Twitter Bans Activist as She Swaps 'Anti-White' Posts for 'Anti-Black'

As the scandal around the now-New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong flared up, Candace Owens, Communications Director at conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, called attention to Jeong's previous tweets.

Owens, who is black, posted the text of one of those tweets, replacing the word "white" with "black."

The activist also seemed to have done a similar swap, changing the word "white" for "Jewish." That tweet, however, appears to have been deleted, although some users were quick to take screenshots.

Apparently, a significant number of Twitterians reported her tweets, leading to the suspension of her account – something that drew the ire of social media users.

Even though Twitter has already apologized to Owens for temporarily blocking her account following reports of violations of the platform's rules, the issue engendered a huge controversy.

Users accused the network of espousing a double standard, pointing to the fact that Joeng's tweets, largely viewed as “anti-white,” were never removed – neither was her account.

But Owens' account was suspended for 12 hours just because she imitated Joeng's tweets, simply swapping out the word “white” for “black.”

After Twitterians launched a large-scale online campaign to make the platform unsuspend the activist's account by launching a hashtag #FreeCandace, Twitter unbanned it:

The massive backlash came shorty after a barrage of Jeong's tweets dating back to 2014 and 2015 resurfaced following the NYT's announcement of the new hire. In her tweets, she blasted "dumba** f***ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions" and rhetorically wondered if white people were "genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun."

Responding to the fierce criticism, The New York Times defended its decision to hire Sarah Jeong as an editorial board member despite her past remarks and claimed that she had responded to online harassment by mimicking the rhetoric of her bullies.

Sarah has also tweeted out a statement, justifying her comments as “counter-trolling”: