The Age of Trump is an age of psychological disconnect. Pathological outrage is the order of the day, yet nothing much seems ever to actually happen. This week’s cataclysmic non-event involves an Asian-American lady selected to be lead editorial writer on tech/legal matters at the New York Times. It turns our that the new hire, Ms. Sarah Jeong, has been expressing rather negative opinions of a certain race on Twitter for several years now, going so far as to smile benignly at the thought of that race’s genocidal extermination. Fortunately for Ms. Jeong she didn’t mutter the “n” word, like the swiftly disemboweled Papa John, or mock the Prophet Muhammed (blessed be he), like the bullet-ridden staff at Charlie Hebdo; instead she merely expressed a certain pleasure at the termination of the nation’s racial majority, white people.
Now, as racial punching bags goes, we all know that whites are the only acceptable target going. Expressing disdain for Whitey gains as many status points on the left as brandishing a new Rolex does among security traders. But normally the disdain is phrased suavely–“hegemony, colonalism, institutional racism, white privilege, microagresssions,” yada yada: the dog whistles of leftist racism. Ms. Jeong’s commentary, on the other hands, distinguished itself by its outright crassness:
“Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”
“White men are bullshit.”
“#cancelwhitepeople.”
“White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.”
“Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.”
“oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”
She disposes of sub-genres of cracker-dom with equal finesse:
“Fuck white women lol.”
“Fuck the police.”
Clearly the Times weighed felicity of prose style as well before giving Ms. Jeong the nod.
The fun thing is that the Times earlier cashiered a white woman (lol) from the same position. Quinn Norton had been fired within seven hours of having been hired, for reportedly posting similarly disrespectful tweets too–but against more privileged classes: people of color and gays. Worse, Ms. Norton admitted to being personally acquainted with the legendary hacker Weev, aka Andrew Auernheimer, whom the Times (apparently unaware that Mr. Auernheimer is Jewish) describes as a neo-Nazi.
Not everyone was pleased with Ms. Norton’s dismissal. In an article about her departure, Adam Rogers of Wired wrote:
Everyone is redeemable, Norton explained, and silence or disengagement make racism worse. She pointed to an article she posted on Medium about talking to racists as part of fighting the good fight against them, but also keeping open the lines of communication—as opposed to just, you know, punching Nazis.
Indeed, a number of people came to Norton’s defense:
A few journalists, including a crowd of current and former WIRED staffers whom I greatly respect, criticized the decision. As my colleague Steven Levy wrote, “She’s no racist or Nazi sympathizer. She’s a smart edgy writer whose tweets are too easily taken out of context.” They described her as a complicated, forceful voice for the underrepresented—for women, for people of color, for the poor and the technologically disenfranchised.
Yeah, but so what? James Bennet, the editor of the editorial page, was unforgiving: “we’ve decided to go our separate ways,” he said, fatuously describing Norton’s swift turnaround firing as a glad mutual parting. But the Times has dug its heels in the sand hard over Ms. Jeong, and the quickness with which the white journalist was cashiered for tweets about one group contrasts vividly with the support the other journalist enjoys.
Are Ms. Jeong’s comments racist? Racist enough to cause her to get the boot? An easy algorithm for determining the racism of a statement is to substitute one target word with another. Replace any of Ms. Jeong’s comments above “black people” or “Jews” and see what happens. (Candace Owens, a black female conservative, did exactly that, and her account was immediately suspended and the tweets banned. Ms. Jeong’s, needless to say, remain.) As in Animal Farm, all livestock are equal, but some are more equal that others.
Of course, to the modern left, racism is entirely institutional and systemic—an expression of power. As such, only the powerful—white straight males—can indulge. Whatever the verbal assault, a nonwhite female like Sarah Jeong is merely (nay, heroically) resisting maleness and whiteness. It isn’t racism at all, just a victim speaking truth to power.
Yet what is it exactly that makes a Harvard law school graduate and writer for Forbes, The Atlantic and The Nation, now pulling six figures annually as a lead editor at the New York Times, a victim as compared to, say, a unemployed white male vet popping the day’s opioids with the other trailer trash? How exactly is Ms. Jeong, seated at heart of the informational power center that is the Times, not exerting hegemony, while a white plumber clearing away the sewage for these major players is? It’s a mystery.
But mysterious as it is—should the Times fire her? I think not. I would keep her on.
Why?
First, it would be honest. The Times is, quite frankly, grossly biased, and it is much better to have that bias out in the open. There are hundreds of subtle ways you can slip bias in–months of coverage are devoted to the Trayvon Martin shooting, for instance, but have you ever seen even one story at all in the Times about a black cop shooting a white kid? Statistics show clearly that more whites are shot by police than blacks, but the preferred narrative overrules the statistics.
Discerning prejudice when it’s subtle, like the above, rather than blatant and visible, is far harder than finding anything at all as you wade through Deridababble about neo-colonial microaggressions. But when racial hatred is as blunt and gross as Ms. Jeong’s indulgences, you find data worth knowing. For if someone with Miss Jeong’s views emerges from Harvard Law School, and writes for Forbes, The Guardian and The Nation after tweeting her racist comments publicly for years, what does it say about those institutions? Or our culture? Bare the symptom; it can’t be treated if you hide it
Second, it seems to me that the best practical solution to racism is meritocracy. Let the top scorer get the scholarship, whether he, she or it is black, white, disabled, foreign-born, leprous, whatever, and regardless of whether their personal opinions are distasteful. I would be content with an all-black SCOTUS, an all-female Senate, a certifiably Kenyan-born President if they were effective and honest and good at their jobs. Ms. Jeong is being asked to write about law and technology, and on those matters she seems qualified; I see no reason why her views on another subject should disqualify her. If she were asked to cover the opioid crisis in Appalachia and her first paragraph crowed about the growing piles of white corpses, that would be poor journalism. Canning her for that, not for her tweets, would be reasonable. But if she can do what she is being asked to do well enough, why give her the boot?
If you ask people to not generalize about others, you’re asking the impossible. Generalizing is what people do. All you can do is ask that they not do so in a shallow and irresponsible manner. Ms. Jeong has done so, and replies in kind have been delivered. But should she lose her job, her platform, for making her coarse generalizations? If she feels she must, I would rather she made subtle, informed, accurate generalizations about white people and other groups, but opinions don’t have to be kind or positive or even true to be honest. It is the task of a newspaper to publish commentary as it sees fit, just as it is the task of government to ensure that we live in relative peace with one another, secure in our persons and our homes. It is not the task of business or government to make us all like one another. We don’t know how to do that, and besides, not everyone is likable.
Living in the world as we know it means encountering people whom we don’t like and who don’t like us; people with whom we disagree, and with whom we would rather not associate. If that is expressed verbally and not violently, the resulting society may be irritating, but it nonetheless can be peaceful and viable. That is no small achievement; which is why I favor practicing the virtue of toleration even when it involves the intolerant. The witch hunts cause us more sorrow than the witches.
So. Fire her? Not at all. Let her tweet! Sarah Jeong is the canary in the coal mine, the shape of things to come. Better that old white men who read the New York Times hear her out, and be better prepared for the exultant cruelty she celebrates. More and worse is surely right around the corner; let us thank her for the warning.