DC Area Writer Loses Book Deal after Reporting a Worker Eating on a Metro Train

[Anonymous]

Author Natasha Tynes sparked outrage on social media after she tweeted a photo of a black Metro employee eating on the train and reported the woman to officials. Now, Tynes may lose her book deal.

Tynes, a writer and World Bank employee in Washington, tweeted a photo Friday morning of a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employee in uniform eating on one of the service's trains.

"When you’re on your morning commute & see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train," Tynes wrote in the tweet, which she has since deleted. “I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope @wmata responds. When I asked the employee about this, her response was, ‘worry about yourself.'"

Transit officials responded to her tweet within an hour and thanked her for "catching" the employee eating and "helping" to "make sure all Metro employees are held accountable."

The response said: "Can you confirm the time you were on the train, the direction you were headed and what line you were on?”

Tynes provided those details and added: “Thank you for responding. Appreciate it.”

The backlash began immediately. University of New Hampshire professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein commented: "Eating while Black."

...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/author-reported-metro-worker-eating-train-now-she-might-lose-n1004716

Since then, picked up by USA Today, AP, WUSA9, Slate and a number of blogs.

The narrative pushed by Twitter was "a privileged racist anti-black writer attacked a black working-class woman and got mad when the answer wasn't deferential enough." That was enough for a book deal getting canceled.

Discuss.

[jsteele]

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/804071.page