Are these racist?
— Armin Navabi (@ArminNavabi) August 2, 2018
These are tweets by Sarah Jeong who was just hired to the NYT editorial board. pic.twitter.com/B3P7ay8QNR
From the New York Times today:
Times Stands By Editorial Board Member After Outcry Over Old Tweets
By Jaclyn Peiser
Aug. 2, 2018On Wednesday, The New York Times announced that it had hired Sarah Jeong as the lead technology writer for its editorial board, saying she “has guided readers through the digital world with verve and erudition, staying ahead of every turn on the vast beat that is the internet.”
There was soon an outcry on right-wing websites over tweets Ms. Jeong wrote from 2013 to early 2015, which referred to white people with terms like “groveling goblins” and “dogs.”
On Thursday, The Times released a statement saying that it knew about the tweets before hiring Ms. Jeong, 30, and that she would stay on the editorial board.
“Her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment,” The Times said in its statement. “For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers. She sees now that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media.” …
Uh, here’s a defender of Jeong providing the “context,” which don’t exactly uphold the NYT’s rationalization. The basic context in Jeong’s mind is that she has to live on a planet on which most of the good stuff was invented by the ancestors of white people, which ticks her off no end.
Soon after The Times announced that it had hired her, screenshots of her old tweets — which, in one case, included the phrase “#CancelWhitePeople” — began circulating on Twitter. They were soon picked by right-wing websites like The Gateway Pundit, The Daily Caller and The Federalist. Ms. Jeong also received support from people who said her tweets had been taken out of context and questioned the motives behind those who had resurfaced them.
In contrast, the motives of the anti-white male bigots are above question because they are good for the Democratic Party. From my current column in Taki’s Magazine:
But how can the Democrats build an “excited, diverse coalition” among people who, by definition, don’t really have much in common? The Democratic coalition is always on the verge of flying apart in fratricidal enmity. At the moment, for example, the media is stoking black rage toward white women, whom The New York Times is repeatedly calling by the racist slur “Becky,” for summoning the police when they feel unsafe.
The one thing the Democrats’ confederacy of the dissimilar can share is hatred of whites, or, to be precise, cisgender straight white men.
This is why the press keeps pushing endless hate hoaxes. Shameful antiwhite racist libels are the KKKrazy Glue that holds together the Democratic coalition.
Besides, don’t forget simple morally corrupting self-interest. Sarah Jeong spreading mindless hate against white men advances the career prospects of non-white-men such as, to take one example, Sarah Jeong.
A remarkable fraction of today’s opinion journalism consists of blatantly self-interested promotion of racial and gender hate by non-white-men.
In contrast to today’s action by the NYT, back in 2015 (in Unz Review):
Razib Khan Hired and Fired By the New York Times, Both On the Same Day!
JOHN DERBYSHIRE • MARCH 20, 2015 • 900 WORDS • 46 COMMENTS • REPLYYesterday (i.e. Thursday) morning I was reading this article about a raft of new names hired to post at the New York Times blog. To my surprise, I saw the name Razib Khan among them. “Wow,” I thought, “Things are looking up.”
I’ve known Razib for 15 years or so, since we both belonged to Steve Sailer’s Human Biodiversity email group. He’s a brilliant guy; better read in the human sciences than anyone I know — and I know Steve Sailer, Nicholas Wade and Steven Pinker. …
Don’t read Razib if you’re not willing to engage with the latest results in behavioral genetics, population genetics, computational genomics, and related areas of the human sciences.
(And, by the way, don’t post to the comments thread on Razib’s blog unless you’re on-topic and at least as well-informed as he is on the point under discussion. Razib does not suffer fools gladly, and is merciless with commenters who don’t come up to his own high standards.)
…Well, so I was looking forward to Razib’s contributions to the New York Times blog, and to seeing him pitilessly demolish some of the innumerate idiots he’d be sharing that blog with.
Alas, it was too good to be true. I was browsing the blogs that same evening, Thursday evening, and I saw a post on geneticist Greg Cochran’s blog with the title The Once and Future Khan. From which:
Razib Khan managed to get himself hired and fired by the New York Times over the course of a single day, an enviable record. Having the Times look upon you with favor is a dubious honor in the first place, something like having a leper ask you out on a date — so a quick hire-and-fire is optimal. Something for the CV, but you never had to actually hang out with the slimebags. Not as cool as “refused the Fields Medal.” but pretty cool.
