As Twitchy reported earlier Thursday, we’re to the point where a New York Times features writer had to apologize for a tweet in which she suggested new hire Sarah “#CancelWhitePeople” Jeong had yet to prove she deserved the warm welcome that columnist Bret Stephens had offered her.
For those who still haven’t been convinced that Jeong’s many tweets about hating “dumbass f**king white people” weren’t racist, here’s Vox’s Ezra Klein with an explainer:
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1027173350819459072
You see, on Twitter, “white people” doesn’t necessarily mean white people. We’ll let Klein explain:
A few years ago, it became popular on feminist Twitter to tweet about the awful effects of patriarchal culture and attach the line #KillAllMen. This became popular enough that a bunch of people I know and hang out with and even love began using it in casual conversation.
And you know what? I didn’t like it. It made me feel defensive. It still makes me feel defensive. I’m a man, and I recoil hearing people I care about say all men should be killed.
But I also knew that wasn’t what they were saying. They didn’t want me put to death. They didn’t want any men put to death. They didn’t hate me, and they didn’t hate men. “#KillAllMen” was another way of saying “it would be nice if the world sucked less for women.”
…
The same dynamic seems to me to be at play in the way “white people” is used in Jeong’s jokes. On social justice Twitter, the term means something closer to “the dominant power structure and culture” than it does to actual white people.
If Klein wants to argue that Jeong’s “jokes” aren’t racist because Asian-American women don’t compose “the dominant power structure” of America, he needs to get in line, because that bit has been played out all week. You can’t be racist if you’re not in power, duh.
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The real culprit, Klein believes, is Twitter itself. Twitter is weird, he says, and it strips comments of context — which is why you might not want to tweet something that, devoid of context, sounds alarmingly racist. You’d think a professional writer would know that.
So … Voxsplained. Any questions?
Bewilderingly, @ezraklein appears to define bad faith as disagreeing with him, and good faith as agreeing with him. #identitypolitics https://t.co/v93SXiH7Cj
— Michael A. Lowry (@mlowry) August 8, 2018
This article is a bunch of excuse making to avoid ever having to criticize people who aren't white because adios, woke points if you do.
— neontaster (@neontaster) August 8, 2018
We’re going to hand the mic over to Eric Weinstein for a bit.
1/ @ezraklein has written an important essay. A Rosetta Stone for SJWs/Non-SJW Left/Conservatives.
This piece on the @nytimes’ hiring of gender & race-baiter @sarahjeong is also spectacular in that it somehow manages to combine deep insight with barely believable cluelessness. https://t.co/G0bZR0yp9Z
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 8, 2018
2/ @ezraklein describes “Feminist Twitter” (which doesn’t of course actually exist by virtue of Twitter’s open design) as a place where the words #KillAllMen came to mean simply “it would be nice if the world sucked less for women.”
You sorta have to read it to believe it: pic.twitter.com/qu9V6vdKFK
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 8, 2018
3/ As you can see from @ezraklein’s emotive shadings, he’s deeply troubled by patriarchy, yet only mildly annoyed at #KillAllMen feminism. What I would call open racism/sexism against whites/men is to him a kind of edgy snarky in-group lingo, but weirdly sent in the open to all.
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 8, 2018
4/ What’s so interesting about @ezraklein’s line of thought here is that he is describing a massive transfer of empathy. We are asked to understand @sarahjeong’s wild gender & race baiting as snark in the context of alleged oppression as she and her group police micro-aggression.
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 8, 2018
5/ What @ezraklein is describing to conservatives here is a recently mainstreamed Left I’ve never seen before…and I’m on the Left. The woke-network got confused that by breaking into the big time, #KillAllMen level privilege is scrutinized out of network as STRAIGHT-UP-BIGOTRY.
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 8, 2018
6/ Also, I learn on “Social Justice Twitter”, @sarahjeong & her ilk don’t mean “white people” when they say “white people.” They mean “the dominant power structure”, & anyone with an iota of self awareness gets this on the Left.
