Site Tweets About White People ‘Aging Like Bananas.’ When We Inquired, They Called Daily Wire Racist.

Affinity Magazine, an online publication catering to a teen audience, which describes its primary content as “pop culture with social justice and politics,” published an interesting tweet about the Met gala on Monday:

Uh, it was funny. Mean funny. pic.twitter.com/DjEn95oPS6

— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) May 2, 2017

Backlash came swiftly. Affinity deleted the tweet, and posted several justifications regarding melanin, and the different ways people age. Ultimately, however, they apologized, calling their tweet “tacky,” though not admitting it was racist:

Our intent was not to mock people who suffer from eating disorders or drug abuse. It was simply to highlight how differently people age.

— Affinity Magazine (@TheAffinityMag) May 2, 2017

Twitter users eagerly responded to the half-apology:

@TheAffinityMag So you used race to generalize every individual. You’re not a credible source of any information.

— Callas Dollier (@DallasJsallaD) May 2, 2017

@TheAffinityMag Christie Brinkley is 63. Maybe not all white people are not the same?? pic.twitter.com/YwehDSopZp

— Steve Lindsay CBS (@SteveLindsayCBS) May 2, 2017

@TheAffinityMag Every time you say something about white people, replace “white” with “black”, re read it, and then decide if its racist.

— (@technowizardry) May 2, 2017​

@TheAffinityMag They’ve battled with eating disorders and diseases. You insulted them. Not professional and not funny/edgy/cute. Rude.

— danny devito (@tuuast) May 2, 2017

The Daily Wire reached out via email to Alex Reaves, Affinity Magazine‘s “race editor,” in an attempt to clarify the situation. We asked two simple questions:

• Was the tweet, in the opinion of Affinity, racist?
• If not, why was it deleted?

Rather than answer the question, or engage in an exchange of ideas and opinions, Reaves simply replied: “After browsing The Daily Wire, I have come to the decision that I can’t in negro conscience contribute to this piece. Have a blessed day.”

When pressed as to what that meant — what about the website’s content made her unwilling to answer our questions? — Reaves claimed The Daily Wire is a racist publication. We pushed back, asking her to show us examples of racist content from the site.

Reaves couldn’t do that. Instead, she made assumptions about the intent of our writers, as well as placing vague blame on The Daily Wire for getting our “white readers riled up.”

Racism manifests itself in more ways than just racial slurs, and smaller, unintentional acts often reinforce the former. I know the Daily Wire’s style: publish stories bound to get its white readers riled up while occasionally throwing gas on the fire themselves (“Black students triggered by the pro-First Amendment stance,” the insinuation that reverse racism exists, “race-based stupidity”).

Perhaps you, who aren’t black, wouldn’t see microaggressions as racist, but I don’t have such a luxury. I have already been emailed this morning by a man claiming that I should be grateful for the existence of white people. He probably doesn’t see himself as racist, and yet websites like yours will encourage him to revel in his ignorance while people of color get the brunt of it.

Go ahead, publish the article, and set your readers off the leash and onto a site run mostly by teenagers trying to navigate whiteness, an experience you’ll never have and thus never truly understand. Just don’t involve me in it.

The phrase “black students triggered by the pro-First Amendment stance” comes from a piece about black students at Pomona College who authored a protest letter in which they literally referred to “objective truth” as a form of white supremacy.

The phrase “race-based stupidity” comes from an article decrying those who criticized the Grammy’s for awarding Adele instead of Beyoncé. After detailing the ridiculousness of the complaints that racism was the reason the “incredibly rich, world famous” Beyoncé lost to Adele, the author writes: “Yes, clearly Hollywood has a problem. But it isn’t racism. It’s race-based stupidity.”

These pieces aren’t in any way racist; they’re responding to the progressive dogma that insists that racism is an institutional and undefeatable force from which minorities can never escape — but that’s racism according to the Left. Moreover, according to Reaves, the onus is on The Daily Wire to stop those who might take our content — which is rightly critical of the progressive narrative as it pertains to race — and use it inappropriately to advance their personal racist agenda.

Lastly, Reaves plays the victim, daring us to “set [our] readers off the leash and onto a site run mostly by teenagers trying to navigate whiteness,” something we can “never understand.”

Okay, then. But at least we understand that racial jokes about people’s appearances aren’t appropriate.