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NYTimes Peru N-Word: My side of the story, in four parts

344 points by FillardMillmore 6y ago

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djoldman 6y ago
Part 2: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-two-what-happened-january-28-3e41bdbb28a7 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... Part 3: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-three-what-happened-in-the-2019-investigation-6f8e9939a385 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... Part 4: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-four-what-happened-in-peru-2a641a9b5e83 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...
- lisper 6y ago
  Thanks! Do you by chance also have a link to the Daily Beast article that started this kerfuffle?
  - qnsi 6y ago
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...
    - disgrunt 6y ago
      > Multiple people familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast that an internal investigation was conducted about the claims and that the top science reporter was reprimanded. The paper also reached out to some parties who complained to apologize for McNeil’s behavior and to assure the students and parents that action had been taken internally against him. Not a single accuser was named. Goes on to use "people familiar with the situation" and "Some parties". Even hit pieces on journalists are effectively sourceless. Journalism is dead.
      - jccalhoun 6y ago
        The accusers seem to be the students themselves and so were and may still be minors. If that is the case I don't think naming them in this situation would be the best thing to do.
        disgrunt 6y ago
        Not by my reading of the hit piece. > After the excursion ended, according to multiple parents of students on the trip who spoke with The Daily Beast along with documents shared with the...
    - stefan_ 6y ago
      I assume it is intentional that this article is devoid of any actual quote of what is purported to have been said, and instead consists purely of multiple, mostly redundant statements of how the teenagers reacted to what is insinuated to have been said? The levels of indirection here don't leave a great impression.
  - FillardMillmore 6y ago
    I believe this is the article in question. https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...
- kragen 6y ago
  In the interest of holding people accountable for what they publish, rather than giving them the option to falsify their words later, or claim that others have done so: Part 1: https://archive.fo/PLa2m https://archive.fo/PLa2m Part 2: https://archive.fo/cbU53 https://archive.fo/cbU53 Part 3: https://archive.fo/TT3B2 https://archive.fo/TT3B2 Part 4: https://archive.fo/W12D7 https://archive.fo/W12D7 (As another comment points out below, these articles are also likely to get memory-holed by demands to censor "racist content", or "content by racists".) I did try things like https://web.archive.org/web/20210301145319/https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-four-what-happened-in-peru-2a641a9b5e83 https://web.archive.org/web/20210301145319/https://donaldgmc... but the Medium JS seems to successfully replace the page with a 500 error after it's loaded, despite being served from the IA. All the requests in the debug pane do go to archive.org, so this is probably a solvable problem. Are there other good alternatives to archive.fo for this kind of thing? Maybe something decentralized?
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    I wonder if there's something like archive.is/fo/vn/??, but built on IPFS.
sodality2 6y ago
Tangent but why is medium.com so bad? CPU usage is instantly 100% for the first 20 seconds after loading. Disabling JS has no visible effect but makes it load instantly. Granted, I'm on an older laptop (AMD A6-7310 APU) but holy cow I thought I could at least browse the web on this thing for a few more years.
- nathancahill 6y ago
  Medium is awful. Pages on average load in <0.5 seconds, including JS. Medium takes 12 seconds on average. Bandwidth is not the bottleneck, I have 1Gps service.
koreanguy 6y ago
get a real job, news is not a job
temp8964 6y ago
"We make America what it is — without a free press, democracy dies." The second part is certainly true. But are you sure about the first part? If you ask anybody who make America what it is, the answer "journalists" maybe won't pass 10%.
- paxys 6y ago
  People might not say it, but it is absolutely true. The biggest thing that separates a good democracy from a bad one is a free press that holds government accountable by providing transparency into its operations.
  - temp8964 6y ago
    "Who make America what it is?" != "Who make democracy what it is". America's uniqueness is not democracy. There are many other countries are democratic and have free press and have journalists.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > The second part is certainly true. But are you sure about the first part? If you ask anybody who make America what it is, the answer "journalists" maybe won't pass 10%. Without a free press, you're left with PR (or propaganda, to use its original name). You can't have much of a democracy if that's how the citizenry are "informed." This is shown by how one of the first things budding authoritarians do in backsliding democracy is attack the free press and gain control over it (e.g. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/24/hungary-editors-sacking-blow-press-freedom https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/24/hungary-editors-sacking-...). There's a high likelihood that someone will respond to my comment with a false equivalency claiming journalism is propaganda.
  - temp8964 6y ago
    The question is "Who make America what it is?", it is not "Who make democracy what it is". America's uniqueness is not democracy. There are many other countries are democratic and have free press and have journalists.
westoque 6y ago
> We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. Something about this line irks me. I have a love-hate relationship with journalism because of this. I like that we are able to share stories through good communication and writing but on the other hand, being honest could (as the author said) "bite" you back. I just wish that we were honest about the interaction from the get go and not waiting for that a-ha moment to catch the person off-guard so they can support their own initiative, bias or story.
jeffbee 6y ago
If you go on a short trip with some people and afterwards half the people independently complain that you're an offensive racist, there's more to the situation than you "misjudged your audience."
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > If you go on a short trip with some people and afterwards half the people independently complain that you're an offensive racist, there's more to the situation than you "misjudged your audience." I don't think it's that simple, especially when the "some people" are teenagers. Teenagers, more often than most, can be a rather inflammatory combination of ignorant and zealous.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    Ignorant, zealous, eager to impress each other, and easily impressed by each other.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    There's a Principal Skinner meme in here somewhere, if I can just put my finger on it...
    - tablespoon 6y ago
      > There's a Principal Skinner meme in here somewhere, if I can just put my finger on it... Memes can be funny and express pretty dumb generalizations, all at the same time.
- vehemenz 6y ago
  Depends who the people are. In this case, the complainants are mostly ultra-privileged white kids whose parents can afford to send their privately schooled kids on a resume-building field trip to another country with a veteran NYTimes journalist. In this case, the audience are connected and powerful people exchanging phony victimhood for social capital. If anything, he gave his audience too much credit.
- 6y ago
hojjat12000 6y ago
I do not know who this guy is. I don't read the NYT. I have a hard time reading long texts. I get distracted or bored real quick and switch to a different tab. But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting. I'm sorry that this happened. This is a nightmare of mine. Someone gets a hold of some stupid thing that I said or did (as a joke back in college) or in this case as an honest attempt to explain stuff to teenagers, and now you have to go over every single word and explain yourself. and as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.)
- LanceH 6y ago
  Apologies are frequently taken as admission and only fan the flames.
  - hojjat12000 6y ago
    I meant in my personal life. I make a joke, she gets offended. I can spend the next hour explaining the joke and how it wasn't supposed to be offensive. Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward.
    - nickff 6y ago
      I don't think that makes you a coward, it just means that you value other things over being 'right'. Some people are obsessed with always 'winning', and don't pay attention to how their fighting can hurt people and relationships. I obviously don't know you or the specifics of your disagreements, but I think you should be forgiving of yourself.
    - autoditype 6y ago
      > Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward. You can apologize AND simultaneously it can be true that such other person is also a jerk who purposefully gets offended by stupid things and takes everyone out of context for their own benefit who leads a march to cancel you.
u678u 6y ago
Its quite amazing that he's an experienced journalist and he knows its worth publishing your own work directly because you know journalists will subjectively misquote you. Its a good lesson.
tengbretson 6y ago
This guy seems to really have a knack for writing with himself as the focus. Maybe he'll find better fortunes outside of journalism.
- hojjat12000 6y ago
  These are article about how something he said was taken out of context. He is talking about "himself" because that's the topic! This is not an article in the Times. This is a post in his blog explaining how he lost his job! Why would you say that?
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Because its an easy way to bring down the content of the article, instead of addressing the points it makes.
bitbang 6y ago
Read an article on this last week. With the internet sucking up all the advertising revenue, journalism is turning into propaganda in order to try to retain patronage. It's eating them from the inside out. https://thedispatch.com/p/words-as-weapons-how-activist-journalists https://thedispatch.com/p/words-as-weapons-how-activist-jour...
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  This has always been the case. Do you imagine news barons ever allowed journalists to publish stories that didn't suit their narrative?
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    I think a new thing is that so few control the news consumption of so many?
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Isn't it the other way around? Weren't news much more concentrated before the option of writing blog posts or tweets existed?
      - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
