It seems like his picture disappeared.
I think the difference is that it wad somewhat ambiguous who Guap was addressing, while you left no doubt.
I don’t really think the replies to Guap suggest it was ambiguous at all.
Sure, which is what happened here. She made a mistake. It happens.
But it’s still a mistake.
I think even she says it was a mistake. Are we all agreed on that now?
No, it’s reasonable for everyone.
This is not affirmative action. We don’t need to apply some different standard such that minorites can make up for some sort of historic racism deficit. That’s ridiculous.
She did. That was the correct response.
Sure. As long as we pretend there’s no such thing as history or context, which is a pretty stupid thing to pretend…and I don’t think there’s any rule around here that we have to play dumb.
Nevertheless, I don’t think Twitter is a great medium for these perfomative expressions of anger or satire. For one thing, Twitter resists context and timeliness with all it’s might. Tweets from years ago are easy to pull out and recontextualize by people in bad faith. Better just to not do it.
Sure if it was just one or two example. But in her case it is literally scores of racist tweets spread out over a couple of years. That’s not a a mistake that’s pattern of racism. The fact that she is a minority and her target is white people, is mitigating circumstance in her punishment. But it doesn’t change the fact that what should did was wrong.
I don’t understand why it is so hard for people to say that she made lots of racist comments, and that is strong evidence that she is in fact a racist.
So it is ok to characterize Trump supports as racist based only on their tweets, but not for Sarah?
Because the comments were transparently ridiculous, to the point that they were obvious parody. Parodies of racism take the form of racism but aren’t racist.
When you can discern sincerity in those tweets, yes. Why not?
The gist of the disagreement here seems to be this: Some people think Jeong’s tweets were deliberate expressions of sincere racist views, and some people think they were deliberate expressions lampooning racist views. If you don’t grasp that, your arguments are going to be misdirected.
No. I’d say it’s ok to characterize their tweets as racist, maybe.
I’m not sure how many ways there are to say: context matters. You could infer from a Trump supporter’s tweets that she/he might be a racist. I’m not sure you could make a definite statement one way or the other just based on the twitter record, though.
Of course, these days a lot of white supremacists openly call themselves that. I’m pretty comfortable calling them racists, yeah. And probably they’d agree with that label.
Random aside meant as a break from people being assholish to each other in here;
Having sadly dealt with more than a few, the really weird thing I’ve anecdotally picked up is they tend to not be okay with the label. Neo Nazi? Skinhead? Sure. But racist? Oh, no… they’re just “right” in their minds.
What’d I do? I think I’m being respectful.
Not singling anybody out; you just had the remark about racists which inspired me to comment, lol
So what I’m getting here is that Sarah Jeong
- Is not a nice person. Ambitious and callous. (Enidigm article).
- Wrote some foolish/somewhat racist tweets.
- Is being targeted purposefully by xenos happy to put down an uppity, female person of color.
These three points seem to be able to coexist in my head. I have not decided whether I approve of her being on the Times editorial board.
Your mind-reading skills are super impressive, I don’t understand why you haven’t won the World Series of Poker with your uncanny ability to ascertain the true meaning and intention of people even when they say the opposite.
I give everybody 3 strikes before I categorize them as something.
Jeong hit her quota many times over.
As Brett Stephens says in his column.
" Among these: “White men are bull—”; “#CancelWhitePeople”; “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men” and “f— white women lol.” She has also bashed the police, called for censoring a fellow journalist, and believed the 2014 University of Virginia rape hoax, in the course of which she lashed out at “white men” and “white college boys.”
We should call many of these tweets for what they are: racist. I’ve seen some acrobatic efforts to explain why Jeong’s tweets should be treated as “quasi-satirical,” hyperbolical and a function of “social context.” But the criterion for racism is either objective or it’s meaningless: If liberals get to decide for themselves who is or isn’t a racist according to their political lights, conservatives will be within their rights to ignore them.
You can defend some of her tweets as being over the top, and some as well she was counter trolling, but how in the hell do you defend these? If you stretch you can say she is just reacting to be the daughter of Korean immigrants in the age of Trump. But in some case like the “fucking white woman lol”, when she having a good day and some spokeswoman said something perfectly reasonable which she disagreed with. The spokeswoman only crime was being white.
