Sarah Leong und die „Ich habe mich nur verteidigt“-Verteidigung

Gerade sorgt in den USA die Berufung von Sarah Leong in die Redaktionsleitung der linken Zeitung „The New York Times“ für einiges an Unmut.

Denn diese scheint eine ziemliche SJW gewesen zu sein und hat – wenn auch in älteren Tweets – sehr hasserfüllt gegen weiße Männer etc geschrieben.

Hier ein Auszug:

 

Sarah jeong

Die Aufführungen ihrer Tweets führten zu einer Stellungnahme:

We hired Sarah Jeong because of the exceptional work she has done covering the internet and technology at a range of respected publications.

Her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers. She sees now that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media. She regrets it, and The Times does not condone it.

We had candid conversations with Sarah as part of our thorough vetting process, which included a review of her social media history. She understands that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable at The Times and we are confident that she will be an important voice for the editorial board moving forward.

Statement from Sarah Jeong

As a woman of color on the internet, I have faced torrents of online hate, often along this vein:

I engaged in what I thought of at the time of counter-trolling. While it was intended as satire, I deeply regret that I mimicked the language of my harassers. These comments were not aimed at a general audience, because general audiences do not engage in harassment campaigns. I can understand how hurtful these posts are out of context, and would not do it again.

Also die alte „Ich wurde angegriffen und habe mich gewehrt“-Verteidigung kombiniert mit „alles nur Satire“ und „ich habe die imitiert“.

Auch dazu fand das Netz einiges:

you aren’t replying to anybody in these tweets pic.twitter.com/WuBHrKEeqZ

— patrolloti (@patrolloti) August 3, 2018

Racist New York Times editor Sarah Jeong is also a cop hater

"But guys guys the cops were mean tweeting her first and this was nothing but her return trolling…now leave her gentle innocent spirit alone" – Regressives, probably pic.twitter.com/Phv0QYhmPN

— Good Ideas Vs Bad (@BadIdeasVs) August 3, 2018

Und natürlich das klassische Bild dazu:

Like clockwork. pic.twitter.com/q4sQvM5Tgh

— Orwell & Goode 🇨🇱 (@OrwellNGoode) August 3, 2018

Einen interessanten Kommentar dazu findet man hier:

Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word “white” with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only “fit to live underground like groveling goblins” or that she enjoyed “being cruel to old Latina women,” and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.

But the alternative view — that of today’s political left — is that Jeong definitionally cannot be racist, because she’s both a woman and a racial minority. Racism against whites, in this neo-Marxist view, just “isn’t a thing” — just as misandry literally cannot exist at all. And this is because, in this paradigm, racism has nothing to do with a person’s willingness to pre-judge people by the color of their skin, or to make broad, ugly generalizations about whole groups of people, based on hoary stereotypes. Rather, racism is entirely institutional and systemic, a function of power, and therefore it can only be expressed by the powerful — i.e., primarily white, straight men. For a nonwhite female, like Sarah Jeong, it is simply impossible. In the religion of social constructionism, Jeong, by virtue of being an Asian woman, is one of the elect, incapable of the sin of racism or group prejudice. All she is doing is resisting whiteness and maleness, which indeed require resistance every second of the day.

Jeong ist gerade ein Paradebeispiel dafür, warum diese Theorie so schlecht ist:

Jeong ist in Süd Korea geboren, dem Land dessen Wirtschaft an 11. Stelle der Welt steht. Ihre Eltern sind wohl zum Studium in die USA gegangen und sie ist dann dort aufgewachsen. Sie hat In Harvard Jura studiert und anscheinend zudem in Berkley.  (Dort hat wahrscheinlich auch ihre Indoktrinierung stattgefunden, denn sie war Editor bei der Zeitschrift „Harvard Law and Gender“, wahrscheinlich eine feministische Rechtszeitschrift.

Wenn man ein Vorurteil in den USA über Asiaten von Harvard hat, dann wohl eher dass sie sehr schlau sind und hart arbeiten. Sie dürfte damit eigentlich einiges an „Privilegien“ gehabt haben, schließlich sind Asiaten auch die am besten verdienende Gruppe in den USA.

Aber irgendwie scheint sie dennoch einen enormen Hass verinnerlicht zu haben und den hat sie dann im Netz rausgelassen.

Weiter in dem Kommentar:

That’s why Jeong hasn’t apologized to the white people she denigrated or conceded that her tweets were racist. Nor has she taken responsibility for them. Her statement actually blames her ugly tweets on trolls whose online harassment of her prompted her to respond in turn. She was merely “counter-trolling.” She says her tweets, which were not responses to any individual, were also “not aimed at a general audience,” and now understands that these tweets were “hurtful” and won’t do them again. The New York Times also buys this argument: “her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time, she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers.”

