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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So - a DC woman tweeted out a photo of a uniformed metro employee eating on the Metro, noting that Metro prohibits eating on the metro, and complaining about a metro employee violating the same rule metro employees ask riders to respect.  The tweeter is Arab American and the metro employee she complained about is a black woman. Now her publisher and book distributor are cancelling her novel's publication as a result. (See Post article below: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/05/11/dc-pundit-shamed-metro-worker-eating-train-now-her-book-deal-is-jeopardy/?utm_term=.804898e5dbb8).

So, I agree her tweet was unnecessary and thoughtless: metro employees are low wage workers who get very short breaks, and this poor metro employee could now get fired.

But a) Metro does enforce its no eating policy, often in absurd and horrible ways, often against people of color, so is it really inherently horrendous for the tweeting author to highlight that this is a bit hypocritical? (see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/metro-transit-police-arrest-teenager-for-carrying-chips-and-lollipop-into-station/2016/10/19/1360a014-9627-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html?utm_term=.fe6adc99091b)

And b) If she had instead posted a photo of a uniformed DC cop breaking a law that other people go to jail for breaking (maybe having an open container of alcohol, or peeing in an alley), would everyone be calling her a racist if the cop in her photo was African America - as opposed to thanking her for highlighting police hypocrisy?

And c) Her book was cancelled, WTF? Even if you think her tweet was completely thoughtless, should this really lead to her book being nixed?

I consider myself very much on the left and I think both commuters and metro employees should be able to eat on the metro without fear of arrest or discipline, and I also think low wage workers get a shitty deal, and low wage African American female workers get a particularly shitty deal. But I also think it's frightening that this tweeter's NOVEL has been cancelled because of a tweet that was, at worst, thoughtless, for which she has already apologized.

Am I missing something?

[/quote]

While we don’t want to jump on the race bandwagon, many Arabs are racist. They will often be obsequious to white people but dismissive or outright rude to black people. Is this writer racist? I don’t know. Would she have taken a picture of a white employee eating? I don’t know the answer to that either. I do have an issue with her publishing the employee’s picture. Regardless of the fact that she was breaking the rules, she doesn’t deserve to be shamed publicly. Metro has a system in place for complaints, and she should have gone that route.[/quote]

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