Imagine it were discovered that a white journalist at the New York Times had, as a college student, written a letter to the student paper about African Americans in which the writer claimed that the African American race was "the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager and thief in the modern world." Do you suppose that that white journalist would still be employed at the Times by the end of the day?
Surely not, but if the journalist were an African American woman describing white folks in such terms would it then be acceptable? Should she not be fired just as a white colleague would be?
Well, apparently not as Jordan Davidson at The Federalist explains:
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead essayist on New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, wrote a letter to the editor in Notre Dame’s The Observer [when she was a student there] stating that “the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.”
Hannah-Jones claimed that the actions of European settlers and explorers such as Christopher Columbus were “acts of devils” and likens them to Hitler.
“[The whites] lasting monument was the destruction and enslavement of two races of people,” Hannah-Jones wrote.Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project at the Times has been roundly panned by historians for its historical inaccuracies - such as her claim that the American Revolution was fought in order to maintain slavery. So bad was her history in the piece that last December five distinguished American historians wrote a letter to the magazine's editor, expressing their dismay "at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it." Their letter can be read here.
Unsurprisingly, her grasp of history while a student at Notre Dame was evidently no better than it is today. Here's more from Davidson:
The Times did not respond to a request for comment on whether their employee still maintained the racist beliefs expressed in her Notre Dame letter, but again, were this a white journalist who had written something similarly offensive and ludicrous about blacks it wouldn't matter whether the writer still held those views or not, that journalist would've been cashiered the very day the college letter came to light.
But at the Times racism is evidently acceptable as long as it's manifested by "people of color." This is the same paper, after all, that employs Sarah Jeong, a sample of whose vile racist tweets can be read in Davidson's article at the above link.
Hannah-Jones claims Africans arrived in North America long before Europeans, but that unlike Europeans, Africans befriended and traded with the indigenous people. She claims pyramids in Mexico are a symbol of said friendship.The historical and anthropological ignorance reflected in these claims is stunning, but the "hate-speech" in her letter was worse as she goes on to claim that white people today are still guilty of horrific crimes against black people:
The descendants of these savage people pump drugs and guns into the Black community, pack Black people into the squalor of segregated urban ghettos and continue to be bloodsuckers in our community,” she writes.
“But after everything that those barbaric devils did, I do not hate them,” she wrote. “I understand that because of some lacking, they needed to [sic] constantly prove their superiority.”Well, perhaps she's sincere when she says she doesn't hate whites (though her use of capitals for "Blacks" and lower case for "whites" is telling), but a white person having made similar comments about blacks would not only be banished to professional exile but find herself the butt of relentless ridicule by late-night comedians if, after having called blacks "barbaric devils" she then tried to deny that she hated blacks.
The Times did not respond to a request for comment on whether their employee still maintained the racist beliefs expressed in her Notre Dame letter, but again, were this a white journalist who had written something similarly offensive and ludicrous about blacks it wouldn't matter whether the writer still held those views or not, that journalist would've been cashiered the very day the college letter came to light.
But at the Times racism is evidently acceptable as long as it's manifested by "people of color." This is the same paper, after all, that employs Sarah Jeong, a sample of whose vile racist tweets can be read in Davidson's article at the above link.
Here's a litmus test for whether what anyone, white or black, says is actually racist: reverse all the racial references in what was said, and by whom it was said, and ask whether you'd consider the statement racially offensive.
In other words, if it'd be racist if a white person said it then it'd be racist if a black person said it. To deny this would itself be racially discriminatory, would it not?