        Not necessarily, professional news organizations, including blogs and tweeters are increasingly owned by fewer and fewer parent companies. At least compared to say 70 years ago. If you go back farther it will be a different story.
deleted 6y ago
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3JPLW 6y ago
This seems to assume some background knowledge of the situation, of which I had none. Here's a quick primer: > He left The New York Times in 2021 following public reports of making racist remarks, including use of the word "nigger", during a 2019 trip to Peru with high school students. McNeil claims he intended to quote the word in a discussion about the use of the slur. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McNeil_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McNeil_Jr.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> 1. Yes, I did use the word, in this context: A student asked me if I thought her high school’s administration was right to suspend a classmate of hers for using the word in a video she’d made in eighth grade. I said “Did she actually call someone a (offending word)? Or was she singing a rap song or quoting a book title or something?” When the student explained that it was the student, who was white and Jewish, sitting with a black friend and the two were jokingly insulting each other by calling each other offensive names for a black person and a Jew, I said “She was suspended for that? Two years later? No, I don’t think suspension was warranted. Somebody should have talked to her, but any school administrator should know that 12-year-olds say dumb things. It’s part of growing up.” > 2. I was never asked if I believed in white privilege. As someone who lived in South Africa in the 1990’s and has reported in Africa almost every year since, I have a clearer idea than most Americans of white privilege. I was asked if I believed in systemic racism. I answered words to the effect of: “Yeah, of course, but tell me which system we’re talking about. The U.S. military? The L.A.P.D.? The New York Times? They’re all different.” > 3. The question about blackface was part of a discussion of cultural appropriation. The students felt that it was never, ever appropriate for any white person to adopt anything from another culture — not clothes, not music, not anything. I counter-argued that all cultures grow by adopting from others. I gave examples — gunpowder and paper. I said I was a San Franciscan, and we invented blue jeans. Did that mean they — East Coast private school students — couldn’t wear blue jeans? I said we were in Peru, and the tomato came from Peru. Did that mean that Italians had to stop using tomatoes? That they had to stop eating pizza? Then one of the students said: “Does that mean that blackface is OK?” I said “No, not normally — but is it OK for black people to wear blackface?” “The student, sounding outraged, said “Black people don’t wear blackface!” I said “In South Africa, they absolutely do. The so-called colored people in Cape Town have a festival every year called the Coon Carnival where they wear blackface, play Dixieland music and wear striped jackets. It started when a minstrel show came to South Africa in the early 1900’s. Americans who visit South Africa tell them they’re offended they shouldn’t do it, and they answer ‘Buzz off. This is our culture now. Don’t come here from America and tell us what to do.’ So what do you say to them? Is it up to you, a white American, to tell black South Africans what is and isn’t their culture?” I fundamentally don't understand why the Times didn't explain this early on. Not necessarily release these statements verbatim, but certainly provide some of this context.
djoldman 6y ago
If you're a journalist, you should know better than anyone that: There is no such thing as off-the-record and It is wise to consider everything one says and writes to be saved for eternity and immediately sent to one's worst enemy It's interesting that we humans just can't stop talking.
- mdoms 6y ago
  How is this relevant?
khanmaytok 6y ago
TL;DR?
- Daho0n 6y ago
  You can't say racist words. Not even to ask "did she really say <bad word>?" because then you said it yourself and hence you are a racist. It's woke America.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    The TLDR is 'don't argue with woke, entitled, powerful/rich teens'. Especially don't do it by being nuanced in your usage of racial slurs - it will go over their heads and it's likely to bite you in the ass.
  - eli 6y ago
    According to the person who got fired. That's not how the other people there describe it.
    - djrogers 6y ago
      > That's not how the other people there describe it. Easy to say, but we don't actually have any details reported from any first hadn't accounts other than this one...
      - eli 6y ago
        The original story that started this all spoke to multiple of the students on the trip and has more details: https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...
    - sir_bearington 6y ago
      No, other people who describe it were clear that McNeil used the word in reference not as a pejorative. Even the NY Times' own coverage said that he did not use the word as an insult.
deleted 6y ago
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hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I'll admit, I didn't read all four articles. I got about half way through the first one and was just wondering "I still have no idea what this is all about." Fortunately, the Wikipedia article on the author has a brief summary. In particular, I thought this quote from the Wikipedia article really summarizes the differences between older and younger generations: "there is a profound difference between using a racial epithet in the course of a discussion about that racial epithet's use, and using a racial epithet to diminish or to wound someone." For "socially conscious" people in my generation (Gen X), I think nearly all of us would find calling someone a racial epithet abhorrent. At the same time, while I understand culture has shifted and I wouldn't do it now, I still find it quite bizarre that the mere utterance of the epithet, even in a sentence like "You should never call someone a <racial epithet> because that is extremely offensive" is considered itself racist by younger people. I recall hearing about a young popular YouTuber about a year or so ago who was accused of being racist simply for singing along to the lyrics of a popular rap song. Even more strange to me was that his defense (which was true if one looked up his Instagram video) was that he did NOT utter said epithet, in that he was singing along with the lyrics but when it got to that word he just skipped it and didn't say it. I understand culture changes, but it still bothers me that we've gotten to the point where we completely disregard intent and focus instead just on the syntax of what was said. To be clear, I'm not sure if that's indeed what occurred in Mr. McNeil's case, but I certainly have seen it in other examples.
- sgustard 6y ago
  Is there a difference between calling someone a word and using the word to make a point about that word? More importantly, is it relevant for me as a non-POC to dictate how this word affects someone else?
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    Singling out a student as a target of an insult is nothing like the situations under discussion. If a teacher said "How would Ronnie feel if I accused him of fucking his sister" the biggest problem isn't the use of the word "fucking."
  - 6y ago
tesnirnat 6y ago
> “Recently,” I told Carolyn, “I’ve been feeling a little like a Confederate Statue. I think people are getting a little sick of me and are waiting for me to make a mistake so they can pull me down and trample me.” I can't be the only person who thinks that this is an odd and inappropriate comparison to make, can I? But it doesn't surprise me that someone who thinks that this is a reasonable analogy in a public setting would be interpreted as making racist remarks.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  i'm surprised and grateful that it wasn't
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > I can't be the only person who thinks that this is an odd and inappropriate comparison to make, can I? You're probably right. But I think there are also many who take a view opposite of yours. Maybe that's why these debates rage for multiple years, instead of being quickly resolved.
  - tesnirnat 6y ago
    My father is like this. He believes very strongly that he should be allowed to say anything and other people should be able to take it. I don't really agree, personally, but I empathize with the central crux of the argument (freedom of speech, or something like that). Nobody likes to be told what (or what not) to do. But I think life would be easier if we all spent some time thinking about how our audience would perceive our words before we say them out loud.
- cout 6y ago
  I had a similar internal response when I read that sentence. I could easily interpret it as claiming that people are pulling down Confederate statues because they are a little sick of them rather than because of what the statues represent.
  - jariel 6y ago
defgeneric 6y ago
It sounds like what's happening at the New York Times is that the younger generation of journalists (Gen X, Millenials) want the older generation out. They want their jobs. In that context it's easy to see why no argument or defense would ever convince the "woke" mob in the newsroom.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  well it has been claimed that they want to direct the news rather than tell it, as in they want to push what they think is right and that moral imperative is more important that presenting the facts. this is what worries me the most about the changes seen in the press, many publications are already bowing to pressure and far too many jump on the vilification bandwagon as if to say "See we know how to act and we agree" without regard to context or much else. cancel culture or whatever you want to call it is hyper destructive and will simply lead to a world where trust is never possible if you wanted to destroy Western civilization you could not do much better than this. McCarthyism is back on the menu.
  - fullshark 6y ago
    Perhaps that is just the weapon of choice to achieve the OP's stated goals, particularly effective in a social media environment outside their jobs where outrage = attention = name recognition.
  - gremlinsinc 6y ago
    The older generation has been canceling pro-socialist speech and agendas for decades, is that okay? How is this any different?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    > well it has been claimed that they want to direct the news rather than tell it, as in they want to push what they think is right and that moral imperative is more important that presenting the facts. This is what the corporate press has always done. There has never been a time where wealthy papers were paying journalists to follow the story and would print whatever they found. These are just nice stories people tell themselves. What's mostly happening right now is a combination of a changing of the guard, with a new generation valuing other moral absolutes than the previous one; and more access to the internals of papers because of freer accesa to information (and misinformation) from social media.
