The Young Turks are facing more accusations of racism, this time from a former employee who accused them of making veiled threats and holding them to a different standard because they were black. Cenk denies the allegations.But this isn't the first problem TYT has had with racism. Cenk had to apologize for racist and sexist blog posts less than a year ago and the name The Young Turks is the name of the group that committed the Armenian Geno****Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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The Young Turks are once again being accused of racial discrimination.
This time, a former employee, a black journalist, has filed a lawsuit against them, claiming racial discrimination.
And in the past, this same employee has filed a complaint against the Young Turks for racial discrimination.
This isn't the first time the Young Turks have been accused of being racist.
At one point, Cenk Uygur, the founder, wrote racist blog posts for which he had to apologize.
And then there's the name the Young Turks, which is tied to the group.
It's actually the name of the group that committed the Armenian genocide.
So what exactly did they do this time to warrant a lawsuit?
How are the Young Turks responding?
And is this progressive news organization actually racist?
But before we get started, let me give a quick shoutout to today's sponsor, Newsvoice.
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Before we get to the news of the lawsuit, let's look at BuzzFeed News' story from January.
A black journalist has filed a complaint against progressive media outlet The Young Turks for racial discrimination.
Andrew Gerald Jones claimed that he told CEO Cenk Uygur about mistreatment, but was told to, quote, shut the F up and deal, according to the complaint.
The quotes attributed to me in the workplace are completely false, Uygur said.
Andrew Jones, a black journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian and The Intercept, alleges that Young Turk's founder and CEO, Cenk Uygur, told him complaining about racial biases within the company was a fireable offense, and that he should just shut the F up and deal.
The complaint, filed at the New York State Division of Human Rights, alleges that Jones, unlike his white colleagues, dealt with shifting expectations, unclear deadlines, and a lack of a travel budget for investigative stories.
Jones said that he complained to executives that his boss, Jonathan Larson, treated other reporters in the TYT Investigates group less harshly, and that he faced improper charges of insubordination and poor performance.
Jones said that he was contacted by David Kohler, one of the founders of TYT, who told him he would begin an investigation into his complaint of racial discrimination, but nobody ever followed up with him.
The complaint alleges that another executive called Jones shortly thereafter and made a veiled threat, saying, If this all works out, you are under Larson, but he may also discontinue your services.
He complained and said, this isn't working for me, I'm facing racial discrimination, said Bill Moran, Jones's attorney.
The response he kept getting was, you just need to deal with it, this is fine, and if you complain again, something bad will happen to you.
Variety reported a day later a statement from Ugar.
It's really unfortunate that he has decided to work with a lawyer
who has now brought two different, unrelated actions against us.
Of course we care a great deal about diversity in the workplace.
That is part and parcel of what we do and who we are.
We will defend our record and not give in to baseless demands.
Which brings us to today.
They are now being sued for racial discrimination by the ex-employee.
Jones's lawsuit seeks compensatory damages and punitive damages of at least $75,000 plus attorney's fees and litigation costs.
He says he suffered economic injury in the form of lost wages and a harmed reputation, as well as considerable emotional distress, according to the lawsuit.
Reps for TYT Network did not respond to a request for comment.
Jones alleged that Kohler is publicly known for making racist comments, for example, referring to less affluent black people in the South who relax on their porch on hot summer days as po-black people just hanging out in the heat.
TYT Network eventually placed Jones on a probationary two-week evaluation period because, he claimed he was told, Jones had failed to create any original or exclusive content.
On October 5th, because Jones allegedly failed to meet Larson's professional standards, TYT pushed for Plaintiff to sign a severance package where he would waive his civil rights claims, receive approximately one month's salary, and resign, according to the lawsuit.
Jones refused to sign the agreement and was fired, the lawsuit says.
The statement back in January from Jenkins is interesting, in my opinion, because he says the lawyer is bringing the complaints against him.
But the lawyer can't bring a complaint against you without someone to complain.
In this instance, Andrew Jones has filed a complaint.
And according to the lawsuit, when they were firing him, they wanted him to sign something that waived his rights to sue them for civil rights abuses.
Which says to me that they were aware something was going on.
Now, again, that's according to the lawsuit.
It may or may not have happened.
This is one side making an allegation against the other.
Now, issues of racism are not new to the Young Turks.
When you look at their name, the Young Turks, that is the name of the group that committed the Armenian Genocide.
That's a fact.
And in the past, Cenk Uygur has written several articles denying that the Armenian Genocide even happened.
From Wikipedia, we can see this entry.
He reiterated his position in a letter to the editor of Salon in 1999.
In a blog post in April 2016, he rescinded the statements.
Armenian Genocide Denial.
He reiterated his position in a letter to the editor of Salon in 1999.
In a blog post in April 2016, he rescinded the statements.
He went on to claim that he does not know enough today to comment on it.
As of 2017, his full acceptance of the term genocide was indicated in the main TYT program
first on September 6, when he referred to it as the Armenian Genocide, while discussing
Myanmar's Muslim Genocide, and then again in the main TYT program on November 29, while
discussing the in-court suicide of war criminal Slobodan Praljic, he again referred to it
as the Armenian Genocide twice.
