Just as the coverup is often worse than the crime, the efforts of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other outposts of the progressive elite to say that Sarah Jeong’s bigotry is not bigotry serves only to emphasize their own bigotry. Apparently no one ever told them that when you’re in a hole, stop digging.
I’m referring, of course, to the recent decision of the New York Times to hire Sarah Jeong, either despite or because of her boatload of tweets denigrating whites. Ed Morrissey has a good take on this controversy here, and David French, always insightful, provides a good summary and discussion here.
French agrees with the hole diggers that anti-white racism is not “as bad” as other kinds of racism, but he insists that it nevertheless exists and in fact has very bad effects. I think this argument is entirely correct, but I believe he overstates it at one (relatively minor) point: “The threat of anti-white racism (except in rare cases) isn’t violence,” he writes. “It’s not systematic oppression. There’s no realistic scenario where ‘the tables are turned’ and black Americans visit on white Americans a reverse version of the worst aspects of American history.”
He’s right that whites in the United States are in no danger of “systematic oppression” by blacks, but a bit less so about the “no realistic scenario where ‘the tables are turned.’” Alas, there are all sorts of scenarios — in academia, in government and private offices — where, as a practical matter no whites need apply, accompanied by a legion of progressives who defend the discrimination as “diversity” or “compensation” or whatever.
It is true that this sort of discrimination is not “as bad” as the Jim Crow segregation, and worse, in our history, but as French’s own persuasive argument makes clear, not being “as bad” doesn’t mean doesn’t exist.