hahahahe 6y ago
Even as a progressive who read the NYT religiously growing up in NYC, I stopped reading it in the past five years or so. It’s gotten so bad that I don’t think they can recover. The same goes for other highly regarded names in the newspaper business such as the Financial Times, WSJ, etc. I think it’s simply a reflection of the dying industry. I get my news from Twitter directly from reporters that I respect.
mc32 6y ago
The biggest take for me is that reporters are ideologues of what they see as ‘truth’; to wit: “...But we’re still jackals. We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. At the highest levels, like Watergate, it’s about digging for the truth, no matter what corrupt government official it hurts. At the basest level, when even the crummiest scandal erupts, you have to repeat the accusation, even if you know it’s untrue or half-true, in order to explain the truth — no matter how much you may personally like the source you’re hurting.” How can you know if you’re ultimately right or wrong? What are you inflecting?
prepend 6y ago
The lesson here is that there’s no meaningful conversations to be had between 60 year olds and teenagers. So just avoid them. I know I seem like an old person, but there’s situations where I’ve had to talk to teenagers and the experience is surreal how different our realities are. And it’s definitely worse when the teenagers are rich. It’s all one can do to not freak out and start screaming like Annie Wilkes from Misery or Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye. I was sitting in a classroom and the sentence I remember was “My dad says a [Mercedes] E Class is just the poor man’s S Class, I would never drive one even if you gave it to me.” The mistake this person made was going on the trip. Trying to be “open minded” with teenage rich girls who chose to go on a Peruvian shaman vacation shows poor judgement. Author says he was trying to do his friend a favor, but a $300/day upside compared with just the mental pain of eating meals with teenagers for days is just not worth it. This seems like NYT just using an excuse to fire him and the ideological madness is just cover.
- deleted 6y ago
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- chrisshroba 6y ago
  > The lesson here is that there’s no meaningful conversations to be had between 60 year olds and teenagers. > the mental pain of eating meals with teenagers for days I really think this incorrectly stereotypes an entire generation as this set of unreasonable and irrational fools. While the teenagers on the trip misjudged the author's intentions, it is the Times that are at fault for using those complaints as grounds for discipline.
  - prepend 6y ago
    I think it definitely stereotypes, but it’s a defense mechanism. I think it’s possible, but too risky to attempt. It’s a situation where the Times is clearly in the wrong, but this guy is out of a job. Because of the thoroughness of these posts and the references to lawyers, the best case is this guy gets millions after a few years of litigation. But that’s why the reasonable action is to just avoid the risk. That’s easier than trying to fix teenagers, large orgs, etc
teddyh 6y ago
> We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
klmadfejno 6y ago
It seems to me one of the prominent issues in the "racist" dialogue is the nuance between people who are outwardly hateful and people who are outwardly indifferent to racial injustice. This guy probably doesn't hate anyone, but it certainly doesn't come across to me like he cares. This part is a red flag: > So, yeah, I can be an asshole. If you’re an editor, and you made changes in a story of mine, and I lashed out at you like that, I’m very sorry. It wasn’t because of your race or sex or youth or anything else. You may have just been a set of initials in the margins of our editing software. That’s one part of me that’s not very nice, and I know it. If I did that to you, I apologize. And if you’ll tell me about it, I’ll apologize personally. This seems like a red flag: > I’m surprised by how quick some colleagues who barely know me were prepared to accept those accusations and even add more on a Times alumni Facebook page. Someone to whom I don’t think I’ve spoken since 1994 said “calling him only a racist is being nice.” An editor I happily worked side by side with in 1989 and have had brief but cordial chats with maybe once every ten years when we bump into each other on the street said I seemed “dismissive of people of color and their views” back then. Someone I thought I’d been very nice to when she left the paper attacked me for using the expression “third world” in a story that was, as always, approved by several Times editors. This sounds like a red flag: > My girlfriend thinks I have a high-functioning Asperger aspect to my personality — I’m empathic about suffering but I also very much misread audiences. A young Haitian-American colleague and friend who sat behind me for three years in Science news called me after the Beast story. I told him what I’d actually said in Peru. He said, “Donald, you sound exactly like my father. He would also say ‘You can’t dress like a thug to a job interview and expect to get the job.’ But from you, it sounds racist.” I said “How is ‘thug’ racist? What about Thug Life Records?” He said “It’s almost the equivalent of the n-word. Don’t you know about Marshawn Lynch?’’ I said: “He plays for Seattle?” I could hear him sigh. “No, Donald, let me explain…” You can basically feel this guy's personality as a cliche. He thinks he's pretty smart. He constructs logical reasons to justify his action and doesn't understand intuitively when others have strong adverse reactions to his reasoning. In part 2 he provides this passage: > The question about blackface was part of a discussion of cultural appropriation. The students felt that it was never, ever appropriate for any white person to adopt anything from another culture — not clothes, not music, not anything. I counter-argued that all cultures grow by adopting from others. I gave examples — gunpowder and paper. I said I was a San Franciscan, and we invented blue jeans. Did that mean they — East Coast private school students — couldn’t wear blue jeans? I said we were in Peru, and the tomato came from Peru. Did that mean that Italians had to stop using tomatoes? That they had to stop eating pizza? Then one of the students said: “Does that mean that blackface is OK?” I said “No, not normally — but is it OK for black people to wear blackface?” “The student, sounding outraged, said “Black people don’t wear blackface!” I said “In South Africa, they absolutely do. The so-called colored people in Cape Town have a festival every year called the Coon Carnival* where they wear blackface, play Dixieland music and wear striped jackets. It started when a minstrel show came to South Africa in the early 1900’s. Americans who visit South Africa tell them they’re offended they shouldn’t do it, and they answer ‘Buzz off. This is our culture now. Don’t come here from America and tell us what to do.’ So what do you say to them? Is it up to you, a white American, to tell black South Africans what is and isn’t their culture?” Another instance of him asserting pedantic reasoning against a hard emotional opinion. Material he knows well is making people uncomfortable, but believes he is not at all accountable for. I don't think he is a racist. I think he is highly likely to be perceived as an asshole by those around him. I think its highly likely that he aggravates sensitive issues, including racial issues, somewhat frequently. I probably wouldn't want to work with him.
deleted 6y ago
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jxy 6y ago
> Obviously, I badly misjudged my audience in Peru that year. I thought I was generally arguing in favor of open-mindedness and tolerance — but it clearly didn’t come across that way. And my bristliness makes me an imperfect pedagogue for sensitive teenagers. Although the students liked me in 2018, some of those in 2019 clearly detested me. So in the end, he still blamed those teenagers. Has he learned nothing?
- chokolad 6y ago
  > So in the end, he still blamed those teenagers. Has he learned nothing? What should he have learned?
  - etchalon 6y ago
    How to behave.
    - chokolad 6y ago
      > How to behave. How ? What exactly should have been changed in his behavior ?
      - etchalon 6y ago
        I'd have started with not engaging with teenagers as if they're adults, taking cues from the group as to where they were at emotionally and intellectually, and listened more than spoke. If you run through a field of land mines, you can't get mad when your legs get blown off.
        orthecreedence 6y ago
        > and listened more than spoke. Ah yes, the teacher who only listens to their students' feelings. The greatest wisdom of all comes from letting a bunch of kids steamroll you. > If you run through a field of land mines, you can't get mad when your legs get blown off. This is the issue. What teenagers think about someone should not be a field of landmines. Teenagers are constantly whiplashed by emotion, easily offended, self-important, and constantly trying to impress and one-up each other. The last thing we need to do with teenagers is shut up and let them speak. Yet now we've given a handful of them the power to fire someone based on their feelings. What message does this send?
ericol 6y ago
The US has such a big issues with racism, that anti-racism is an even bigger and worst ism than the original one, and it has spilled over the entire world, up to the point of cancelling other cultures. Rather recently, an Uruguayan footballer was fined [1] for using a word that is considered "racist"- and I think had to attend some sort of course on "racism". His sin? Calling a friend "negrito" out in the open (In an Instagram story). Now, here's the thing. "Negrito" (and even "negro") is an entirely valid affectionate nickname to call somebody in at least Uruguay and Argentina. My mother called me "mi negrito" when I was young. I call my daughter "negrita", my girlfriend calls me "mi negro" all the time, and many of my friends are called "El negro <last_name>". It is really baffling that because a lot of people has a lot of issues with racism thousands of kilometers away from where I live - or where Cavani lives, to that matter - because of this. [1] https://lmgtfy.app/?q=cavani+racism https://lmgtfy.app/?q=cavani+racism
wellthisisgreat 6y ago
Pardon the ignorance but isn’t there a significant difference in how you pronounce this word? There is one way to say it that is the taboo version (phonetic spelling sort of) and another - with -a in the end which is how it’s used in songs etc.? I have never heard the first pronunciation used in the US, but the second, accepted version is used everywhere, mostly by black people, but by white people too. Even though white people using the accepted version may raise some eyebrows, it’s nothing compared to what I imagine would happen if the first, phonetic pronunciation was used. Asking this because it seems many people here refer to rap / movies / street use of the word, where in 100% of the cases (besides maybe some historic prose) the word has been used in its modified, accepted form. As for the first, historic/ phonetic pronunciation, it seems unreasonable to use it in any context, besides maybe speaking of some historical usage in prose etc., unless, of course, one actually intends to be offensive.
