Prosemitism and the New York Times

        

        

        The New York Times has a race problem. The Times is known among the black intelligentsia as “The White Lady,” who today finds herself in the peculiar and embarrassing position of pushing a diversity narrative for others that has not been much applied in her own newsroom. Or in the pages of the newspaper, actually. 

        According to the Times’ own numbers, last updated in 2024, the news staff is approximately two-thirds white in a country where Caucasians are in the lower 50s and declining. Times leadership is 70% Caucasian. This is actually an improvement because in past decades the newspaper’s white staff has been closer to 90%. Go back beyond that and the Times didn’t really hire blacks or Latinos at all, except as window dressing—like, to point out the lone black person at a typewriter in the back of the newsroom when the mayor or another dignitary was taking a tour. As in “tokens.”Management was busted just a few years ago by the newspaper guild for uniformly giving lower scores, for promotion, to minority news staff. The features of the “peculiar institution,” as slavery was known in years past, have been adopted by a different peculiar industry, American journalism. 

Today in the premier newsroom in the world—the NYT—blacks and specifically Latinos are both far below their percentages in the population while Jews who represent 3% of the US population are, according to some estimates, ten-fold too highly represented among the White Lady’s ranks. What’s up with that? The Times doesn’t track its Jewish percentage, or at least doesn’t publicize it, but historically the major editors, columnists and investigative types, to say nothing of the publisher—which is the Sulzberger family, actually—have been Jews. With a sprinkling of WASPs. The peculiar position of the Sulzbergers is that the same diversity standards pushed in its reportage of American industry/government has not applied among its own hires. This is actually not news but is instead something that we see every day among the higher ranks of American journalism. 

Reporters at the Washington Post, National Public Radio, ProPublica, the New Yorker el al want to complain about the decline of diversity due to the Trump administration—ICE attacks or what have you, erosion of affirmative action on college campuses—but the journalists doing the complaining are almost invariably white, often Jewish—the so-called “white saviors” who are so common among reporters in recent years. On-air correspondents of the various networks are more representative, even at Fox News, because a lack of diversity is palpable on a screen, while the worst racists in hiring are clearly print media. Nowhere is that more true than the White Lady herself. And includes her reportage which operates under a well-defined double standard. 

“Making our journalists know that we will stand up for them in the moments when they come under attack,” Executive Editor Joe Kahn said last year in an interview with the news site Semafor, “that the institution is behind them, their safety but also their integrity, is a very important thing to do and also allows us to communicate with readers about the actual facts of a story.” Kahn’s comments were in the context of a question about Elon Musk’s criticism of the White Lady but are also pertinent in the newspaper’s sins against minorities, related to condescension, theft of narrative and false narratives that unduly attribute black liberation to the efforts of Jews. But before going there, yes we will go there, despite the risk of being labeled antisemites, yet again? The Kahn interview was by Semafor’s editor in chief Ben Smith who was the White Lady’s main media critic and who previously worked for Joe Kahn, which is a conflict of interest, no? Smith also identifies as Jewish, btw. The interview was a complete blowjob, which is the journalistic term for a story that is so positive that the subject couldn’t have written anything more positive himself. There’s no one to call bullshit on the NYT in other words. Joe Kahn says everything except what happens when criticism of the newspaper of record is accurate, because the White Lady admits no inaccuracies. Except her corrections notes about misspellings and wrong dates in stories. But what if the whole piece is a crock of shit, like the newspaper’s false reporting that led to the War in Iraq? The White Lady's policy is that a reader can complain by communicating with the writer or editor only, because the position of ombudsman was eliminated two or three years ago.

But onto race in America. The Times’ credibility problem with black people, which is our subject here, just manifested itself twice in ugly and wholly discriminatory ways, first with coverage of the death of civil rights icon and former presidential candidate the Reverend Jesse Jackson of Chicago. To set the scene. 

Over the course of three days the Times published some 20 pieces on Jackson’s death, 17 of which were written by whites, overwhelmingly Jews, including the main story by Peter Applebome, former White Lady columnist and Atlanta bureau chief, a self-promoting Jewish expert on African Americans who wrote the main piece and who chose as the first person to quote in his story—about this black civil rights icon—a Jewish political organizer from Chicago named Rose. A more accurate and far shorter take on Jesse Jackson’s racial trajectory will be presented below but it’s useful to note first that Jewish beliefs about black people are often based upon ignorance and upon a delusional view by American Jews that they are somehow owners of the black narrative in this country. Wrong, bro. Although this is a belief that is on permanent display at the Times. Just because you read it in the newspaper of record doesn’t mean it’s true, though. 

