NPR felt pressed to delete a tweet on Tuesday that rained on the parade of newly elected Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, since many black voters were upset that their preferred minority didn't win the office. It said in part "While many are hailing it as a turning point, others see it as more of a disappointment that the three Black candidates couldn't even come close."
The first woman and person of color is a disappointment? Karen Townsend quipped at Hot Air "Apparently, all historic firsts are not created equally." As she pointed out, Wu was the true hardcore lefty in the race, with her opponent, Arab American Annissa Essaibi George, looking moderate by comparison. Wu will succeed black interim mayor Kim Janey, who succeeded Marty Walsh, who became Biden's Labor Secretary in March.
The tweet by @NPR was deleted but here is a screenshot.
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) November 16, 2021
NPR demonstrates once again it is undeserving of taxpayer funded grants. pic.twitter.com/qPEmI6rNAd
NPR then issued a "corrective" tweet, confessing it was "causing harm." After all, a "woman of color" won the race. Just months ago, "stopping AAPI hate" was all the rage on the left, so it's odd that NPR would say that the Blacks deserved to win more, somehow.
We realize we don't always get things right the first time, and our previous tweet/headline misrepresented the story.
— NPR (@NPR) November 16, 2021
We deleted the previous tweet, which was causing harm, and have updated the story
They did not take down the story that aired on NPR. Reporter Tovia Smith chronicled the mourning on Tuesday's Morning Edition:
TOVIA SMITH: Hope was high this year in this time of racial reckoning, with three Black candidates running, that Boston might elect its first Black mayor, like most of the nation's 30 largest cities have already done.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Please welcome the 55th mayor of the city of Boston, Kim Janey.
TOVIA SMITH: One of the Black candidates even had the advantage of running as acting mayor after temporarily inheriting the job when former Mayor Marty Walsh left to become President Biden's secretary of labor. And yet neither Janey nor the others even made it to the final two.
DANNY RIVERA: I got home and I cried. I cried my eyes out because I don't know the next time we'll see a Black mayor in our city.
Three black candidates ran, and none finished in the final two. Maybe if they could have united around one contender, they could have made it. NPR included activist Eugene Rivers saying it was on blacks and not whites that they didn't succeed. But NPR was still smelling discrimination:
TOVIA SMITH: Indeed, in the preliminary election, the three Black candidates combined got about three-quarters of the vote in areas of the city with the least white voters, while in the whitest areas, they won only about one-quarter of the votes.
MARIE ST FLEUR: I mean, the data speaks for itself, and it's troubling.
TOVIA SMITH: Especially, says former state representative Marie St. Fleur, for a city still straining under a longtime reputation as racist.
Again, didn't electing an Asian reflect on a "racist" reputation?
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