NYT writer Sarah Jeong accused of racism for old anti-white tweets, defenders come to her rescue

New York Times Stands by New Hire

Korean-born tech writer Sarah Jeong has been in the news for the past few days as the most recent person to join the New York Times. Shortly after she was hired, critics dug up old tweets of hers that were considered anti-white, and she was accused of being racist. Examples of her tweets included “#cancelwhitepeople,” and a tweet about her allegedly getting joy from being cruel to older white men. A few went farther and contained words that could potentially get me modded if I post them here, but Google is your friend if you want to read them.

In addition to the article from the New York Times I linked at the top of the post, several articles have come to her defense after the story broke. Vox blamed alt-right bullies for her tweets and the recent backlash. The Washington Post accused Republicans that complained about her anti-white tweets of being hypocrites and promptly bought up President Trump’s criticism of LeBron James and Don Lemon last Friday (as well as other past incidents) as a reason they don’t have a leg to stand on in criticizing her. The Verge, Jeong’s former employer, called the backlash from her old tweets “harassment and abuse,” and compared her critics (trolls in their words) to the people responsible for Gamergate.

Following the outbreak of controversy, she defended her tweets (link contains foul language) by stating that it was in response to harassment that called her things that I will not repeat here. Critics stated that she went above and beyond defending herself and is just making excuses to cover up her views that they say NYT agrees with. While Jeong was not penalized for her tweets by Twitter, Candace Owens (a black conservative Trump supporter) copied some of her tweets but with the word white replaced by black. She was briefly suspended from Twitter before having her account restored with an apology:

Even Wikipedia was accused of bias. Despite the controversy coming out several days ago, editors were accused of protecting her article by preventing any significant coverage of the tweet controversy from being included in her article. Editors continue to argue on her talk page on whether or not more information of the controversy should be included and as of 7 Aug 2018 at 0107 UTC her article includes one paragraph addressing the controversy without any mention of what the tweets said.

This whole incident brings up a debate on whether it is acceptable for a minority to say offensive things about white people and if it is an example of racism. Some people state that racism is racism no matter who is being targeted. Full disclosure, I have had that view most of my life. Others may have a different view, one example is that racism requires power, and as a result minorities can’t be racist since they usually had no power over Caucasians in the past.

What is your opinion on the situation? Let’s try to be a little civil since people will obviously have different opinions.

Haven't read any of her articles, so I can't say if that kind of hate translates into her paid work, but I don't think it really matters. She can have those opinions, and NYT has a prerogative to keep on on.

Can't say it's surprising. Last week NYT had an opinion article that promoted peaceful dialogue between liberals and potential racists. It's mainly reinforcing the notion that radicalism is fuel for reactionaries, a notion that is almost as old as politics itself, and a pretty tame and self-evident one. The writer was social media mobbed by the readership for the article. Luckily, she still has a job, but If NYT readers want more confrontational people writing for the outlet, then there is an obligation for NYT to hire people that are exactly that.

Oh, look, the same kind of people that ousted Cenk Ugyar and James Gunn.

Why can't weeee be friends?!

Racism is racism, period.

Prejudice and discrimination directed at someone due to their race, and no amount of mental gymnastics, pulling historical context into play, introducing varying power dynamics, or any other such nonsense changes what it is. All these tactics are are attempts to introduce moral relativism so as to be able to be racist against whites while still claiming to hold the moral high ground. No, if you're racist, you're racist. End of story.

While I am not advocating firing people for stupid tweets from years ago.....................others are getting fired for that and I don't see outrage over it.

James Gunn was fired from directing Guardians of the Galaxy 3 recently due to controversial tweets dug up on him and there are plenty of people upset about it, to include several of the cast members trying to get Disney to rehire him.

I don't really think she should be fired for those tweets, I do however think it's highly hilarious, hypocritical and very, very telling of leftists to claim to be against racism to openly defend someone who is unequivocally and blatantly racist on the basis that she's only racist to white people instead of any other group of people.

How do you guys figure you can twist your way out of this without sending the message that it's okay to be racist as long as it's against whites?

