New York Times Sued for Discrimination

The paper of record apparently failed to read its own HR manual.

There was a time when accusing someone of “white supremacy” meant they were, you know, an actual white supremacist. Cross burnings. Hoods. Cryptic numeric codes. Fancy titles like Grand Warlock or Exalted Chupacabra. Maybe a militia compound with suspiciously aggressive landscaping. Nowadays, it mostly just means being unapologetically white (*with a lowercase w).

The New York Times—which has spent the better part of the last decade implying that Donald Trump, his supporters, their neighbors, their dogs, and probably several brands of mayonnaise are one election cycle away from forming a minimum-melanin bowling league—is now being sued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for allegedly discriminating against a white male employee in the name of diversity.

It’s almost poetic.

According to the complaint, a longtime editor at the paper was passed over for a promotion in favor of a less-experienced nonwhite woman, purportedly because the Times was pursuing stated race- and gender-conscious hiring goals. Despite more than a decade at the paper plus extensive real-estate journalism experience that made him a natural fit for the Deputy Real Estate Editor position, the unnamed journalist didn’t even make it to the final interview round. Not a single white man did, if you’re keeping track.

The suit further claims that the eventual (outside) hire had no background in real-estate coverage—even though that qualification was listed right in the job requirements—bypassed portions of the standard interview process altogether, and still landed the position after being rated below two other finalists by the Times’ own interview panel.

The Bee gets it.

That last point isn’t insignificant. Because the issue isn’t merely that a white dude didn’t get a promotion. It’s that the paper’s own evaluators ranked other candidates higher and still gave the job to the third-place (alleged) diversity pick.

The paper “categorically rejects the politically motivated allegations brought by the Trump administration’s EEOC” [insert NO KINGS protest sign here] and insists its hiring practices are wholly merit-based. It’s a bold claim considering the Times has published an actual written report outlining “action plans to increase non-white and female representation in its leadership positions.”

THE TIMES: “We only hire the best, most qualified candidates!”
ALSO THE TIMES: “*from a diverse, pre-selected field of non-white, non-male, ideologically approved applicants.”

Also worth noting: This is not some brand-new Trumpian legal theory cooked up between Truth Social rants. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has prohibited employment discrimination against all races—which, last time I checked, includes whites—since 1964. (Presumably, the legacy media giant knows this.) And the Times is hardly an isolated target here. Under EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, the agency has also flagged companies including Nike and Coca-Cola for race- and sex-conscious hiring, mentorship, and networking programs. In other words, the move is part of a broader legal crackdown on corporate DEI practices, not a one-off grudge match with the Gray Lady.

If the EEOC prevails, the Times could face punitive damages, compensation orders, and a permanent injunction blocking future race-based hiring policies—which would be a fairly embarrassing outcome for the self-appointed referee of social justice.

To be clear, private companies are free to hire badly, irrationally, nepotistically, aesthetically, politically, spiritually, astrologically, or because the CEO’s nephew “smells like pine needles.” What they generally cannot do—at least under longstanding federal civil-rights law—is explicitly penalize applicants because of race.

Here’s what I find humorous: People hear “a white man was discriminated against” and respond the way medieval peasants reacted to reports of dragons: That’s impossible. It’s mythical. You’re making it up. A hedge fund manager named Chip whose father owns half of Connecticut was discriminated against? Don’t make me laugh.

Read the rest here.

This isn’t about diversity. It’s about the increasingly bizarre cultural assumption that “white male” is synonymous with “born on Park Avenue wearing a monocle.” Meanwhile there are more than 750,000 homeless people in America, tens of thousands of whom are white men sleeping under bridges, living in cars, or shuffling around Portland arguing with traffic cones. There are white men with addictions, white men who grew up abused, white men working the third shift at tire factories while their backs slowly disintegrate like drywall in a flood.

But in modern discourse, we still talk about “white men” as though they’re a distinct band of Ivy League graduates who summer in Nantucket and complain when the yacht club runs out of cucumber mint water. Here’s a newsflash: Treating whiteness itself as evidence of “supremacy” is as racist as installing segregated drinking fountains. It’s also spawned a weird, socially acceptable form of finger-pointing where if you’re a Caucasian who’s not walking around apologizing for your skin color, if you’re not willing to suffer professionally so that someone darker and perhaps less experienced than you can advance, you are somehow morally bankrupt. And honestly, that mentality is degrading to everyone involved.

It insults successful black Americans by implying they couldn’t possibly have earned their accomplishments without institutional assistance. Tyler Perry didn’t build a billion-dollar empire because some DEI-trained HR manager enthusiastically checked a diversity box. Ben Carson wasn’t named the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the country because Johns Hopkins needed better equity optics. Jay-Z did not become a multi-platinum music mogul because a board of directors said, “You know what this rap industry needs? More inclusion.”

These people succeeded because they’re wildly talented and because they outworked everyone else. The same goes for countless minority doctors, lawyers, executives, entrepreneurs, journalists, engineers, and business owners who would probably prefer not to have their accomplishments framed like Make-A-Wish prizes handed out by guilty white liberals in Patagonia vests.

It’s also a slap in the face to struggling white people to treat them all like heirs to the Vanderbilt fortune who spend their weekends fox hunting and shopping for fine art. As if, “you’ll be fine; you’re white” is a magic wand that waves away a foreclosure notice, a fentanyl addiction, or generational poverty.

None of this is to say discrimination against minorities doesn’t exist. Of course it does! Humans are tribal lunatics and always will be. And yes, race can absolutely intersect with genuine disadvantage. The problem is we’ve wandered into deeply unsettling territory where refusing to judge people by their skin color is seen as a character flaw—the irony!—while openly sorting them by race is considered enlightenment.

You can’t have it both ways. A person’s pigmentation either matters… or it doesn’t.

The Times acknowledged the shift in 2024… and then promptly forgot it.

The fascinating part is that the same institutions that spent years aggressively racializing everything—from math standards to bird-watching to refrigerator ownership—now seem shocked that some white employees have learned to recognize discrimination when they experience it. It turns out that when you repeatedly insist everything is about race, people eventually take you at your word.

Funny how that works.

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