First, suffice it to say that Jews don’t “know” us—black people—despite protestations to the contrary, any more than anyone from any race or culture knows any other race or culture. That’s ordinary humanism, bro, although cultural humility often clashes with the Jewish belief that black culture is their field of expertise, even to the exclusion from that field of black women and men ourselves. Jews are tourists in the hood, in other words, just as American black people are when, for example, we visit Tel Aviv. But you can’t tell the Times that, or the New Yorker for that matter where Editor-in-Chief David Remnick who is Jewish and has been accused by his own staff of racism in hiring, yet considers himself another expert on black people, having published four books—depending on your count—on the black peep, including a biography of Barack Obama. And which leads to the second incident to be discussed, another recent story by the White Lady. In which the newspaper of record is caught running a game, just like a bad boy in the hood, in order to downplay Jewish affronts to blacks and instead stress the White Lady’s endless complaints of antisemitism.

Interestingly just a year or two ago Ta-Nehisi Coates said—while mentioning his desire to write about Palestine and the Palis’ struggle with the Israelis? He said he was warned off and told by Jewish journalist/friends that he didn’t have the knowledge base to criticize Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. That hasn’t stopped Jewish “experts” at the Times or New Yorker, bro, who are more than willing to opine on African Americans who they apparently know very little about. A recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography Jonathan Eig, the Jewish sportswriter from Dallas who is now the white press’s go-to foremost authority on Martin Luther King Jr.? Eig also has a series of children’s books written in the person of a little black girl. 

This certainly has nothing to do with cultural appropriation or any wish on Eig’s part to exploit the black narrative for his own profit. God forbid. How do we know that? Because the principal Times book reviewer Dwight Garner wrote in his commentary on Eig’s MLK biography that the tome is now “the authoritative biography” of Martin Luther King Jr. Without actually explaining how the white guy Garner is in a position to make that judgment about the white guy Eig on the subject of the black leader MLK. What Eig's work does do—his children's books for example—is keep a black author from getting a contract from a publisher to write about black people. Just as the Times' plethora of white “experts" on blacks and race keeps African Americans and Latinos from being hired in the White Lady’s newsroom. The Times has frequent coverage of blacks, btw, just not by blacks. 

Doubly interesting is that Mr. Coates was at The Atlantic, where the editor-in-chief is former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg. Coates now writes for Vanity Fair. Enough said. 

Except that the work that Coates eventually produced pointed to the similarities between what the Palestinians experience under Israeli rule and what blacks have experienced in America. An analogy that the White Lady objects to, however. The Times reviewer of Coates The Message was Jennifer Szalai, who is the newspaper’s chief white-expert on black literature and has previously written that it is “banal” to think that black people are more knowledgeable on our own history than are whites. 

In the review she subtly dissed Coates’ new book for a lack of a traditional factual basis: “He is using his position of prominence and moral authority to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians. Having lived the life of the famous Black writer in mostly white professional spaces, someone who has been both venerated and vilified, he finds in his new community ‘the warmth of solidarity.’” There’s nothing wrong with that, actually, solidarity, Ms. Szalai. Except at the New York Times, when the subject is non-Jews. Szalai also leans into two tropes in her review that blacks “feel” but don’t use facts, something often heard in white academic circles, and that a successful black writer owes his success to white readers, the aforesaid white professional spaces. Gee, isn’t that kind of demeaning?

Actually a discussion of facts would include the fact that American Jews love nothing better than to recall Jewish efforts to help African Americans, during the civil rights era, including two Jewish Freedom Riders who got their tickets cancelled in Mississippi, alongside countless blacks. But Jewish historians and journalists somehow totally ignore those hundreds of black G.I.s who died in combat in Europe during World War Two while liberating concentration camps. The Tuskegee Airmen for example were not flying over Mississippi, although those missions might have been useful too. Instead they were flying and dying over Germany, in order to free Jews. 

It’s remarkable that a people like our Jewish brothers and sisters—who have promised never to forget the past—are so quick to forget what has been done for them but not to them. That is how the White Lady’s reportage works as well. And there’s actually a trick involved in her coverage, a slight of journalistic hand, you might say.

On the third day of Times reporting on Reverend Jackson’s death, the subject finally became something that black people might have found more meaty. In a piece by the Jewish journalist Jonathan Mahler, who is another of the Times’ white experts on black people, the story was called “How a Stray Quote of Jesse Jackson’s Led to a Rupture Between Black and Jewish Voters,” did you read that?