James Gunn was ousted for openly advocating the firing of people for having "bad opinions" and trying to smear another leftist dude who said other liberals should open up to right wing intellectuals such as Ben Shapiro.

The guys at Daily Caller, not liking his mud slinging tendencies (which is understandable, given that Ben Shapiro is legitimately one of the nicest people in american politics today), dug up his old tweets and gave him a taste of his own medicine.

That is a magistral lesson in don't start nothing, won't be nothing. Not really a good example to bring up in this context.

all of this ridiculous nonsense about firing people over comments could be a precursor for a culture that accepts that you can not talk about anything in your own time unless its glowing praises of the company you work for

why are people still using twitter? all it does it cause problems for people.

@comp_atkins: Seriously. Reading Twitter just makes me want to read an actual source with some details, and posting on it leads to nothing but problems.

@ad1x2: I and many other got fans are trying to get him rehired.

I WILL BOYCOTT THAT FILM IF HE IS NOT REHIRED.

@N30F3N1X: correction. James stated about people who currently and still had that mind set not people who said something a decade ago and changed now.

Disney already knew about those tweets when he was hired. He'said not the same person.

Anyone trying to justify it that way is just being a turd.

Lol this goes back to my double standard thread I posted a few days ago.

Honestly I hate Twitter though and I'm not sure why anyone bothers to use it.

the problem with your logic is you are putting 'consistency' of your enemy above your own sense of morality.

@tryit: No I'm just pointing out racism seems to be ok as long as your bashing white people. Either be against all forms of racism or let people say what they want. Don't police one side of the argument.

again.

you are placing the consistency of your enemies about your own sense of right and wrong.

you have basically said more than once now that you think its more important for them to be consistent then it is to do the right thing as you see it. and as a side note, you yourself are not constitent on the same subject.

so why not instead, just stand up for what you believe how it should be. rather then trying to play 'gotchas'

We have a thread about this already.

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/offtopic-discussion-314159273/is-there-a-double-standard-when-it-comes-to-racism-33438369/

Like I said over there, Jeong was counter trolling people that were attacking her for her race. NYT discussed this with her during the interview process and felt she explained the context of her tweets well. Free speech advocates should respect her. Instead of going to twitter and trying to get people banned, she just trolled them right back. And it turned out she was better at trolling than any of them could ever hope to be.

Credible link to that would be good.

Personally, I'm very forgiving and I dont like to see people lose their jobs over stupid comments. There's been way too much of this crap recently on both sides, where people have been digging way into the past to attack figures. I just read about some sports player who had to make a huge apology for comments he made when he was in high school. Hell, I'm such an entirely different person than the ignorant moron I was in high school. I'd hate for people to judge me on that past behavior because I've felt I've grown and learned an enormous amount since then. We all do.

That being said, her comments were very ugly and filled with hateful rhetoric. I disagree with many of the people here, who believe there was nothing wrong with what she did. There's no context in which many of the things she said would be appropriate. Attacking any group of people and demeaning their worth is not right even if you hate that group of people. You can't generalize an entire group of people based on the actions of a few. I'm very disappointed in many of you, but unlike Jeong, I blame you and not your race.

LOL I know that.

Ben Shapiro? A NICE GUY!? Dude is still as smarmy as his old friends at Breitbart.

Besides, not like the right wing weren't, you know... doing just that with leftists, so spare me. This is nothing more than a war of ideologies, first by censoring one another (though some deserve the cut support, like Alex Jones).

I don't normally like firing people for things they say but she is in a media position so I wouldn't mind. Maybe it would make some media think about the income they receive from baseless defamation articles. Whether that money is really worth the sacrifice.

Yeah we've talked a couple times about this part, here. Thing is there isn't even a way to phrase that mentality without error. Even in that sentence there, you do say that according to that view it requires a position of power, and that they usually did not have power in the past. The past is not now. Usually is not always. And the victim is rarely in the position of power.

