Sarah Jeong

Sarah Jeong

: Photo from Wikimedia Commons / Author of Photo: XOXO Festival

Overview

* Became The New York Times editorial board’s lead writer on technology in August 2018
* Left the NY Times’ editorial board and became an opinion columnist in August 2019
* Detests white people


Sarah Jeong was born in South Korea in 1988, and then moved to the United States with her family three years later. She eventually earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard, where she served as editor of the Journal of Law & Gender. Rather than pursue a career as an attorney after completing her formal education, Jeong opted instead to become a technology writer for a number of online start-up companies. Her articles also appeared in such publications as The Washington PostThe New York Times MagazineThe AtlanticForbes, The Guardian, and Motherboard.

In 2014-15, Jeong put out a periodic newsletter with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to “defending civil liberties in the digital world.” In 2015 she authored a book titled The Internet of Garbage, which explored such topics as online harassment, free speech, and social media networks. In 2017, Forbes magazine named Jeong to its “30 Under 30” list of influential young media figures.

Following a relatively brief stint at The Verge, the technology news outlet owned by the far-left Vox Media, Jeong was hired in August 2018 to serve as The New York Times editorial board’s lead writer on technology. Her hiring sparked controversy, however, when media reports revealed that she had repeatedly expressed open contempt for white people – particularly white heterosexual males – in scores of tweets she had posted between 2013 and 2015. Some examples:

  • “Oh man, it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” (July 2014)
  • “White people have stopped breeding. You’ll all go extinct soon. That was my plan all along.” (August 2014)
  • Dumbass fu**ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” (November 2014)
  • “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins” (December 2014)
  • white men are bullsh**” (December 2014)

In response to the violent race riots sparked by an August 2014 police shooting of a young black criminal named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Jeong directed obscenities at the police and asserted that “America is fu**ing racist.” In many of her tweets during 2014-15, she used the hashtag “#CancelWhitePeople.”

Jeong was equally candid about her low regard for men. In a series of tweets in 2014-15, for instance, she claimed that “all men” are “equally” and “innately” nothing more than “fountains of meaningless garbage” who “see every woman as an open landfill for their thoughts.” “Being a straight woman,” Jeong elaborated, “is like being attracted to garbage heaps made of radioactive arsenic.”

In 2014-15, Jeong wrote forcefully in support of University of Virginia student Jackie Coakley, who in November 2014 falsely told Rolling Stone magazine that she had been gang-raped by several white male students as part of a fraternity initiation rite. As Coakley’s story subsequently began to crumble under the weight of inconsistencies and obvious fabrications, Jeong doubled down in her defense of the young woman. “The more I see these ‘inconsistencies’ and ‘discrepancies’ touted as evidence of falsehood, the more convinced I am that Jackie is not lying,” Jeong wrote on her blog. And in a number of tweets, Jeong lamented what she characterized as American society’s reflexive impulse to disbelieve women who wish to go public with their accounts of pain and abuse:

  • “If you’re a rape victim, you need an airtight affidavit to be believed. If you’ve been accused, you can knock a story over with a feather.”
  • “There isn’t a good reason to believe Jackie is lying, unless you already want to believe she is lying.”

When major news outlets and activist groups alike continued to point out the deficiencies in Coakley’s story, Jeong accused them of “shoddy reporting.” “The people who called bullsh** on this story called bullsh** because they couldn’t believe nice white college boys were monsters,” she tweeted in December 2014.

During the run-up to the 2016 presidential election between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Jeong posted a number of tweets that included such declarations as “Trump is Hitler,” “Trump = Hitler,” and “trump is basically hitler.” Another of her Twitter posts posed the question: “Was Hitler as rapey as Donald Trump?”

In August 2019, Jeong left The New York Times editorial board, becoming an opinion columnist with the newspaper.

Further Reading:Sarah Jeong Biography” (Gossipgist.com); “Sarah Jeong Joins The Times’s Editorial Board” (NY Times, 8-1-2018); “Newest Member of NYT Editorial Board Has History of Racist Tweets” (National Review Online, 8-2-2018); “NYT’s Embattled Sarah Jeong: President Trump is ‘Basically Hitler’” (Washington Times, 8-6-18); “What Do the ‘Educated Left Wing Elite’ Believe?” (by Robert Stacy McCain, 8-3-2018).

 

Additional Resources:


Sarah Jeong Is a Boring, Typical Product of the American Academy
By Heather Mac Donald
August 8, 2018

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