I love much of the stuff Vice creates and Sarah Jeong is a important voice I follow. But it seems both could not see past the appearance of Naomi Wu, could not understand her circumstances and putting her at risk to make a minor point in a story.
If you think that Jeong's tweets are equivalent to actual racism, you don't understand what racism is and how it affects people.
Racism is not just a matter of politeness. It is not arbitrary rules of decorum that you have to follow. It is not a semantic property of a sentence in isolation. Racism is a systemic problem that threatens people and limits their opportunities.
When Sarah Jeong snarks at Andrew Sullivan for being an old white man, old white men are not actually threatened.
Yes, this means you can switch races in a comment and it will change from racist to not racist, or not racist to racist, and that's because there's context, it's not just arbitrary rules about words.
growlist|7 years ago
rspeer|7 years ago
Racism is not just a matter of politeness. It is not arbitrary rules of decorum that you have to follow. It is not a semantic property of a sentence in isolation. Racism is a systemic problem that threatens people and limits their opportunities.
When Sarah Jeong snarks at Andrew Sullivan for being an old white man, old white men are not actually threatened.
Yes, this means you can switch races in a comment and it will change from racist to not racist, or not racist to racist, and that's because there's context, it's not just arbitrary rules about words.
Kimm0n0|7 years ago