It's pretty simple. If a person gets racially abused or locked out or humiliated they are not in a position of power. They are busy being f'd based on the color of their skin. What good does it do the victim of racism that there are other people with a similar skin color who are doing really well? The answer is: that doesn't help the man one bit. It's like saying that the man needs to be punished because his 'brothers' are so well off. The whole power fantasy angle only looks at the situation as a whole (or at least the whole... part of history that they like to look at) but not at what is happening to a victim of racism. Not at what is actually occurring there.

If we talk about racism that's not necessarily about the national or global scale. We could be talking about a man who has been refused entry into a store because of his skin color. And we can ignore the racism there on that level and only focus on what impact that has on the balance between the treatment of races in the world but that's purposefully steering the conversation away from what is happening over there. It's a bit like a judge deciding whether a man who robbed a bank is guilty or not based on the effect it has on the US stock market, ignoring the actual thing that transpired and the meaning of robbing a place in itself. He still robbed the bank.

If you do discriminate on race, then no matter how unfair the world is to any particular race at that time, you're still discriminating somebody on race. There's no right way about it. If a person does not want to be discriminated against based on their race, they should not discriminate based on race. And there we see the beautiful rational error of the radical left. I can hear them thinking, going: "If the white people don't want to be discriminated against, they should not discriminate based on race." That's grand. Lumping people together based on the color of their skin, and making them all responsible for what anyone does who is born with that color... That is exactly the type of thought that you want to cure the world of. Something must be wrong, but what could it be? Man, what a riddle.

people on the right really need to grow thicker skins and not be so easily offended by something like what she said given what was said to her

I don't really know anyone on the right who knows about this so I wouldn't be able to tell. But yes it would be nice if conversations became less of a minefield, generally speaking.

IF she was just responding to some racist trolls in a non-serious manner then I don't have that much of a problem with it. Would be nice if that was made clear in her tweets too. Then it's just whatever. My initial response was very much emotionally inspired, let's say. We all do it sometimes. But if she means it, that's very different to me.

She said she had thought of her comments as "counter-trolling," and that "while it was intended as satire, I deeply regret that I mimicked the language of my harassers. These comments were not aimed at a general audience, because general audiences do not engage in harassment campaigns. I can understand how hurtful these posts are out of context, and would not do it again."

That does sound sincere to me. So maybe I shouldn't have been so jumpy.

it her comment was unbelieveably benign

more over, she was counter trolling people who literally threaten violence against her

Let me know when you find the answer. Countless examples exist of people expressing their opinions on social media only to have it back fire on them. It's like people don't learn.

if I was a deep state conspiracy theorist i would say that this trend is to get people normalized to the idea of extreme censorship of what they say. Easier to get people to self censor with the believe that its normal then it is to bring down a hammer

I'd be OK with her being fired if the NYT was unaware of her unprofessional behavior. I'm also OK with the NYT choosing to give her a second chance at their own risk, coupled with a statement saying such behavior is unacceptable.

"Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins."

It doesn't really matter whether she feels that way or not. She put it and numerous other statements like it out there publicly, and it was despicable. She was being goaded by and responding to racists, but they're still racist unprofessional words on a public platform. It is possible to control yourself online. I'm not a child, hence "he started it" is not a valid argument to me. I'm skeptical about the hire.

I dont think such comments are worthy of a person being fired for.

even in the context of their employement.

people really need to grow thicker skin

Eh it's racist. If we are going to fire for racism then it should be absolute and not picking and choosing.

Irony. If only she had a skin as thick as me, none of this would have happened to her.

I'm only slightly offended by it, certainly a lot less offended than she was with the racism directed at her. I wouldn't petition to get her fired. I wouldn't insist she be fired, but I would understand if the NYT didn't want their brand associated with someone posting hateful things about one of the largest demographic groups in the nation. I won't stop reading the NYT because of the hire, but the childish attitude of her posts, combined with a pretty weak statement of regret that put nearly all the blame on those that attacked her first, doesn't exactly make me enthusiastic about her potential insights. I think that's a pretty reasonable position.

