Supercilious Society

Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he resigned from his position with the company, and will be replaced by Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal. Shortly after the announcement, it came out that in 2010, Mr. Agrawal tweeted, “If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists?” This tweet is wrong on so many levels. First, the claim that all whites are racist is completely false, and lacking any credible evidence. The next is the lie that anti-Muslim hate was promoted during the war on terror. Following the 9/11 attacks, America bent over backwards, separating the religion of Islam from Muslim extremist terrorists. Less than a week after the attacks, President George W Bush told the country that, “Islam is a religion of peace,” and “not only did terrorists hijack planes and destroy life; they also hijacked the beautiful religion of Islam.” He also encouraged religious, racial and cultural tolerance when he said, “no one should be treated unkindly because of the color of their skin, or the content of their creed.”

But the biggest danger in Parag Agrawal tweet was the way he drew a moral equivalency between two forms of racism, which only serves to legitimize racism regardless of the form it assumes. This was the exact opposite of what President Bush and many Americans stood for post-9/11 – the elimination of bigotry in all forms which led to the attacks. A small group of Muslim terrorists decided to hijack planes, blow up buildings and kill thousands of innocent people, and we non-Muslim Americans were on guard not to label all Muslims as terrorists or impugn the religion of Islam. We were told that those few extremists, regardless of their motivation or how much harm they caused, were not representative of Islam. So, if all Muslims are not terrorist because a few Muslims are terrorist, then it only follows that all white people are not racist, because a few white people are racist. Yet, here is a man who is taking over one of the most powerful social media companies in the world, who believes that it is right and just to label all white people as racist because a few white people said racist things. He failed to learn the lesson of 9/11 that bigotry and prejudice are wrong.