And I'm not being hyperbolic.
If you go to the Young Turks Wikipedia page, you can see just down here that it says they carried out the Armenian Genocide.
And when you go to the Armenian Genocide Wikipedia, you can see that it is the second most studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.
And according to Wikipedia, 1.5 million people were killed.
But there is a bit more, because he did write some other racist statements.
From Next Shark, seven months ago, Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur exposed for racism against Asian men objectifying Asian women.
The article reads, Yigit Uygur, creator of the popular progressive online
network, The Young Turks, was recently outed for writing multiple racist and sexist blog posts in
the early 2000s.
Uygur was found to have made a number of posts using objectifying language to describe women
during his early days as a blogger.
In one of the graphic posts from 1999, he wrote that women were generally flawed because of their lack of sex drive, according to The Wrap.
In an article supposedly about suicide also written in 2002, he even inserted a diss against Asian men, while advising overweight or unattractive men to seek Japanese women, Who he believes will easily sleep with American men.
He said that every American is John Wayne to a Japanese girl who need a new purse, a grammar lesson in English, and a decent-sized penis for a change, Ugar wrote.
Because of these statements, he had to resign from the Justice Democrats.
We are deeply disturbed by recent news regarding Cenk Ugar and David Kohler.
Their language and conduct is horrifying and does not reflect our values as Justice Democrats.
We would be hypocrites to not act immediately and ask for their resignation.
Here is our official statement.
So there is a complaint.
There is a lawsuit against the Young Turks for being racist.
We also have the instance where old blog posts were unearthed showing that they did make some racist comments, or sexist comments, and they had to apologize for it, and they had to resign from their progressive political organization.
There's then the name, the Young Turks, which is the name of the group that committed a genocide, and Cenk Uygur's denial of it for many years, though again, he did retract those statements, apologize, and now accepts it to be fact.
The Young Turks is a proper noun, and though it is used to refer to people who are young upstarts who want to make change, that is a bit esoteric, as most people probably don't know what that means.
Now, when you combine that with Cenk Uygur's previous statements on the Armenian Genocide, it makes you think that they're not necessarily using it in that manner.
I'm not going to assign intent to what the Young Turks are doing, and I'm talking about the Progressive News Program.
What I will say is that their name is the name of a group that carried out a genocide, and it's surprising to me that even though many people have asked them to change it, they've refused.
Then when you hear these allegations against them of racism and sexism, in the past, that they've apologized for, and then another employee files a lawsuit against them, it leads me to believe that they very well may be racist.
I'm not going to say they definitively are.
Everybody makes mistakes.
And it's possible that this is all a misunderstanding, for sure.
But they do have a bit of circumstantial evidence working against them.
If you Google search the Young Turks and petition, you can see that there have been some rather unsuccessful and rather unsupported Efforts to get the Young Turks to change their names.
But it does seem like some of these people are progressive, or at least pretending to be.
The post talks about what the Young Turks did.
Perpetrated the Armenian Genocide, slaughtering approximately 1.5 million Armenians, and forcing deportations throughout the Ottoman Empire of the survivors from 1915 to 1923, the Young Turks of a century ago decimated a population that still today has not fully healed.
One of the commenters said, Because I believe in having a just and inclusive world,
I may not be Armenian, Assyrian, Pontic Greek, but as a human being, I stand in solidarity with those
communities.
Let's decolonize our minds and our language.
I stopped watching your show, which I had been a fan of two years ago,
due to your refusal to change your name.
I look forward to a rebranding of the Young Turks.
Now, it's possible that the people calling on the Young Turks to change their name
are just people on the right who don't like them and want to damage them
or earn some political points.
But it is interesting that many people on the left aren't calling them out, telling them to change their name as well.
Because, at the end of the day, it seems like people are just going to play politics.
And I know that people are going to come to me and say the only reason I'm talking about it is because I'm right-wing, which is total nonsense.
BuzzFeed News reported this.
Variety reported this.
This is news being talked about.
And the Young Turks is one of the largest alternative media companies in the world.
And this is very important stuff.
They are being sued for racial discrimination.
They have a human rights complaint for racial discrimination.
They have admitted to making sexist and racist comments in the past, and they were forced to resign from their political organization because of it.
Then there's the name that they've refused to change.
Now, these are only a few specific incidents.
It doesn't mean all of the Young Turks are racist, and they do a ton of content that aims to be anti-racist.
But whether or not you think they're racist is up to you.
Just because there are a few moments doesn't mean they're overwhelmingly racist or anything like that, and I don't want to imply simply because I highlight these moments I'm saying they are racist.
I'm saying it's important to take these things in context When you see the reporting from BuzzFeed and from Variety.
But let me know what you think in the comments below and we'll keep the conversation going.
Do you think this is them being racist?
Do you think they actually are?
Or do you think people make mistakes, pencils have erasers, and the Young Turks tend to do a good job?
Again, comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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