Ben Shapiro is one of the nicest guy there are in today's political scenario. Fact. Unlike leftists whose reaction would be to ban them from the room, when he gives speeches he asks for people who disagree with him to move in front of the queue during Q&A so that they can have a legitimate debate, he never insulted anyone in any discussion no matter how heated and only resorted to profanity when people were openly calling for violence against him (guess which party the students who did it came from), he never speaks out of turn, he makes sure he has reliable sources for any claim he makes to the point of being fastidious.

If you didn't have your head so far up your ass you could rename yourself Mitt you'd be able to tell. He's the living avatar of what political debate should look like, and just because he hurtz your feewingz doesn't mean he broke any rules of etiquette.

And yeah, it wasn't right wingers who got a Nobel prize fired over a joke about his wife or an engineer fired for calling out discriminatory hiring policies. You're comparing having certain opinions with foul jokes about the holocaust, sexual abuse and pedophilia. Don't even pretend they're anywhere near the same universe.

I agree with this. I just cannot help but admire with glee the amount of contrivances on top of other contrivances leftists make up to justify their RIDICULOUS double standards, considering they'd be the ones screaming for her head to be taken off her shoulders if she were caucasian and her tweets were aimed at blacks or hispanics.

What happened to Candace Owens is nothing short of extraordinarily funny.

His comment was directed at me. A leftist, who suggested it would be fine to fire her for this.

In spite of that you claim we have a ridiculous double standard? Thanks for demonstrating the constant paranoia and "we're the real victims" racialized bs on the right is alive and well. Like many leftists and moderates, I believe in attempting to be PC (aka, not an ass) wherever possible. I think that the anti-PC movement is largely an attempt by insecure, thin skinned people to make space to troll and bully because they're afraid and unsure of their place in the world. Afraid they are not capable of controlling themselves and will be met with ridicule, or they are overly entitled and believe being an ass shouldn't come with consequences. We made a racist internet troll president, I think it's pretty silly to worry about our society being too sensitive.

I think when you choose to ridicule PC norms, you are berated and victimized by tracts of our culture, sometimes unfairly.

I think when you choose to ridicule PC norms, you are celebrated and elevated by swaths of our culture, often stupidly.

Yeah, you have ridiculous double standards. Your opinion doesn't matter for shit, the left's answer at large does.

Also, you understand absolutely nothing of what PC or the anti-PC movement is and people voted Trump precisely because of childish and patronizing attitudes like yours. You too should take your head out of your ass.

If it is true people voted for Trump precisely because attitudes like mine exist or are rampant, then wouldn't those people deserve at least a little of the patronizing scorn you say I feel for them? Don't YOU feel that would be a ridiculous reason to elect someone? Not because he's good for your interests, but because they feel his election will what, make those like me angry? Give those like me perspective on their anger towards us? Surely, if I'm as arrogant as you say, and I'll readily admit I am sometimes arrogant to a fault, that would be a fool's errand, no?

correction.

My statement is one of fact that is not dependent on WHO I say it to.

People on the Right have thin skin and they need to get thicker skin.

Regardless of your own personal political views

I dont agree

a believe system can not be censored simple because we censor a person from speaking what they believe.

@tryit: Directed was the wrong word. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say given your response was prompted by my response, a leftist who said I was OK with Sarah Jeong being fired, it is paranoid and out of place to use that response in particular to suggest leftists as a group are giving Sarah Jeong a pass. As if leftists are some monolithic group, a fact belied and ignored by the self-same response. Not that I necessarily expected him to know I'm a leftist, I'm not active enough on the board to assume that, the suggestion was merely for effect.

Employers don't have to put up with offensive beliefs creating problems.

So after reading the actual articles, it appears that she apologized for counter-trolling, especially when she was insulted for her ethnicity and threatened because she was a lesbian (or someone thought she was a lesbian)...

So... why should I care?

here is what I am saying to be clear because I havent been

1. EVERYONE, left, center, no fucks given, right are ALL getting way bent out of shape over words, words that are not inciting violence.

2. the Right is particularly more sensitive about it then other groups

a tinfoil hat theory is that this is a strategy to get people used to more censorship by normalizing it and even having them accept it as reasonable.

It should stop.