In some ways, I agree with @charmtrap and Brett Stephen people are more than their Twitter accounts. So perhaps it’s unfair to judge somebody solely on the basis of what they tweet. That should apply to everybody liberals and conservatives. But I actually think it is more likely that Twitter is a window into what people truly believe, their inner soul
But the more important point is that there are lots of racist in this country and they aren’t all white. I’ve been in in a heavily Asian culture since I’ve 18. Many Asian have told me that their parents are racist. They want them to marry Chinese (if they are Chinese), Japanese (if they are Japanese),Korean or Vietnamese are acceptable, whites are tolerable. dating/friendship with a Mexicans isn’t ok, and dating blacks are grounds for being disowned. But their racism is just a severe flaw in their personality, it diminishes but doesn’t negate their many positive traits, devoted parents, hard-working, active in the community, law-abiding, polite etc. My grandfather was racist until the day he died and my mom is less racist than she was but still is and I suspect this is generally true for most members of the greatest generation. There are many good things I can say about both people. I imagine a similar pecking order is common in many families in America and the rest of the world.
I find the intolerance of racist to be understandable but rather naive. Being racist is a very bad thing, but it is better than a being a murderer, rapist, or drug dealer, and no worse than being a wife beater, sadist, asshole etc. Racism isn’t a permanent condition, people do a change and literally tens of millions American were racist and no longer are. Even more (pre-Trump) decided that should keep their racist opinion to themselves and their closest friend.
Sarah Jeong is a racist. It is really unfortunate because she is young, intelligent and well-education. By all accounts, she is also very knowledgeable about technology and an excellent writer. As long as she keeps her opinion about white people to herself I don’t have a problem with her being on the NY Times editorial board. Maybe working around all those white people will change her opinion.
Just fyi, as we have crossed swords a bit on this it was not me. I wold sooner tell you directly if I have a problem :) .Anyways in case you were wondering you can cross me off the suspect list, I know I would be curious. so I dont blame you wanting to know.
What really bums me out is that, as @playingwithknives has said, those of you who take issue with Jeong are playing directly into the hands of a manufactured outrage machine. The people who turned this into an issue don’t deserve people like Timex and Rod Humble. :(
Since the Blazing Saddles thing didn’t seem to work for some of you, what about Get Out? In Get Out, Jordan Peele suggests that white people want to scrape black people out of their bodies and then wear them like shells as a latter day expression of slave ownership. How is that different from Sarah Jeong’s absurd Tweets? Isn’t Get Out open to the same criticism as Jeong’s Tweets?
-Tom
First i appreciate the kind words and right back at you! :) You rock! So do folks here on the other side. I dont doubt everyone’s sincerity.
I havent seen get out. But if its a work of fiction then that comparison doesnt work for me.
To make an silly comparison if I said “Infowars is not racist or insane, its clearly a parody and a work of fiction you guys are fools if you cant see that!, Its just making fun of crazy fascists!” you would rightfully think I was out of my mind.
She said many of these things entirely straight faced , it was not a parody. I mean just go read her twitter.
It is a very obvious and clear cut case of a racist getting caught. She has got away with it, which I find upsetting but its upsetting in the context of a much wider and massive rise in normalizing racism in the United States which upsets me much more.
If the NYTimes and reasonable liberals are getting on board with the “its ok for our side to be racists” train then that makes me sad.
I would note I could now write several paragraphs talking about how Jeons racism matters far far far less than all the fucking hideous racist shit POC are being subjected to on a daily basis these days but you can fill in the blanks. I just want to acknowledged that fact.
I also feel mildly guilty about us all (thats all of you including me) spending so much time about a relatively trivial racist incident just because its about her being racist to white people, when poc’s lives are being impacted daily.
In my happier world everyone here would have looked at that and said “wow yeah thats racist, thats awful, hope the NYTimes does something about it.” , pat ourselves on the back for not excusing our sides racists like the other side does, then move back to the far far far bigger issues of racism that are occurring daily against POC.