Hitton 6y ago
It's regrettable, but the author seems to forget that he was part of an organization that has been spreading rhetoric which leads directly to this for years, now when he himself is bitten by this too, it's surprised pikachu face.
Pxtl 6y ago
I know I should be paying attention to the meat of the matter, but I was stuck on the fact that this man's life story was literally "I started in the mail room in the '70s" and I'm flabbergasted that there are people in the modern world who got jobs at the most prestigious newspaper in the world that way. It's like hearing "oh yeah I used to take the trolley to work for a nickel and we'd go see a talky after work" from a modern working-age human.
- alexithym 6y ago
  > I know I should be paying attention to the meat of the matter Yes, maybe you should :P
dang 6y ago
Part 2: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-two-what-happened-january-28-3e41bdbb28a7 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... Part 3: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-three-what-happened-in-the-2019-investigation-6f8e9939a385 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... Part 4: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-four-what-happened-in-peru-2a641a9b5e83 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... The referenced story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d... (Thanks djoldman and qnsi.)
icebergwarrior 6y ago
Nigger. Now can we, as a society, move on?
altgans 6y ago
I think the author didn't misinterpret the situation. Just everyone else did. In my opinion the "emergency mode" of the NYT made everything worse. Why would the hold an emergency meeting if it wasn't an emergency. If they had just held their horses, the actually empty article of the "beast" would have fizzled. Note: I am not a media insider --- I don't like the authors response in this post. In part 1 he is basically groveling. He needs to provide the facts, and then shut up, instead of telling everyone how he "was active in africa", so he clearly can't be racist
shruubi 6y ago
So, after reading all this (and boy, I understand it's to provide context, but it is a slog), my general takeaway is that Donald was making good and accurate points, but perhaps for this audience probably should have considered and measured his words a bit more. I do believe that if you actually understand the situations, there is most definitely no malice or harmful intent in anything he said/did, but I can also see how in the current climate where nuance is irrelevant that things he said and did could be perceived as offensive to people who are hypersensitive to these things. What concerned me more was that, at least based upon this narrative, the collective failure of The Times to perhaps underline from the outset that the issue was spreading within the newsroom and how serious it was, and that the Times provided next to no support for the situation beyond having legal proofread statements and more or less left Donald to hang in the wind. It really seems to me that the Times more or less gave up on Donald from the outset and let things snowball as an excuse to get rid of him to avoid bad PR. And the real kicker is that they still left him up to get a pulitzer for his reporting at their publication while throwing him under the bus. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
- santoshalper 6y ago
  It's always hard to say when you only see one person's accounting of a story, but it sure looks like NYT was sick of him and looking for a reason to get rid of him.
- dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  He was negotiating on behalf of the union and the people he negotiated with were in charge of his punishment. This sends a strong message to other people negotiating on behalf of the union to not be such a pain.
- 1024core 6y ago
  > things he said and did could be perceived as offensive to people who are hypersensitive to these things. Then they should have used this incident to educate them. Sure, the word $N in question would be offensive to a black person. But why should a bunch of white teenagers be offended if he just used it the way he did? Sounds to me like a bunch of virtue-signallers trying to outdo each other
tantalor 6y ago
NYT: "We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent." Also NYT: As President Barack Obama said of racism in 2015: “We are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘[n-word]’ in public. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/opinion/sunday/n-word-tape-trump-racism-omarosa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/opinion/sunday/n-word-tap... (They print the actual word)
- notJim 6y ago
  For the record, they walked that statement back. It was an absurd statement in the first place, but they did walk it back. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/new-york-times-editor-walks-back-statement-racial-slurs-n1257482 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/new-york-times-editor-walks...
  - tantalor 6y ago
    Thanks! Didn't know that.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
This ‘revitalized’ NYT should be viewed as a brand new organization (starting with zero respect). Only then will you not be disappointed.
dragonwriter 6y ago
Seems to me a combination of really poor quality[0], meandering writing by McNeil and obsession with the “cancel culture” narrative by many approaching the story is obscuring that real story here, talking McNeil at his word, is “management anti-labor negotiator leads effort to force out perennial labor negotiator who was a long time thorn in the side, and when the pretext on which that effort was founded fails to lead to the target handling the situation quite badly enough to justify firing, the details of the internal investigation (with additional embellishments designed to be provocative) conveniently leak to an outside media org, providing pretext for another round of action in which the target is finally forced out”. If we accept McNeil’s narrative, and cut through the weeds of the meandering explanation, it seems very much to be a story of repeated attempts to find a way to leverage whatever material was available, including especially McNeil’s known prickly, defensive lack of tolerance for what he sees as BS, especially about himself, to maneuver him into a situation where he could be fired or forced to resign, not something genuinely driven by offense at him using a particular word, or disrespecting tribal shamans, or telling stories about his encounter with partially nude dancers, or any of the other incidents cited in complaints, together or separately. [0] EDIT: arguably, some really poor quality writing on my part is obscuring my point here: in regard to McNeil’s epic, I meant “poor quality” only in terms in efficiency in conveying his side of the narrative of his being forced out for the benefit of readers looking to be informed about that, which superficially seems to be the putative intent of the piece.
- jboog 6y ago
  This guy has been writing for the NYT for decades. Has tons of prestigious accolades for his writing, was up for a Pulitzer this year and you claim his writing is "poor quality" based on....what exactly?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > you claim his writing is "poor quality" based on....what exactly? Because it is meandering, lacks a clear focus and organization, falls down tangents, etc. People who are excellent writers within a professional system where (1) they aren't writing about themselves, and (2) have the support of professional editors, etc., before the public sees the work, often have much lower quality without #2 or when the context is far from #1, such as writing about personal incidents that are highly charged. And most especially when both of those occur at the same time. And I don't claim his writing in the general sense is poor quality, I say that the four-part epic on this incident is poorly written. Or maybe it intends more to graphically convey the flow of consciousness that results from extreme indignation more than to inform effectively about the author's side of events, in which case it's a masterpiece of written art. “Poorly written” definitely makes an assumption of purpose that may not be warranted: as a show-not-tell feelings piece it is tremendously effective.
King-Aaron 6y ago
> Yes, I did use the word, in this context: A student asked me if I thought her high school’s administration was right to suspend a classmate of hers for using the word in a video she’d made in eighth grade. I said “Did she actually call someone a “(offending word”? Or was she singing a rap song or quoting a book title or something?” So he was asking a student if they had said the "evil word"... He wasn't calling anyone that, he was basically repeating it to ask the question. And they fired him for that? Honestly, I'm a massive proponent of social progression. But this seems like 'cancel culture' obsession going way too far.
- Igelau 6y ago
  I would have expected that professional journalism is a den of vipers, but this is just a complete infestation of evil. Change the names and issues and you could just as easily be talking about the GOP at this level of bull-headed corruption and ignorance.
deleted 6y ago
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spoonjim 6y ago
This is an example of why I’ve changed from someone who openly discussed issues with people to a person who will only discuss “sports and weather” with my real name attached, such as at work, and then funnel the rest into a set of increasingly toxic Reddit alts.
jerome-jh 6y ago
Referring mostly to part 3: if you're aging in a modern company and do not fully endorse the "company spirit", you will be targeted by younger bullshiters. They will perceive you as a threat to the company and use your demise as a way up. In this case it is likely the DB has been tipped by an insider. Newspapers are modern companies like many others: they are under ferocious competition, live from ads and subsidies from would-be oligarchs. Not a place for a "grumpy" old man, no matter the value you bring to the company, if you are not part of the "team".
SurfingToad 6y ago
I've seen "cancel culture" in analogy to the immune response for a long time now, and it fits pretty well. If you imagine that ideas can spread like infections, it makes sense to quarantine and ostracize individuals that have caught threathening ideas.. There's also the thing where someone socializing with an 'infected' individual gets treated as if they were infected as well. Better safe than sorry. With a high false positive rate, you err on the side of safety. Smoke detectors have a high false positive rate by design. You'd rather it go off on accident every now and then than fail when there's actually smoke. Present-day "McCarthyism" seems like a good example of this process in action. To people who dismiss the idea of cancel culture, I say this: check out South-Korea. Celebrities are regularly driven to suicide by online mobs. It's an epidemic. If a slight moral flaw is perceived, they're fair game. And the mobs can be brutal.

