How Could the NYT NOT Discriminate Against White Men?
“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.” -- Oscar Wilde
From the Washington Post news section:
U.S. agency sues New York Times, accusing it of bias against White male employee
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged that the newspaper violated civil rights law by denying a promotion to a White man and blamed its adherence to DEI policies.
May 5, 2026 at 4:21 p.m. EDTtoday at 4:21 p.m. EDT
By Scott Nover
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the New York Times on Tuesday, alleging that the news organization violated federal law by passing over a White male employee for a promotion.
“No one is above the law — including ‘elite’ institutions,” EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in a statement. “There is no such thing as ‘reverse discrimination’; all race or sex discrimination is equally unlawful, according to long-established civil rights principles.”
She continued: “Federal law is clear: making hiring or promotion decisions motivated in whole or in part by race or sex violates federal law. There is no diversity exception to this rule.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Lower Manhattan, alleges that the Times violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 in denying an unnamed employee a promotion. The EEOC said the Times’ emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), which the Trump administration has worked to eliminate, was to blame.
“The New York Times categorically rejects the meritless and politically motivated allegations that the Trump administration’s EEOC is pursuing against us,” Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha wrote in a statement Sunday after the newspaper first reported on the brewing litigation. “… Throughout this process, the EEOC deviated from standard practices in highly unusual ways, blatantly weaponizing a traditionally independent government body to serve a predetermined narrative.”
The White male employee sought a job as deputy real estate editor, according to the lawsuit, and lost to a multiracial female candidate without direct experience covering real estate.
“Neither race nor gender played a role in this decision,” Rhoades Ha said in a follow-up statement Tuesday. “We hired the most qualified candidate, and she is an excellent editor.”
Kalpana Kotagal, the sole Democrat on the commission, voted against authorizing the lawsuit. While everyone is entitled to employment protections under the law, she said in a post on social media, the mere existence of DEI policies isn’t enough to demonstrate misconduct.
She also questioned the motivations behind the lawsuit.
“Regrettably, I fear this litigation is driven not by the merits, but by a desire to advance the administration’s political agenda, which weakens civil rights protections for workers and undermines employer efforts to advance equal employment opportunity,” she said.
The lawsuit follows reporting in the Times alleging that staffers at the EEOC are under intense pressure to bring cases that further the Trump administration’s agenda, including dismantling DEI policies.
Well, uh, yeah …
My question is: Wouldn’t it be blatantly hypocritical of the NYT to not discriminate against white men while it crusaded for a decade during the Great Awokening against white men?
It could be that this particular white man (whose name has not been made public, but New York Magazine, which is not the New York Times, by the way, is pointing toward this 30 year veteran editor) didn’t get the job because he personally is bad at it. But that would have been horribly hypocritical of the NYT to only hire people based on their skill rather than their race.
Paywall here.