During his 1984 run for the presidency Jackson famously referred to Jews as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown,” which was clearly inappropriate (brought to light by a black Washington Post reporter, fyi) but was also indicative of African American dissatisfaction with the Jewish narrative of blacks in this country. Which includes the proposition that any disagreement with Jews is unacceptable. It wasn't actually a stray quote, bro. 

Jews spend a lot of time in African Americans’ business—telling us what to do and what to think, to say nothing of what is “best” for us—without being invited. Part of the reason is financial. Once we accept contributions, whether of the political variety or to our educational institutions, the camel’s nose is under the tent. But whither, exactly, the hymie epithet? It’s history, bro. In the 1960s and 1970s Jews were forced out of some civil rights organizations—by angry black activists, lest we forget—for being patronizing and attempting to run black groups. As if we are inferiors and need Jewish direction in achieving our own liberation. Which the Times did not mention in its exploration of Jesse Jackson’s sins, even though Jackson was openly suspicious of the Jewish role in black civil rights. 

The Mahler piece continued, as background: “A natural alliance between two largely liberal minority groups, each with a history of discrimination, had come under pressure from the country’s changing political dynamics. In New York City, a 1968 struggle over the control of public schools in largely Black neighborhoods prompted the firing of a group of predominantly Jewish teachers — spurring a citywide strike led by the Jewish head of the teachers union.” One point of contention is that African Americans are arguably not that liberal. We believe in fairness but also in many of the same traditional values as conservatives, including family and faith, and we are less and less attached to what is called, in the black podcast world, “the Democratic plantation.” And forgive one for wondering why Jews were in charge of black instruction in the first place? 

And why it was so disconcerting that black teachers wanted the task of educating black children. What’s also interesting about the Mahler piece is that any break in black-Jewish relations can be attributed to actions by blacks, never anything that Jews have done. Jews are only victims in this perspective. Let’s see. The Times has, almost singlehandedly, just ended the mayoralty of an African American in New York City, who got too close to Muslim Turkey, and Jews contributed significantly to the recent reelection losses of two black Democratic members of Congress who had the temerity to criticize Israel. But if blacks who are such a key demographic of the Democratic Party—as we are reminded endlessly by the White Lady—if we question Jews or criticize Jewish politics/actions we automatically become antisemites. Or we’re “ungrateful.” Oh please. 

If on the other hand they criticize us it is because they're smarter or more upright morally/ethically. Really? This standard also applies in Hollywood, btw. During the uproar over the Gaza War as American blacks began to stand up for the Palestinians—and correctly so—television star Julianna Margulies who is Jewish said we were “brainwashed.” It’s actually Jews who have been brainwashed, in part by the White Lady herself, to believe the decades of pro-Israeli b.s., which only now is coming to light as a wide swath of the domestic public questions lock-step support of the Jewish State. Cue the ongoing war with Iran. But enough of Gaza and the Hormuz Strait and onto Chicago, and later New York, the aforesaid “Hymietown.” Let a black person opine briefly on our own peeps for a change. 

Chicago was the black melting pot and has formed so many ambitious black leaders including Oprah, Michael Jordan, Reverend Jackson, Elijah Muhammad and, most famously, Barack and Michelle Obama. In this context too the newspaper of record doesn’t know what it’s talking about. One might say, if one wished to be crude, the White Lady is a lying ho. Because her “errors” are so intentional.

For instance: A more credible Jesse Jackson narrative is not that difficult to recount or understand if the source has cultural competence, which Times people mostly do not on this particular story, race in America. (The White Lady, btw, recently ran an opinion piece by a black writer and two Jews that the term “African American” should no longer be used, in favor of exclusive use of “black.” Now we know, because the Times has spoken and told us our role/responsibilities yet again.) But on to Illinois. 

My mother and father were both born in Texas but grew up in Chicago after their families migrated, part of the mass movement of blacks from the South to the northern states and the Midwest during the early 20th century, in order to escape Jim Crow. To set the scene. For example Jesse Jackson himself went north from his birthplace in South Carolina. Chicago was where so many escaping black families ended up. 

My father used to recount being a kid in Chicago in the 1920s and watching as an expensive car pulled up in the black hood and the back door opened and sitting there was Al Capone. With a  large bank bag of coins in his lap, which he threw handfuls of at passing Negroes. Who scurried to pick up the money. Capone was insuring that if he came to trial and any blacks appeared on the jury, they knew to vote not guilty. Mr. Gold, the political operative who the Times quoted on black Chicago, isn’t going to tell you that.

My mother who was a gifted observer had a favorite saying about the Windy City where she spent her childhood, before moving to California like many other blacks because the Great Lakes region was too cold. “Chicago has,” she liked to repeat, “the meanest niggers in the world.” 