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djoldman 6y ago

lisper 6y ago
Thanks! Do you by chance also have a link to the Daily Beast article that started this kerfuffle?
- qnsi 6y ago
  https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...
  - disgrunt 6y ago
    > Multiple people familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast that an internal investigation was conducted about the claims and that the top science reporter was reprimanded. The paper also reached out to some parties who complained to apologize for McNeil’s behavior and to assure the students and parents that action had been taken internally against him. Not a single accuser was named. Goes on to use "people familiar with the situation" and "Some parties". Even hit pieces on journalists are effectively sourceless. Journalism is dead.
    - jccalhoun 6y ago
      The accusers seem to be the students themselves and so were and may still be minors. If that is the case I don't think naming them in this situation would be the best thing to do.
      - disgrunt 6y ago
        Not by my reading of the hit piece. > After the excursion ended, according to multiple parents of students on the trip who spoke with The Daily Beast along with documents shared with the...
  - stefan_ 6y ago
    I assume it is intentional that this article is devoid of any actual quote of what is purported to have been said, and instead consists purely of multiple, mostly redundant statements of how the teenagers reacted to what is insinuated to have been said? The levels of indirection here don't leave a great impression.
- FillardMillmore 6y ago
  I believe this is the article in question. https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...
kragen 6y ago
In the interest of holding people accountable for what they publish, rather than giving them the option to falsify their words later, or claim that others have done so: Part 1: https://archive.fo/PLa2m https://archive.fo/PLa2m Part 2: https://archive.fo/cbU53 https://archive.fo/cbU53 Part 3: https://archive.fo/TT3B2 https://archive.fo/TT3B2 Part 4: https://archive.fo/W12D7 https://archive.fo/W12D7 (As another comment points out below, these articles are also likely to get memory-holed by demands to censor "racist content", or "content by racists".) I did try things like https://web.archive.org/web/20210301145319/https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-four-what-happened-in-peru-2a641a9b5e83 https://web.archive.org/web/20210301145319/https://donaldgmc... but the Medium JS seems to successfully replace the page with a 500 error after it's loaded, despite being served from the IA. All the requests in the debug pane do go to archive.org, so this is probably a solvable problem. Are there other good alternatives to archive.fo for this kind of thing? Maybe something decentralized?
- nerdponx 6y ago
  I wonder if there's something like archive.is/fo/vn/??, but built on IPFS.

sodality2 6y ago

Tangent but why is medium.com so bad? CPU usage is instantly 100% for the first 20 seconds after loading. Disabling JS has no visible effect but makes it load instantly. Granted, I'm on an older laptop (AMD A6-7310 APU) but holy cow I thought I could at least browse the web on this thing for a few more years.

nathancahill 6y ago
Medium is awful. Pages on average load in <0.5 seconds, including JS. Medium takes 12 seconds on average. Bandwidth is not the bottleneck, I have 1Gps service.

koreanguy 6y ago

get a real job, news is not a job

temp8964 6y ago

"We make America what it is — without a free press, democracy dies." The second part is certainly true. But are you sure about the first part? If you ask anybody who make America what it is, the answer "journalists" maybe won't pass 10%.

paxys 6y ago
People might not say it, but it is absolutely true. The biggest thing that separates a good democracy from a bad one is a free press that holds government accountable by providing transparency into its operations.
- temp8964 6y ago
  "Who make America what it is?" != "Who make democracy what it is". America's uniqueness is not democracy. There are many other countries are democratic and have free press and have journalists.
tablespoon 6y ago
> The second part is certainly true. But are you sure about the first part? If you ask anybody who make America what it is, the answer "journalists" maybe won't pass 10%. Without a free press, you're left with PR (or propaganda, to use its original name). You can't have much of a democracy if that's how the citizenry are "informed." This is shown by how one of the first things budding authoritarians do in backsliding democracy is attack the free press and gain control over it (e.g. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/24/hungary-editors-sacking-blow-press-freedom https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/24/hungary-editors-sacking-...). There's a high likelihood that someone will respond to my comment with a false equivalency claiming journalism is propaganda.
- temp8964 6y ago
  The question is "Who make America what it is?", it is not "Who make democracy what it is". America's uniqueness is not democracy. There are many other countries are democratic and have free press and have journalists.

westoque 6y ago

> We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. Something about this line irks me. I have a love-hate relationship with journalism because of this. I like that we are able to share stories through good communication and writing but on the other hand, being honest could (as the author said) "bite" you back. I just wish that we were honest about the interaction from the get go and not waiting for that a-ha moment to catch the person off-guard so they can support their own initiative, bias or story.

jeffbee 6y ago

If you go on a short trip with some people and afterwards half the people independently complain that you're an offensive racist, there's more to the situation than you "misjudged your audience."

tablespoon 6y ago
> If you go on a short trip with some people and afterwards half the people independently complain that you're an offensive racist, there's more to the situation than you "misjudged your audience." I don't think it's that simple, especially when the "some people" are teenagers. Teenagers, more often than most, can be a rather inflammatory combination of ignorant and zealous.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Ignorant, zealous, eager to impress each other, and easily impressed by each other.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  There's a Principal Skinner meme in here somewhere, if I can just put my finger on it...
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > There's a Principal Skinner meme in here somewhere, if I can just put my finger on it... Memes can be funny and express pretty dumb generalizations, all at the same time.
vehemenz 6y ago
Depends who the people are. In this case, the complainants are mostly ultra-privileged white kids whose parents can afford to send their privately schooled kids on a resume-building field trip to another country with a veteran NYTimes journalist. In this case, the audience are connected and powerful people exchanging phony victimhood for social capital. If anything, he gave his audience too much credit.
6y ago

hojjat12000 6y ago

I do not know who this guy is. I don't read the NYT. I have a hard time reading long texts. I get distracted or bored real quick and switch to a different tab. But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting. I'm sorry that this happened. This is a nightmare of mine. Someone gets a hold of some stupid thing that I said or did (as a joke back in college) or in this case as an honest attempt to explain stuff to teenagers, and now you have to go over every single word and explain yourself. and as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.)

LanceH 6y ago
Apologies are frequently taken as admission and only fan the flames.
- hojjat12000 6y ago
  I meant in my personal life. I make a joke, she gets offended. I can spend the next hour explaining the joke and how it wasn't supposed to be offensive. Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward.
  - nickff 6y ago
    I don't think that makes you a coward, it just means that you value other things over being 'right'. Some people are obsessed with always 'winning', and don't pay attention to how their fighting can hurt people and relationships. I obviously don't know you or the specifics of your disagreements, but I think you should be forgiving of yourself.
  - autoditype 6y ago
    > Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward. You can apologize AND simultaneously it can be true that such other person is also a jerk who purposefully gets offended by stupid things and takes everyone out of context for their own benefit who leads a march to cancel you.

u678u 6y ago

Its quite amazing that he's an experienced journalist and he knows its worth publishing your own work directly because you know journalists will subjectively misquote you. Its a good lesson.

tengbretson 6y ago

This guy seems to really have a knack for writing with himself as the focus. Maybe he'll find better fortunes outside of journalism.

hojjat12000 6y ago
These are article about how something he said was taken out of context. He is talking about "himself" because that's the topic! This is not an article in the Times. This is a post in his blog explaining how he lost his job! Why would you say that?
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Because its an easy way to bring down the content of the article, instead of addressing the points it makes.

bitbang 6y ago

Read an article on this last week. With the internet sucking up all the advertising revenue, journalism is turning into propaganda in order to try to retain patronage. It's eating them from the inside out. https://thedispatch.com/p/words-as-weapons-how-activist-journalists https://thedispatch.com/p/words-as-weapons-how-activist-jour...

tsimionescu 6y ago
This has always been the case. Do you imagine news barons ever allowed journalists to publish stories that didn't suit their narrative?
- im3w1l 6y ago
  I think a new thing is that so few control the news consumption of so many?
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Isn't it the other way around? Weren't news much more concentrated before the option of writing blog posts or tweets existed?
    - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
      Not necessarily, professional news organizations, including blogs and tweeters are increasingly owned by fewer and fewer parent companies. At least compared to say 70 years ago. If you go back farther it will be a different story.