That’s the mother of all memos I missed. If true.
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 8, 2018
End/ This is hard to believe if you haven’t read it yourself. I almost feel like I’m making it up. But right now @sarahjeong in her new job at the @nytimes IS the dominant power structure. And by Ezra’s claims on SJW lingo, is therefore, improbably, a white male. Fight the power. pic.twitter.com/jOpOVhVBJc
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 8, 2018
Or, more concisely:
Sarah Jeong pisses on our feet and @ezraklein tells us it's raining.
— Earl Kralik (@earlkralik) August 8, 2018
Great thread, thx.
Jeong, like so many others, deliberately uses what I call "Mean Girl Style." Yet in a classic "shoot the messenger" move, Klein blames Twitter for what Jeong does. smdh
— Yule Heibel (@YuleHeibel) August 8, 2018
https://twitter.com/isoparty/status/1027243223721369601
IT'S OK WHEN WE DO IT
— Alexander (@klassiskliberal) August 8, 2018
Klein’s article’s ‘logic’ slips near into the surreal. Talk about twisting yourself into knots. Wow.
— Bill Stone (@thisisbillstone) August 8, 2018
If i was @ezraklein i’d lay down for a few days cos all that twisting must have done some serious damage to his already weak spine.
— Dog (@BlazarBot) August 9, 2018
In summary, Ezra is applying this filter to the universe. His "side" is worthy of contextualization, understanding of subtlety and nuance, etc. No such accommodation is granted to anyone else. pic.twitter.com/MHj7BsZdAg
— Fauxmaha (@J3ffMiller) August 8, 2018
The realistic subtitle for this piece should be "Yet Another Losing Strategy for the Political Left."
— Tim Shanahan (@EccentricTim) August 8, 2018
https://twitter.com/brianshall/status/1027242023647162368
This article is horrible. If we cut through the progressive bullshit it can be summed up as follows: if a person is liberal (ergo moral, of course) take their tweets seriously but not literally. Reminds me of…. pic.twitter.com/P5MEKXLG19
— Radical Centrist (@RadCentrism) August 9, 2018
"…And if I had any questions, I could, you know, ask, and actually listen to the answer."
You know, like we all did with Roseanne.
— Jed Henley (@jedhenley) August 8, 2018
Isn't it time for people to stop coming up with new meanings for words in retrospect?
— Petar Soldo (@Petar_DRC) August 8, 2018
Welcome to the world of post modernism – where words only mean what every individual interprets them to mean and MY truth exists whereas "truth" as some kind of platonic ideal is a meme created by the patriarchy. Anyone with an iota of self awareness would know that!
— Chad Urban (@Chad_Urban) August 9, 2018
https://twitter.com/beancreator/status/1027540856230764544
As anyone who has ever taken a history course knows, when people repeatedly say they want to kill you, at some point you have to start taking them literally and seriously.
— Allan Guty (@AllanJGuty) August 8, 2018
If we accept that #KillAllMen and #CancelWhitePeople are patently absurd jokes, maybe we can move on and address the fact that we shouldn’t be joking about genocide and the like.
— Eric Christensen (@DigEric) August 8, 2018
I guess the point is if you want to claim a moral high ground you probably actually need to live on that high ground. It's not actually that big of an ask. I mean, you can still be angry about injustice and discrimination without being crass about it, right?
— elbooch (@elbooch) August 8, 2018
This line of thinking is so absurd that it can’t be walked back. Their only option is doubling down and It’s gonna get entertaining.
— Picture me trollin (@TobbinIsrael) August 9, 2018
Related:
HOT TAKE: Vox writer takes poll to see if white people have a positive or negative effect on America https://t.co/34iWejy5a4
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 24, 2018
"Only white people don't find it obvious": Vox columnist explains that poll on whites being bad for America https://t.co/6aw9BfgX3Q
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 30, 2018
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