people in America and allowed them to oppress people of color. And, secondly, that this kind of speech cannot be considered racism, because its intent is simply to signal allegiance to the cause of social justice, and that “jokes” about white people are just an intrinsic part of the rhetoric of those who want to help bring about racial equality.
This is a measured but forceful piece. Italia notes that anti-white racism is in fact far less damaging than racism against minorities. But she still decries the former:
So why am I talking about racism against whites? For two reasons.
First, it is the one sticking point when I try to convince people that racism is wrong and that we must treat people as individuals and judge them, not by their skin color, but on a case-by-case basis. When I decry racism towards other groups, fellow leftists and liberals agree with me. If I tell them racism against whites is wrong, they demur. If there were a consensus that sentiments like Sarah Jeong’s are racist, I wouldn’t have written this article. I don’t consider the tweets, in themselves, of much importance. What worries me is how strongly people are defending this flavor of bigotry.
Secondly, the attempts to justify statements like Jeong’s as an exception to the general rule about racism, and to sneakily suggest that it’s OK in this case are damaging, for both strategic and moral reasons. If we want to combat racism, the only way to convince people to join us is to be clear, consistent, and honest. Blatant double standards will only alienate anyone who has a sense of fairness. But it’s OK when we do it simply won’t wash. And, more importantly, we will have abandoned one of our key principles: that every human being is of equal worth, no matter what the color of her skin. If the left’s slogan ever becomes We Hate White People, or It’s OK to be Racist Against Some People most white people will vote against the left or abstain from voting altogether. And so will I.
She goes on to debunk the redefinition of racism as “power plus prejudice.” As for the excuses that Jeong was just signaling membership in the social-justice Left and that statements like “Cancel white people” were just a joke, Italia says this:
A statement that someone sincerely racist would have been just as likely to make in exactly the same tone, manner and context is probably not a joke (jokes rely on comic hyperbole, irony, and incongruity). If you simply make repeated statements like “white people are scum,” you can reasonably expect people to take you at your word, just as you can if you assert that “Jews control the media.” Trying to wriggle out of responsibility afterwards by claiming you were actually joking is disingenuous and unpersuasive. This kind of trolling also muddies the issues, debases political discourse, and makes the left appear untrustworthy.
Excusing racist jokes when their butt is white people is not acceptable for the reasons Italia gives in the paragraph right after the screenshot.
She finally calls for a humanistic anti-racism that calls out all forms of bigotry:
I often hear that people who object to this kind of rhetoric are just “triggered white people” who have had their “feelings hurt.” This is the left-wing mirror image of the right’s tendency to say outrageous things simply to “trigger the libs.” It’s facile attention seeking and it’s a bogus rebuke anyway. People’s feelings are often hurt if you tell them you hate all their kind. That’s normal. Making racist statements in order simply to hurt people’s feelings is not something to be proud of: it’s the act of a bully. This argument is also a gross oversimplification. Many of those spouting anti-white rhetoric are white people themselves and many of those annoyed, frustrated, or offended by it are people of color. Anyone with integrity opposes racism—no matter whom that racism is directed against.
For the record, I am mixed race. [Italia is part white, part Parsi] I don’t fit into a neat white versus non-white dichotomy. I won’t join in with performative racism of any kind. I won’t endorse trolling. I won’t provide cover for bullies or spout racist slogans about any group. I will continue to speak out, loud and clear, in favor of a universal liberal humanist approach, in which a person’s worth is not determined by their skin color. I know I’m not alone in this. Join us.
Finally, in a demonstration of the hypocrisy of both the Left and Facebook, here’s a story (yes, it’s from Breitbart, but let’s not kill the messenger) of how twitter suspended an account of Candace Owens that simply took Jeong’s tweets and substituted the words “Jewish people” for “white people”. (They later restored Owens’s account.) The question remains, why, for Twitter and much of the Left, is it hate speech to demonize Jews but not white people? After all, Jeong’s account was never suspended, and as far as I know her tweets remain. Here’s an example of Owens’s parody tweets and Twitter’s suspension of her account. Note that in the tweet she announces it’s a parody of Jeong’s tweets!
h/t: divalent, cesar, grania