deleted 6y ago

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3JPLW 6y ago

This seems to assume some background knowledge of the situation, of which I had none. Here's a quick primer: > He left The New York Times in 2021 following public reports of making racist remarks, including use of the word "nigger", during a 2019 trip to Peru with high school students. McNeil claims he intended to quote the word in a discussion about the use of the slur. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McNeil_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McNeil_Jr.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> 1. Yes, I did use the word, in this context: A student asked me if I thought her high school’s administration was right to suspend a classmate of hers for using the word in a video she’d made in eighth grade. I said “Did she actually call someone a (offending word)? Or was she singing a rap song or quoting a book title or something?” When the student explained that it was the student, who was white and Jewish, sitting with a black friend and the two were jokingly insulting each other by calling each other offensive names for a black person and a Jew, I said “She was suspended for that? Two years later? No, I don’t think suspension was warranted. Somebody should have talked to her, but any school administrator should know that 12-year-olds say dumb things. It’s part of growing up.” > 2. I was never asked if I believed in white privilege. As someone who lived in South Africa in the 1990’s and has reported in Africa almost every year since, I have a clearer idea than most Americans of white privilege. I was asked if I believed in systemic racism. I answered words to the effect of: “Yeah, of course, but tell me which system we’re talking about. The U.S. military? The L.A.P.D.? The New York Times? They’re all different.” > 3. The question about blackface was part of a discussion of cultural appropriation. The students felt that it was never, ever appropriate for any white person to adopt anything from another culture — not clothes, not music, not anything. I counter-argued that all cultures grow by adopting from others. I gave examples — gunpowder and paper. I said I was a San Franciscan, and we invented blue jeans. Did that mean they — East Coast private school students — couldn’t wear blue jeans? I said we were in Peru, and the tomato came from Peru. Did that mean that Italians had to stop using tomatoes? That they had to stop eating pizza? Then one of the students said: “Does that mean that blackface is OK?” I said “No, not normally — but is it OK for black people to wear blackface?” “The student, sounding outraged, said “Black people don’t wear blackface!” I said “In South Africa, they absolutely do. The so-called colored people in Cape Town have a festival every year called the Coon Carnival where they wear blackface, play Dixieland music and wear striped jackets. It started when a minstrel show came to South Africa in the early 1900’s. Americans who visit South Africa tell them they’re offended they shouldn’t do it, and they answer ‘Buzz off. This is our culture now. Don’t come here from America and tell us what to do.’ So what do you say to them? Is it up to you, a white American, to tell black South Africans what is and isn’t their culture?” I fundamentally don't understand why the Times didn't explain this early on. Not necessarily release these statements verbatim, but certainly provide some of this context.

djoldman 6y ago

If you're a journalist, you should know better than anyone that: There is no such thing as off-the-record and It is wise to consider everything one says and writes to be saved for eternity and immediately sent to one's worst enemy It's interesting that we humans just can't stop talking.

mdoms 6y ago
How is this relevant?

khanmaytok 6y ago

TL;DR?

Daho0n 6y ago
You can't say racist words. Not even to ask "did she really say <bad word>?" because then you said it yourself and hence you are a racist. It's woke America.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  The TLDR is 'don't argue with woke, entitled, powerful/rich teens'. Especially don't do it by being nuanced in your usage of racial slurs - it will go over their heads and it's likely to bite you in the ass.
- eli 6y ago
  According to the person who got fired. That's not how the other people there describe it.
  - djrogers 6y ago
    > That's not how the other people there describe it. Easy to say, but we don't actually have any details reported from any first hadn't accounts other than this one...
    - eli 6y ago
      The original story that started this all spoke to multiple of the students on the trip and has more details: https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...
  - sir_bearington 6y ago
    No, other people who describe it were clear that McNeil used the word in reference not as a pejorative. Even the NY Times' own coverage said that he did not use the word as an insult.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I'll admit, I didn't read all four articles. I got about half way through the first one and was just wondering "I still have no idea what this is all about." Fortunately, the Wikipedia article on the author has a brief summary. In particular, I thought this quote from the Wikipedia article really summarizes the differences between older and younger generations: "there is a profound difference between using a racial epithet in the course of a discussion about that racial epithet's use, and using a racial epithet to diminish or to wound someone." For "socially conscious" people in my generation (Gen X), I think nearly all of us would find calling someone a racial epithet abhorrent. At the same time, while I understand culture has shifted and I wouldn't do it now, I still find it quite bizarre that the mere utterance of the epithet, even in a sentence like "You should never call someone a <racial epithet> because that is extremely offensive" is considered itself racist by younger people. I recall hearing about a young popular YouTuber about a year or so ago who was accused of being racist simply for singing along to the lyrics of a popular rap song. Even more strange to me was that his defense (which was true if one looked up his Instagram video) was that he did NOT utter said epithet, in that he was singing along with the lyrics but when it got to that word he just skipped it and didn't say it. I understand culture changes, but it still bothers me that we've gotten to the point where we completely disregard intent and focus instead just on the syntax of what was said. To be clear, I'm not sure if that's indeed what occurred in Mr. McNeil's case, but I certainly have seen it in other examples.

sgustard 6y ago
Is there a difference between calling someone a word and using the word to make a point about that word? More importantly, is it relevant for me as a non-POC to dictate how this word affects someone else?
- aidenn0 6y ago
  Singling out a student as a target of an insult is nothing like the situations under discussion. If a teacher said "How would Ronnie feel if I accused him of fucking his sister" the biggest problem isn't the use of the word "fucking."
- 6y ago

tesnirnat 6y ago

> “Recently,” I told Carolyn, “I’ve been feeling a little like a Confederate Statue. I think people are getting a little sick of me and are waiting for me to make a mistake so they can pull me down and trample me.” I can't be the only person who thinks that this is an odd and inappropriate comparison to make, can I? But it doesn't surprise me that someone who thinks that this is a reasonable analogy in a public setting would be interpreted as making racist remarks.

marshmallow_12 6y ago
i'm surprised and grateful that it wasn't
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> I can't be the only person who thinks that this is an odd and inappropriate comparison to make, can I? You're probably right. But I think there are also many who take a view opposite of yours. Maybe that's why these debates rage for multiple years, instead of being quickly resolved.
- tesnirnat 6y ago
  My father is like this. He believes very strongly that he should be allowed to say anything and other people should be able to take it. I don't really agree, personally, but I empathize with the central crux of the argument (freedom of speech, or something like that). Nobody likes to be told what (or what not) to do. But I think life would be easier if we all spent some time thinking about how our audience would perceive our words before we say them out loud.
cout 6y ago
I had a similar internal response when I read that sentence. I could easily interpret it as claiming that people are pulling down Confederate statues because they are a little sick of them rather than because of what the statues represent.
- jariel 6y ago

defgeneric 6y ago

It sounds like what's happening at the New York Times is that the younger generation of journalists (Gen X, Millenials) want the older generation out. They want their jobs. In that context it's easy to see why no argument or defense would ever convince the "woke" mob in the newsroom.

Shivetya 6y ago
well it has been claimed that they want to direct the news rather than tell it, as in they want to push what they think is right and that moral imperative is more important that presenting the facts. this is what worries me the most about the changes seen in the press, many publications are already bowing to pressure and far too many jump on the vilification bandwagon as if to say "See we know how to act and we agree" without regard to context or much else. cancel culture or whatever you want to call it is hyper destructive and will simply lead to a world where trust is never possible if you wanted to destroy Western civilization you could not do much better than this. McCarthyism is back on the menu.
- fullshark 6y ago
  Perhaps that is just the weapon of choice to achieve the OP's stated goals, particularly effective in a social media environment outside their jobs where outrage = attention = name recognition.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  The older generation has been canceling pro-socialist speech and agendas for decades, is that okay? How is this any different?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  > well it has been claimed that they want to direct the news rather than tell it, as in they want to push what they think is right and that moral imperative is more important that presenting the facts. This is what the corporate press has always done. There has never been a time where wealthy papers were paying journalists to follow the story and would print whatever they found. These are just nice stories people tell themselves. What's mostly happening right now is a combination of a changing of the guard, with a new generation valuing other moral absolutes than the previous one; and more access to the internals of papers because of freer accesa to information (and misinformation) from social media.

hahahahe 6y ago

Even as a progressive who read the NYT religiously growing up in NYC, I stopped reading it in the past five years or so. It’s gotten so bad that I don’t think they can recover. The same goes for other highly regarded names in the newspaper business such as the Financial Times, WSJ, etc. I think it’s simply a reflection of the dying industry. I get my news from Twitter directly from reporters that I respect.