What she meant by “mean nigger” is what we often still mean today, formidable. Like Michael Jordan, or Oprah. Ambitious. Smart. Capable. But white people don’t know what a mean nigger is, unless they’re told by us. Chicago has created a lot of mean niggers in fact, thru the years, with and without the assistance of Jewish pols. What Times coverage also failed to note at Reverend Jackson’s passing is that Jesse Jackson was part of the generation of black people who first grew tired of Jewish efforts at control of our narrative and their condescension towards us, like Ms. Margulies. 

Back to New York City. And back, actually, to the public education realm where the Times noted that Jews feel they have been dissed by blacks in the past.

So, like, a week after Reverend Jackson’s death the White Lady carried an astounding story. The piece centered on a videoconference regarding a public school that might be shuttered. Let the White Lady tell it from there, because she does a very good job up to a point. It’s what she doesn’t say, in this case, that is highly racist and unjustifiably pro-semitic.

“As one student, who attendees said was Black, spoke out to praise her teachers and lament the potential shutting of her school, another attendee — identified as Allyson Friedman, an associate professor at Hunter College who was attending as a public school parent — cut in. “‘They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,’ Dr. Friedman said, according to a recording of the meeting. 

“She was attending virtually and was unaware that her microphone was turned on,” per the Times. “‘If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back,’ Dr. Friedman continued. ‘You don’t have to tell them anymore.’ According to the White Lady, “She appeared to be referencing a comment made earlier in the meeting by the local school district’s interim acting superintendent, Reginald Higgins. He had mentioned Carter G. Woodson, the scholar known as the father of Black history, who said, ‘If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told.’” 

So far, so good. Or so bad, actually, but well reported nonetheless.

The Times followed up with a piece a day or two later that Professor Friedman had been suspended by Hunter College. What was not reported in either piece, and is quite telling both about the professor and the newspaper, is that she, like the White Lady herself, is Jewish. When Jews do great things, the NYT calls out culture/ethnicity, but selectively. As part of the coverage of Henry Kissinger a few years ago, the White Lady was not much interested in the secret bombing campaign that Kissinger helped bring about that killed tens of thousands of Cambodians, but was very interested that, at one point, Kissinger was boning Raquel Welch. When it’s something as horrific as Professor Friedman’s comments, there’s no mention of Judaism. 

What Professor Friedman said was actually far worse than “Hymie” or “Hymietown.” But in the newspaper of record we read about the full extent of Jesse Jackson’s racism but not Allyson Friedman’s. We read about black assaults on Jews but not Jewish assaults on African Americans. One of which took place in my hometown, Austin, Texas. Literally. Again, the White Lady falsified the account by what was not included in the story.

So, like, during the George Floyd protests that rocked the country and coincided with the pandemic, an Army sergeant at nearby Ft. Hood, who had a side gig driving Uber, came to Austin during an anti-police demonstration. Austin cops have killed a lot of minorities, many of them unarmed, through the years. To set the scene. 

The sergeant had a plan to kill a protestor, which he did. The protestor was armed but not threatening and the sergeant’s idea, which he communicated in text messages before shooting the guy four times, was to kill an armed protestor and claim self defense. Long story short, he was convicted of murder and sentenced from 5 to life but was almost immediately pardoned on the instructions of Governor Greg Abbott. The White Lady covered the case of the sergeant, Daniel Perry, who is actually Jewish. Without ever mentioning that the attack on the Floyd protestor was committed by a Jew, although local reports had mentioned Perry’s ethnicity and that information was obviously available to the Times as well. 

The murder trial and the dispute over Sgt. Perry’s pardon both came at the height of the Gaza War when the newspaper of record was full of stories and opinion pieces about the “special relationship” between blacks and Jews and the subliminal question of why African Americans were criticizing Israel. A story about a Jew who had killed a pro-civil rights protestor doesn’t go along with that particular view of American race relations. Perry texted to someone, btw, evidence from the trial showed, “I am a racist” and describing Black Lives Matter activists as “monkeys.” The Times is a wonderful publication but it’s primary mission is prosemitism, that is, pushing a pro-Jewish narrative and ignoring anything that doesn’t jibe with that. Whether it’s Israel, Hollywood or the hood, the White Lady offers what the Times likes to call “a nuanced view” but others might call, simply, bullshit.

One of the only on-the-mark comments in the White Lady’s coverage of Reverend Jackson's death, those 20-odd stories, was by the black writer Michael Eric Dyson who recounted that among Reverend Jackson’s economic campaigns was getting CBS to desegregate and hire blacks. 

One likes to think that if Jackson were still alive and in his prime he would have taken on the White Lady too.