Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s chief editor, rejected the notion that his news media outlet’s hiring practices’ informal predication on racial and ethnic quotas amounted to “racism.”
In an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, Smith stood by his company’s policies to afford preferential treatment for certain racial and ethnic minorities – to the detriment of white males – in its hiring practices.
Partial transcript below:
Carlson: Recently, a year or so ago, you had an open position for a journalism fellowship. Before you understood that your practices were barred by employment law, you opened it only to journalists of color. You barred people from that job on the basis of the color of their skin. Now, if that’s not the textbook definition of racism, then maybe you can reeducate me as to what racism means.
Smith: We had a journalism fellowship that was aimed at people of color, I think that many…
Carlson: No, but it excluded people who were the wrong color
Smith: Many media companies….
Carlson: I’m asking you about you, not many media companies, you.
Smith: I think that there’s a, and obviously lots of companie try to recruit a diverse workforce, and certainly including News Corp, and BuzzFeed, and many others. There are also very clear legal restrictions around how exactly you can go about recruiting that diverse workforce.
Calrson: You bumped up against those in the end, but you advertised it as… You learned all that. The law stopped you from doing what you tried to do, which was exclude people from the job on the basis of their skin color. I’m asking you a straightforward question – I’m sorry if I’m being humorless about – why is that not textbook racism? I grew up learning that if you exclude people from a job because of the way they look, their skin color, something over which they have no control; racism. Why is that not racist what you did?
Smith: I mean, I understand that there’s like a broad debate over affirmative action, and that conservatives in some cases view it as racism, and I think, I guess I don’t think that recruiting, trying to recruit, bring out a diverse workforce is that. And I don’t really think you think that, either.
Carlson highlighted certain articles published at BuzzFeed: “21 Things White People Ruined In 2015 – Besides Everything,” “29 Things White People Ruined – We can’t Have Nothin’, “17 Foods That White People Have Ruined – Stop That,” and an article seemingly accepting the premise that “White People are a Plague to the Planet.”
In 2016, BuzzFeed took to Twitter to advertise an opening for its now defunct Canadian bureau, specifically nothing that white males were not welcome to apply (emphases added):
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