mc32 6y ago

The biggest take for me is that reporters are ideologues of what they see as ‘truth’; to wit: “...But we’re still jackals. We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. At the highest levels, like Watergate, it’s about digging for the truth, no matter what corrupt government official it hurts. At the basest level, when even the crummiest scandal erupts, you have to repeat the accusation, even if you know it’s untrue or half-true, in order to explain the truth — no matter how much you may personally like the source you’re hurting.” How can you know if you’re ultimately right or wrong? What are you inflecting?

prepend 6y ago

The lesson here is that there’s no meaningful conversations to be had between 60 year olds and teenagers. So just avoid them. I know I seem like an old person, but there’s situations where I’ve had to talk to teenagers and the experience is surreal how different our realities are. And it’s definitely worse when the teenagers are rich. It’s all one can do to not freak out and start screaming like Annie Wilkes from Misery or Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye. I was sitting in a classroom and the sentence I remember was “My dad says a [Mercedes] E Class is just the poor man’s S Class, I would never drive one even if you gave it to me.” The mistake this person made was going on the trip. Trying to be “open minded” with teenage rich girls who chose to go on a Peruvian shaman vacation shows poor judgement. Author says he was trying to do his friend a favor, but a $300/day upside compared with just the mental pain of eating meals with teenagers for days is just not worth it. This seems like NYT just using an excuse to fire him and the ideological madness is just cover.

deleted 6y ago
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chrisshroba 6y ago
> The lesson here is that there’s no meaningful conversations to be had between 60 year olds and teenagers. > the mental pain of eating meals with teenagers for days I really think this incorrectly stereotypes an entire generation as this set of unreasonable and irrational fools. While the teenagers on the trip misjudged the author's intentions, it is the Times that are at fault for using those complaints as grounds for discipline.
- prepend 6y ago
  I think it definitely stereotypes, but it’s a defense mechanism. I think it’s possible, but too risky to attempt. It’s a situation where the Times is clearly in the wrong, but this guy is out of a job. Because of the thoroughness of these posts and the references to lawyers, the best case is this guy gets millions after a few years of litigation. But that’s why the reasonable action is to just avoid the risk. That’s easier than trying to fix teenagers, large orgs, etc

teddyh 6y ago

> We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

klmadfejno 6y ago

It seems to me one of the prominent issues in the "racist" dialogue is the nuance between people who are outwardly hateful and people who are outwardly indifferent to racial injustice. This guy probably doesn't hate anyone, but it certainly doesn't come across to me like he cares. This part is a red flag: > So, yeah, I can be an asshole. If you’re an editor, and you made changes in a story of mine, and I lashed out at you like that, I’m very sorry. It wasn’t because of your race or sex or youth or anything else. You may have just been a set of initials in the margins of our editing software. That’s one part of me that’s not very nice, and I know it. If I did that to you, I apologize. And if you’ll tell me about it, I’ll apologize personally. This seems like a red flag: > I’m surprised by how quick some colleagues who barely know me were prepared to accept those accusations and even add more on a Times alumni Facebook page. Someone to whom I don’t think I’ve spoken since 1994 said “calling him only a racist is being nice.” An editor I happily worked side by side with in 1989 and have had brief but cordial chats with maybe once every ten years when we bump into each other on the street said I seemed “dismissive of people of color and their views” back then. Someone I thought I’d been very nice to when she left the paper attacked me for using the expression “third world” in a story that was, as always, approved by several Times editors. This sounds like a red flag: > My girlfriend thinks I have a high-functioning Asperger aspect to my personality — I’m empathic about suffering but I also very much misread audiences. A young Haitian-American colleague and friend who sat behind me for three years in Science news called me after the Beast story. I told him what I’d actually said in Peru. He said, “Donald, you sound exactly like my father. He would also say ‘You can’t dress like a thug to a job interview and expect to get the job.’ But from you, it sounds racist.” I said “How is ‘thug’ racist? What about Thug Life Records?” He said “It’s almost the equivalent of the n-word. Don’t you know about Marshawn Lynch?’’ I said: “He plays for Seattle?” I could hear him sigh. “No, Donald, let me explain…” You can basically feel this guy's personality as a cliche. He thinks he's pretty smart. He constructs logical reasons to justify his action and doesn't understand intuitively when others have strong adverse reactions to his reasoning. In part 2 he provides this passage: > The question about blackface was part of a discussion of cultural appropriation. The students felt that it was never, ever appropriate for any white person to adopt anything from another culture — not clothes, not music, not anything. I counter-argued that all cultures grow by adopting from others. I gave examples — gunpowder and paper. I said I was a San Franciscan, and we invented blue jeans. Did that mean they — East Coast private school students — couldn’t wear blue jeans? I said we were in Peru, and the tomato came from Peru. Did that mean that Italians had to stop using tomatoes? That they had to stop eating pizza? Then one of the students said: “Does that mean that blackface is OK?” I said “No, not normally — but is it OK for black people to wear blackface?” “The student, sounding outraged, said “Black people don’t wear blackface!” I said “In South Africa, they absolutely do. The so-called colored people in Cape Town have a festival every year called the Coon Carnival* where they wear blackface, play Dixieland music and wear striped jackets. It started when a minstrel show came to South Africa in the early 1900’s. Americans who visit South Africa tell them they’re offended they shouldn’t do it, and they answer ‘Buzz off. This is our culture now. Don’t come here from America and tell us what to do.’ So what do you say to them? Is it up to you, a white American, to tell black South Africans what is and isn’t their culture?” Another instance of him asserting pedantic reasoning against a hard emotional opinion. Material he knows well is making people uncomfortable, but believes he is not at all accountable for. I don't think he is a racist. I think he is highly likely to be perceived as an asshole by those around him. I think its highly likely that he aggravates sensitive issues, including racial issues, somewhat frequently. I probably wouldn't want to work with him.

deleted 6y ago

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jxy 6y ago

> Obviously, I badly misjudged my audience in Peru that year. I thought I was generally arguing in favor of open-mindedness and tolerance — but it clearly didn’t come across that way. And my bristliness makes me an imperfect pedagogue for sensitive teenagers. Although the students liked me in 2018, some of those in 2019 clearly detested me. So in the end, he still blamed those teenagers. Has he learned nothing?

chokolad 6y ago
> So in the end, he still blamed those teenagers. Has he learned nothing? What should he have learned?
- etchalon 6y ago
  How to behave.
  - chokolad 6y ago
    > How to behave. How ? What exactly should have been changed in his behavior ?
    - etchalon 6y ago
      I'd have started with not engaging with teenagers as if they're adults, taking cues from the group as to where they were at emotionally and intellectually, and listened more than spoke. If you run through a field of land mines, you can't get mad when your legs get blown off.
      - orthecreedence 6y ago
        > and listened more than spoke. Ah yes, the teacher who only listens to their students' feelings. The greatest wisdom of all comes from letting a bunch of kids steamroll you. > If you run through a field of land mines, you can't get mad when your legs get blown off. This is the issue. What teenagers think about someone should not be a field of landmines. Teenagers are constantly whiplashed by emotion, easily offended, self-important, and constantly trying to impress and one-up each other. The last thing we need to do with teenagers is shut up and let them speak. Yet now we've given a handful of them the power to fire someone based on their feelings. What message does this send?

ericol 6y ago

The US has such a big issues with racism, that anti-racism is an even bigger and worst ism than the original one, and it has spilled over the entire world, up to the point of cancelling other cultures. Rather recently, an Uruguayan footballer was fined [1] for using a word that is considered "racist"- and I think had to attend some sort of course on "racism". His sin? Calling a friend "negrito" out in the open (In an Instagram story). Now, here's the thing. "Negrito" (and even "negro") is an entirely valid affectionate nickname to call somebody in at least Uruguay and Argentina. My mother called me "mi negrito" when I was young. I call my daughter "negrita", my girlfriend calls me "mi negro" all the time, and many of my friends are called "El negro <last_name>". It is really baffling that because a lot of people has a lot of issues with racism thousands of kilometers away from where I live - or where Cavani lives, to that matter - because of this. [1] https://lmgtfy.app/?q=cavani+racism https://lmgtfy.app/?q=cavani+racism

wellthisisgreat 6y ago

Pardon the ignorance but isn’t there a significant difference in how you pronounce this word? There is one way to say it that is the taboo version (phonetic spelling sort of) and another - with -a in the end which is how it’s used in songs etc.? I have never heard the first pronunciation used in the US, but the second, accepted version is used everywhere, mostly by black people, but by white people too. Even though white people using the accepted version may raise some eyebrows, it’s nothing compared to what I imagine would happen if the first, phonetic pronunciation was used. Asking this because it seems many people here refer to rap / movies / street use of the word, where in 100% of the cases (besides maybe some historic prose) the word has been used in its modified, accepted form. As for the first, historic/ phonetic pronunciation, it seems unreasonable to use it in any context, besides maybe speaking of some historical usage in prose etc., unless, of course, one actually intends to be offensive.

