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A black Washington Post opinion writer said he quit the newspaper’s editorial board over a dispute with a white colleague about a piece concerning Georgia’s voting laws that he didn’t agree with — accusing her of “robbing me of my humanity,” according to a report.
Jonathan Capehart, who was the only African American member of the editorial board when he quit in 2023, writes in a new book titled “Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home,” that he stepped down over a dispute with another opinion editor, Karen Tumulty, the news site Semafor reported.
In his book, Capehart, who remains a columnist at the paper, writes that he clashed with Tumulty over an editorial which took issue with then-President Joe Biden’s criticism of a 2021 Georgia voting law.
Biden described the law as “Jim Crow 2.0” — a characterization that the Washington Post editorial board deemed to be “hyperbolic.”
That didn’t sit well with Capehart, who agreed with Biden’s view of the law and was upset that the editorial may make it appear as if he supported the board’s position that it was “hyperbolic,” according to Semafor.
According to the book, Capehart was incensed when Tumulty later did not apologize to him for publishing it. He wrote that he felt additionally put off when Tumulty said Biden’s choice of words was insulting to people who had lived through racial segregation in the South.
“Tumulty took an incident where I felt she ignored and compounded the insult by robbing me of my humanity,” he wrote in the book, which was published last week.
“She either couldn’t or wouldn’t see that I was black, that I came to the conversation with knowledge and history she could never have, that my worldview, albeit different from hers, was equally valid.”
Capehart left the editorial board after complaining about the incident to human resources and other senior figures at the paper, Semafor reported.
Capehart’s frustrations were notable enough that after the piece was published, opinion editor David Shipley was asked to meet privately with the Rev. Al Sharpton to discuss the incident and alleged shortcomings in the paper’s opinion coverage, Semafor reported.
The claims made by Capehart in his new book have also reportedly rankled Washington Post staffers, according to Semafor.
Capehart’s description of the incident in his book as well as a recent discussion that he held with former Biden administration official Susan Rice at a local Washington, DC, bookstore last week has been the subject of internal recriminations at the newspaper in recent days, Semafor reported.
According to two Washington Post staffers, staff have complained privately that the book publicly pitted current colleagues against each other and appeared to run afoul of the Post’s editorial guidelines around collegiality, as well as rules that restrict staff from publicly disclosing internal editorial conversations.
The Post has sought comment from the Washington Post, Tumulty and Capehart.
In a statement to Semafor, Tumulty noted that the paper had repeatedly published opinion pieces criticizing Georgia’s 2021 voting laws limiting ballot access, but said she would not comment further on the book or the Post’s editorial processes.
“I have a very different recognition of the events and conversations that are described in this book, but out of respect for the longstanding principle that Washington Post editorial board deliberations are confidential I am not going to say anything further,” Tumulty told Semafor.
Some current and former staff told Semafor that they felt Capehart’s decision to go after Tumulty in a book and on his book tour over an editorial disagreement, as well as the actual description of the incident, was unfair to her.
“Ed board members, current and former, are honor bound not to discuss specific deliberations publicly,” former deputy opinion editor Chuck Lane said in a text to Semafor.
“I can only say that Karen took an unsought leadership role when the paper needed her, and performed it superbly and 100 percent honorably, despite extraordinary health challenges — for which I admire her greatly.”
The Washington Post editorial board has undergone considerable upheaval in the last nine months.
Just before the Nov. 5 presidential election, billionaire owner Jeff Bezos blocked the editorial board from endorsing the Democratic nominee, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Earlier this year, Bezos overhauled the opinion section so that it would promote “personal liberties” and “free markets” — a move that prompted the resignation of Shipley.
