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Jewish Journalist Trolled For Column On Whiteness, Told She’s Not White

Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for New York Times Magazine, penned a column Wednesday noting that white people are finally beginning to see their whiteness, acknowledging implicit privilege and subconscious racism. She was subsequently trolled on Twitter, called non-white by readers because she is Jewish.

“The anti-semitic garbage in my timeline is … voluminous. I guess that’s what comes with writing about whiteness. It sure does speak to white fragility,” she tweeted Thursday.

In her column, “White People Are Noticing Something New: Their Own Whiteness,” Bazelon asks how often white people talk about being white.

“Not often!” she writes. “So long as we aren’t hanging out with white nationalists, marrying into a family of color or chuckling over jokes about our dancing, we have endless opportunities to avoid thinking much about our own race. … Since handing Trump 58 percent of the white vote, we have been the subject of newspaper and magazine analyses about our race-based resentment, fear of declining status and supposed economic anxiety.”

People responded in droves, arguing that because Bazelon is Jewish, she is not white.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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