1/ Following the white-wing hysteria re #SarahJeong's NYT hire is like listening to 7th grader complain 'There's Black History Month but no White History Month!' That's what it sounds like when they say "Put 'black' in any of her anti-white tweets and it's OBVIOUSLY racist!"...
2/ First, I've read the "offending" tweets (a hundred or more) going around and which some like @sullydish consider so damning. Before I respond to some of the key ones though, let me just say...
3/ ...Andrew Sullivan calling anything racist, considering he's the guy who thought it was a great idea to excerpt The Bell Curve in The New Republic, should seriously become the children's picture book definition of irony. But I digress...
4/ Fact is, most of these tweets were attempts 2 mock & counter-troll right wingers & overt racists, by flipping common tropes/lines/arguments used against people of color, online & IRL. Others were attempts at snark that occasionally missed the mark. But racist? No...To wit..
5/ In 2014 she wrote "white people are superior at writing reactive, misleading shit about race." Obviously, she was poking fun at common white racist claims of our superiority, which regularly appear on Twitter. She flipped the trope to make a point. It's not racist...
6/ Same year she re-tweeted "It was just a joke"-- ancient white male proverb. That is not racist. It's a joke aimed at the way white men DO retreat to the "it was just a joke" defense when we say really racist shit. Like, all the time. Pointing out we do this is not racism...
7/ Same year she wrote: TINY WHITE BLOND BOY RUNS THRU AIRPORT SECURITY, DOESN''T GET SHOT, HAPPY HOLIDAYS...not racist. She wasn't lamenting the kid didn't get shot. She was making a point that white rule breakers seen/treated differently. That's a fact about white privilege..
8/ Or when she said "idk white people, maybe if u weren't so emotional you'd be able to get your point across," she was mocking the COMMON way that so many white folks blame black "emotion" for getting in the way of otherwise valid concerns about racism/police violence, etc...
9/ When she mentioned "the white centered cosmetics industry ruined my adolescence," she wasn't being racist but making a point about how that industry (which HAS been white centered re beauty standards, colors/tones offered) operates in a way that has excluded POC....
10/ When she said '#pumpkinfest has set white people back 50 years,' she wasn't being racist, but mocking how white riot in NH during 'pumpkinfest' DIDN'T cause folk 2 say anything like this, the way many do when POC riot. When POC riot it's seen as group thing. Not w/whites...
11/ When she said 'If Ren & Stimpy is an example of great white people art, white people should probably stop making things,' it was reply 2 some1 deriding diversity in cartoon creation, who'd said only quality matters, like Ren & Stimpy. Not racist. Not racist. Not racist...
12/ When she said she had urge 2 advocate 'TSA style searches of white men at movie theatres just to see how mad white men would get,' it was OBVIOUSLY to make point about how white men r NOT profiled despite shooting up theatres (or schools) & that we'd lose shit if we were..
13/ In several of the 'offending' tweets she was just mocking white folk 4 getting upset abt being called white. That wasn't racist, it was true/ ironic, since we of European descent created the term for ourselves! But we don't like POC saying it (unless it's to flatter us )...
14/ And then there are the ones that some are calling the "white genocide" tweets (sigh)...of course, because language is dead and some folks scored in the third percentile on reading comprehension...
15/ Like, when she said: "let's fund study on whether killing all white people would make black people safer." she was MOCKING stupid racist shit that gets said by powerful whites like Bill Bennett who said 'if we aborted 1/2 of black babies, the crime rate would be lower'....
16/ ...& the racist stuff that gets said on Twitter by neo-Nazi trolls, who openly talk about how if we could just 'get rid' of black people whites would b safe. She was again flipping that trope on its head 2 make a point...it was not a call to kill white people 4 fucks sake..
17/ When she said 'the world would get on fine w/o white people,' she was in a convo re: claims that feminists want 2 'kill all men,' & noting it's absurd & men biologically serve a function. By contrast, whites really aren't necessary 4 life on earth (true btw)...
18/ ..u can say it was unnecessary/indelicate comment, but an actual celebration of 'white genocide?' No. She went on 2 note POC disinclination to genocide vs white folk (despite having numbers worldwide 2 do it) & didn't lament this disinclination as if 2 say, "damn..."...
19/ Basically the rest are specific critiques of things like cultural apprioriation by white folks of POC cultural forms/norms/practices, or critiques of white leftists who absurdly get in our feelings about being criticized...
20/ One such tweet was even aimed at me, because of some dickish shit I said on Twitter and FB back in 2013 after such a callout. It wasn't racist of her to clap back at me. It wasn't even unfair. It was earned and a point well taken...
21/ Others of her "offending" tweets were just basically calling out good examples of white privilege and the way most of us are blind to it. One can agree or disagree w/ her views on it but 2 call that discourse racist is nonsense...
22/ This is how the right distorts racism discourse: defining it as anything a person says abt another person's racial group that's critical. So they claim it's racist 2 say whites enjoy advantages, or are often in denial abt racism vs POC...but those are sociological facts..
23/...they are not moral judgments or judgments about the decency/humanity of white people, any more than saying "able bodied people have advantages over folks w/disabilities" and are often "In denial about ableism" is bigoted against the able bodied...
24/ The attack on Sarah Jeong 4 her tweets is disingenuous & part of a larger effort to drag folks of color 4 merely pointing out the ubiquity & absurdity of white racism...you know the kind with the power to actually oppress, like the kind emanating from the White House...
25/ That rightwingers who ignore/paper over THAT racism--the kind that separates families, rationaizes stop/frisk, seeks 2 close borders & soft-pedals neo-Nazis in C'ville--r going after #SarahJeong would b funny if it weren't so pathetic, and such basic Ivory nonsense...
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