Arabnews24.ca:Friday 26 March 2021 10:46 PM: A “race and inclusion” editor at USA Today has been canned after tweeting that mass shooters are “always” white men just hours after a shooting spree in Boulder, Colorado, blaming her firing on an online “harassment” campaign.
Sports reporter and editor Hemal Jhaveri took to her blog on Friday to announce her termination over the controversial, now-deleted https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1374417690975117316, which said “it’s always an angry white man. Always,” in response to Monday’s mass shooting in Boulder. Though she acknowledged the post was an “over-generalization” and a “careless error of judgement” – the shooter, in fact, was not white – Jhaveri nonetheless portrayed herself as victim of a “alt-right” internet mob hellbent on her firing.
“There was social media outrage, threats and harassment towards me, and by the end of the day, USA TODAY had relieved me of my position as a Race and Inclusion editor,” she said of the reaction to her tweet.
— Hemal Jhaveri (@hemjhaveri) https://twitter.com/hemjhaveri/status/1375488035765301248?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSome part of me has been waiting for this to happen because I can’t do the work I do and write the columns I write without invoking the ire and anger of alt-right Twitter. There is always the threat that tweets which challenge white supremacy will be weaponized by bad faith actors.
In chronicling the episode, however, the reporter let slip that she had been disciplined at USA Today on other occasions for “publicly naming whiteness as a defining problem” – apparently seeing nothing controversial in deeming a particular race as inherently problematic. Nonetheless, Jhaveri insisted her hot-button post “[challenged] white supremacy” and that those who took issue with the tweet were merely “bad faith actors”“weaponizing” misplaced outrage.
One of the “alt-right” figures identified in Jhaveri’s blog post – Dave Rubin, a self-avowed classical liberal – https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/1374400228640497665 the journalist “a racist” over the tweet, while another Twitter user asked fellow netizens to imagine the reaction if a USA Today editor penned a similar post about any other demographic.
— John (@OrthoJohnnie) https://twitter.com/OrthoJohnnie/status/1374404219684278275?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1375550261050146819?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwIt didn’t take long before Monday’s mass shooting, which left 10 people dead at a Boulder grocery store, was https://twitter.com/lennyaduncan/status/1374169988957761539 on “https://twitter.com/DenAntifa/status/1374194774132019203” in a https://twitter.com/RoArquette/status/1374144018804707332 of social media https://twitter.com/tmink128/status/1374131154601795589, countless examples of which were https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1374389271021297670 by journalist Caleb Hull. Liberal activist Amy Siskind, meanwhile, https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1374174167084466176“it was almost certainly a white man (again). If he were black or brown he would be dead.” She offered no apology after it emerged the shooter was of Syrian heritage, not exactly in line with the “whiteness” narrative that found immediate approval online.
Twitter took no issue with the racialized posts, telling Newsweek that labeling the shooter – Ahmad al-Aliwi al-Issa – a “white Christian terrorist” did not run afoul of the platform’s policies on “misinformation.” The site’s trending section even managed to pass along the same misleading label itself, https://twitter.com/Lperson96/status/1374398163012915202 al-Issa as a “white male” suspect soon after the massacre.
Also on rt.com ‘Color of skin… important’? Instagram censors artist’s comic as ‘DANGEROUS’ for VERBATIM quote of woke ‘Sesame Street’ episodeThink your friends would be interested? Share this story!
