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Comment by TedDoesntTalk | Hacker News Reader

This is more interesting than the article itself:

> Their view of social justice has no place for forgiveness or grace—as Alexi McCammond recently learned, when the 27-year-old’s editorship of Teen Vogue was cancelled because of some bigoted Tweets she sent as a teenager

This is an incredible story. If you’re not familiar with it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/media/teen-vogue...

Your immature, 16 year old teen self can affect your career trajectory with just a tweet.

She also dressed as a Native American at a Halloween party as a teenager.

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Wow, this is interesting.

I feel conflicted. On one hand, kids do dumb things. On the other hand... those tweets were pretty terrible, and may hint at some deep seated prejudice. And this isn't a 50yo, those tweets were only a decade ago.

Ultimately I fail to be outraged either by her hiring or her firing. They could have kept her and I'd shrug; they fire her and I also shrug. The whole situation is sad. It's hard to imagine my child saying things like that, but who knows, maybe her parents said the same thing.

For reference, here are the tweets referenced in the story:

Outdone by Asian #whatsnew

now googling how not to wake up with swollen, asian eyes...

give me a 2/10 on my chem problem, cross out all of my work and don't explain what I did wrong..thanks a lot stupid asian T.A. you're great

> It's hard to imagine my child saying things like that, but who knows,

Children do horrible, cruel things all the time. It's part of growing up and learning boundaries.

Those aren't vaguely bad as compared to the shit that has been yelled at me out of car windows by people who will never have to answer for it.

The first one is just the "model minority" trope, the second one is a reference to the actual physical characteristic that Americans use to define "Asian" (since we tend to leave South Asians out, and everybody in the West tends to leave Central Asians out), and the third is a case of over-specification that maybe indicates hidden racist attitudes, but could also be a way to distinguish between a number of TAs whose names you don't know.

I don't care about Teen Vogue, and I don't care which elites get jobs in the culture industry dictating the range of acceptable opinion, but tweets like these are minor racial crimes as compared to the systemic actions of people who would never talk like this.

> And this isn't a 50yo, those tweets were only a decade ago.

The difference between age 16 and age 27 isn't a decade, it's 45 years, give or take.

I am not a Christian, but I do think that forgiveness is a very good value. It's also one that is in short supply as of late.

It probably isn't that simple though. This article puts forth that there was likely more going on, with the Tweets being the part that it was easy for people to be loud about:

https://mynewbandis.substack.com/p/my-new-band-is-teenage-mi...

Even if this is true, the point is the trend that made the Tweets so easy to be loud about. It's abnormal and frankly dangerous to have an environment where "she said offensive things a decade ago in high school" is a stronger objection than "she's totally unqualified for this role".

Wokeism is the fastest growing religion for a reason.

"anti-wokers" making a fuss over potato toys and Dr. Seuss books has me convinced they're a larger issue

Have anti wokers got anyone fired.

They are just reactionary fools and don't have as much political clout as original fools.

> She also dressed as a Native American at a Halloween party as a teenager.

As someone who grew up in Germany, this made me chuckle, as probably 50% of children did this at least once in their life where I lived for "Fasching". The other half were cowboys.

Sure, but there are certain things as which one should never dress up in Germany. Don't you think parents should think twice before letting their kids dress up as the displaced indigenous victims of genocide? Context and history matters.

I would argue those types of rules would eliminate most historical outfits, because they’d either have been the oppressed or the oppressors.

Nevrtheless, German kids dont cosplay as SS and Jews. The cowboys in Germany are more about Karl May books which in turn have nothing to do with history.

Treating minors as adults is not a new problem. They are regularly tried as adults by "tough on crime" prosecutors. With examples like that it's not surprising to see the "tough on racism" crowd following that lead.

For crimes they committed 10 years ago?

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