Hitton 6y ago

It's regrettable, but the author seems to forget that he was part of an organization that has been spreading rhetoric which leads directly to this for years, now when he himself is bitten by this too, it's surprised pikachu face.

Pxtl 6y ago

I know I should be paying attention to the meat of the matter, but I was stuck on the fact that this man's life story was literally "I started in the mail room in the '70s" and I'm flabbergasted that there are people in the modern world who got jobs at the most prestigious newspaper in the world that way. It's like hearing "oh yeah I used to take the trolley to work for a nickel and we'd go see a talky after work" from a modern working-age human.

alexithym 6y ago
> I know I should be paying attention to the meat of the matter Yes, maybe you should :P

dang 6y ago

Part 2: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-two-what-happened-january-28-3e41bdbb28a7 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... Part 3: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-three-what-happened-in-the-2019-investigation-6f8e9939a385 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... Part 4: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-four-what-happened-in-peru-2a641a9b5e83 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p... The referenced story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d... (Thanks djoldman and qnsi.)

icebergwarrior 6y ago

Nigger. Now can we, as a society, move on?

altgans 6y ago

I think the author didn't misinterpret the situation. Just everyone else did. In my opinion the "emergency mode" of the NYT made everything worse. Why would the hold an emergency meeting if it wasn't an emergency. If they had just held their horses, the actually empty article of the "beast" would have fizzled. Note: I am not a media insider --- I don't like the authors response in this post. In part 1 he is basically groveling. He needs to provide the facts, and then shut up, instead of telling everyone how he "was active in africa", so he clearly can't be racist

shruubi 6y ago

So, after reading all this (and boy, I understand it's to provide context, but it is a slog), my general takeaway is that Donald was making good and accurate points, but perhaps for this audience probably should have considered and measured his words a bit more. I do believe that if you actually understand the situations, there is most definitely no malice or harmful intent in anything he said/did, but I can also see how in the current climate where nuance is irrelevant that things he said and did could be perceived as offensive to people who are hypersensitive to these things. What concerned me more was that, at least based upon this narrative, the collective failure of The Times to perhaps underline from the outset that the issue was spreading within the newsroom and how serious it was, and that the Times provided next to no support for the situation beyond having legal proofread statements and more or less left Donald to hang in the wind. It really seems to me that the Times more or less gave up on Donald from the outset and let things snowball as an excuse to get rid of him to avoid bad PR. And the real kicker is that they still left him up to get a pulitzer for his reporting at their publication while throwing him under the bus. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

santoshalper 6y ago
It's always hard to say when you only see one person's accounting of a story, but it sure looks like NYT was sick of him and looking for a reason to get rid of him.
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
He was negotiating on behalf of the union and the people he negotiated with were in charge of his punishment. This sends a strong message to other people negotiating on behalf of the union to not be such a pain.
1024core 6y ago
> things he said and did could be perceived as offensive to people who are hypersensitive to these things. Then they should have used this incident to educate them. Sure, the word $N in question would be offensive to a black person. But why should a bunch of white teenagers be offended if he just used it the way he did? Sounds to me like a bunch of virtue-signallers trying to outdo each other

tantalor 6y ago

NYT: "We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent." Also NYT: As President Barack Obama said of racism in 2015: “We are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘[n-word]’ in public. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/opinion/sunday/n-word-tape-trump-racism-omarosa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/opinion/sunday/n-word-tap... (They print the actual word)

notJim 6y ago
For the record, they walked that statement back. It was an absurd statement in the first place, but they did walk it back. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/new-york-times-editor-walks-back-statement-racial-slurs-n1257482 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/new-york-times-editor-walks...
- tantalor 6y ago
  Thanks! Didn't know that.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

This ‘revitalized’ NYT should be viewed as a brand new organization (starting with zero respect). Only then will you not be disappointed.

dragonwriter 6y ago

Seems to me a combination of really poor quality[0], meandering writing by McNeil and obsession with the “cancel culture” narrative by many approaching the story is obscuring that real story here, talking McNeil at his word, is “management anti-labor negotiator leads effort to force out perennial labor negotiator who was a long time thorn in the side, and when the pretext on which that effort was founded fails to lead to the target handling the situation quite badly enough to justify firing, the details of the internal investigation (with additional embellishments designed to be provocative) conveniently leak to an outside media org, providing pretext for another round of action in which the target is finally forced out”. If we accept McNeil’s narrative, and cut through the weeds of the meandering explanation, it seems very much to be a story of repeated attempts to find a way to leverage whatever material was available, including especially McNeil’s known prickly, defensive lack of tolerance for what he sees as BS, especially about himself, to maneuver him into a situation where he could be fired or forced to resign, not something genuinely driven by offense at him using a particular word, or disrespecting tribal shamans, or telling stories about his encounter with partially nude dancers, or any of the other incidents cited in complaints, together or separately. [0] EDIT: arguably, some really poor quality writing on my part is obscuring my point here: in regard to McNeil’s epic, I meant “poor quality” only in terms in efficiency in conveying his side of the narrative of his being forced out for the benefit of readers looking to be informed about that, which superficially seems to be the putative intent of the piece.

jboog 6y ago
This guy has been writing for the NYT for decades. Has tons of prestigious accolades for his writing, was up for a Pulitzer this year and you claim his writing is "poor quality" based on....what exactly?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > you claim his writing is "poor quality" based on....what exactly? Because it is meandering, lacks a clear focus and organization, falls down tangents, etc. People who are excellent writers within a professional system where (1) they aren't writing about themselves, and (2) have the support of professional editors, etc., before the public sees the work, often have much lower quality without #2 or when the context is far from #1, such as writing about personal incidents that are highly charged. And most especially when both of those occur at the same time. And I don't claim his writing in the general sense is poor quality, I say that the four-part epic on this incident is poorly written. Or maybe it intends more to graphically convey the flow of consciousness that results from extreme indignation more than to inform effectively about the author's side of events, in which case it's a masterpiece of written art. “Poorly written” definitely makes an assumption of purpose that may not be warranted: as a show-not-tell feelings piece it is tremendously effective.

King-Aaron 6y ago

> Yes, I did use the word, in this context: A student asked me if I thought her high school’s administration was right to suspend a classmate of hers for using the word in a video she’d made in eighth grade. I said “Did she actually call someone a “(offending word”? Or was she singing a rap song or quoting a book title or something?” So he was asking a student if they had said the "evil word"... He wasn't calling anyone that, he was basically repeating it to ask the question. And they fired him for that? Honestly, I'm a massive proponent of social progression. But this seems like 'cancel culture' obsession going way too far.

Igelau 6y ago
I would have expected that professional journalism is a den of vipers, but this is just a complete infestation of evil. Change the names and issues and you could just as easily be talking about the GOP at this level of bull-headed corruption and ignorance.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

spoonjim 6y ago

This is an example of why I’ve changed from someone who openly discussed issues with people to a person who will only discuss “sports and weather” with my real name attached, such as at work, and then funnel the rest into a set of increasingly toxic Reddit alts.

jerome-jh 6y ago

Referring mostly to part 3: if you're aging in a modern company and do not fully endorse the "company spirit", you will be targeted by younger bullshiters. They will perceive you as a threat to the company and use your demise as a way up. In this case it is likely the DB has been tipped by an insider. Newspapers are modern companies like many others: they are under ferocious competition, live from ads and subsidies from would-be oligarchs. Not a place for a "grumpy" old man, no matter the value you bring to the company, if you are not part of the "team".

SurfingToad 6y ago

I've seen "cancel culture" in analogy to the immune response for a long time now, and it fits pretty well. If you imagine that ideas can spread like infections, it makes sense to quarantine and ostracize individuals that have caught threathening ideas.. There's also the thing where someone socializing with an 'infected' individual gets treated as if they were infected as well. Better safe than sorry. With a high false positive rate, you err on the side of safety. Smoke detectors have a high false positive rate by design. You'd rather it go off on accident every now and then than fail when there's actually smoke. Present-day "McCarthyism" seems like a good example of this process in action. To people who dismiss the idea of cancel culture, I say this: check out South-Korea. Celebrities are regularly driven to suicide by online mobs. It's an epidemic. If a slight moral flaw is perceived, they're fair game. And the mobs can be brutal.