Post racist things about white people and Twitter won’t bat an eyelash. Hell, the New York Times might even defend you.
But post something racist about any other race, and Twitter will be all over you like black on rice…see what I did there?
According to the Daily Caller, Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens tweeted out Sarah Jeong’s words verbatim, but replaced the word “white” with “Jew,” just to show that in any other context, Jeong would have looked an awful lot like a neo-Nazi. This point was well made, but it seemed to fly right over Twitter’s head.
Here are Jeong’s racist tweets. Language warning:
And here’s Owen’s:
Twitter then suspended Owen’s account for twelve hours, claiming that Owen’s tweets violated Twitter’s rules and conditions. That’s an interesting thing for Twitter to say seeing as how Jeong’s racist anti-white tweets survived long enough for the world to find them after she was hired by the New York Times.
According to the Daily Caller, who reached out to Twitter, the social media company realized their mistake and restored Owen’s account saying they made a mistake:
“Twitter takes reports of violations of the Twitter Rules very seriously,” Twitter’s support team wrote in an email to Owens, who shared it with TheDCNF. “After reviewing your account, it looks like we made an error.”
“This was our mistake and we’ve apologized to the account owner for the error,” a spokeswoman for Twitter told TheDCNF. The spokesperson did not say whether a human content monitor or an algorithm was responsible for suspending Owens’ account.
The Daily Caller reached out to Owens to get her comment, who noticed the double-standard of what’s considered racism as well:
“The thing is, I wouldn’t have minded if I was locked out, because I actually agree with Twitter that that language is inappropriate,” Owens said.
“My point in tweeting that and replacing the word with black and Jewish yesterday was to show how different that mentality is when you see it in that context and you see talking about Jewish people and predisposed to burning under the sun or black people saying they should live underground,” she said.
“It’s horrifically racist, but somehow we’ve gotten to a point in society where it’s OK to say the exact same thing about white people, and that’s problematic.”
The pattern holds that racism is perfectly acceptable, so long as it’s against the right group. Identity politics is having its heyday, and Twitter, as well as various other corporations such as Google and the New York Times, are going along for the ride.
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