Let me explain why I think this is the purest of bullshit. If you want to respond to trolls by trolling them, you respond to them directly. You don’t post slurs about an entire race of people (the overwhelming majority of whom are not trolls) on an open-forum website like Twitter. And these racist tweets were not just a function of one sudden exasperated vent at a harasser; they continued for two years. Another tweet from 2016 has her exclaiming: “fuck white women lol.”

Klar, der Rückzug auf die Opferrolle ist immer sehr einfach und zudem ein gutes Statement, um sich dahinter zu verstecken, bis sich die Lage beruhigt hat. Die New York Times wird auch eine sehr linke, also intersektionale Besetzung haben und das bedeutet, dass sie sie nicht feuern können, weil dann ihre eigenen Leute gegen sie sind bzw diese in ihrem Umkreis Gesicht verlieren.

Diesen Kommentar fand ich auch interessant:

These comments echo ideas that have existed for some time. Essentially, they’re tied to the notion that anti-white rhetoric and ideas can’t be “racism” because such rhetoric is justified and/or not connected to power.

But this argument confuses the gravity of an offense with the existence of the offense. A powerless person’s hate may not harm the powerful, but it is still hate. A powerless person’s hate may even be grounded in specific experiences, but it is still hate. The essence of bigotry is to look at the color of a person’s skin and, on that basis alone, make malignant judgments about his character or worth.

Moreover, it is simply false to excuse anti-white racism on the grounds that people of color lack power. There are certainly many millions of vulnerable and marginalized individuals in this nation, and they are disproportionately (though not entirely) black and brown. But when anti-white sentiment is embedded in the New York Times editorial board, it’s no longer “powerless” in any meaningful sense. Similarly, when it reaches the heights of government, the academy, or the bestseller lists, it’s no longer remotely “powerless.”

None of this should be taken as an argument that power doesn’t matter. Of course it does. Power matters. And so does purpose. That’s why no one should compare Jeong’s comments to the racism you see on Stormfront or to the racism we saw on display in Charlottesville last year. Racism married to violence or violent intent is categorically different from the anti-white racism you see in certain quarters of the elite identity-politics Left. Similarly, racism married to state policies — especially state policies of the relatively recent American past, which continue to have malignant effects on poor and disadvantaged Americans — is categorically different from the anti-white racism that exists in parts of the academy or in segments of American media.

The threat of anti-white racism (except in rare cases) isn’t violence. 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. The problem with anti-white racism is that it runs directly counter to efforts to unify in spite of that history. It runs counter to efforts to elevate American culture. And, yes, it can and does create individual injustice in those instances where anti-white racism manifests itself in more than just tweets and academic journals.

Finally, to indulge at all the notion that injustice, even systematic injustice, can excuse or legitimize hatred against a class or group of Americans is to open Pandora’s Box. I’ve seen it argued across the breadth of the Web that anti-white sentiment is a legitimate and understandable response to the actions of white people and “white” power structures. But think about this argument. Veterans of our Middle Eastern wars have seen jihadist horrors on a scale that most Americans can’t comprehend. Is it a legitimate response for a veteran to go on a Twitter screed about “canceling” Arabs or calling them “groveling goblins”? Should a white victim of a black criminal draw conclusions about black people more generally? Even if he can point to disproportionate levels of violent crime?

Of course not. A healthy society urges people to reject unhealthy temptations to generalize, and instead urges that we treat our fellow citizens with a degree of grace and to judge them based on their individual actions. Any categorical hatred or disgust stands directly against this virtue. So, yes, anti-white racism is real, and Americans can and should reject it while still keeping in mind matters of gravity and proportion.

Are we really so far gone that we can’t condemn taking “joy” in being “cruel” to another person on the basis of their race? It’s time to understand a fundamental truth: The denigration of human beings — yes, including white human beings — works its own harm.

In der Tat: Es ist niemals okay einfach zu generalisieren und seinen Hass auf eine Gruppe zu erstrecken, weil es das Klima verschlechtert und es schlicht auch etwas ist, was man in einer zivilisierten Gesellschaft nicht macht. Es ist kein „wehren“, schon gar keine Notwehr, weil eben ein Individualismus und ein respektvoller Umgang der Grundstein einer zivilisierten Gesellschaft sind.

Ein solches Verhalten spaltet – um so mehr, wenn eine Seite schlicht mit zweierlei Maß misst und sich ein Verhalten herausnimmt, welches die andere nicht zeigen darf.

• Sexismus, Rassismus etc = Vorurteil + Macht (prejudice + power)
• Rassismus ergibt sich nicht aus Macht und Vorurteilen
• Strukturelle Diskriminierung
• Nochmal: Strukturelle Diskriminierung
• Mal wieder „strukturelle Diskriminierung“
• „Strukturelle und institutionalisierte Diskriminierung von Männer gibt es nicht“ vs „Die Strukturen des Patriarchats benachteiligen auch Männer“