Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capeheart quits editorial board over dispute with white colleague: ‘Robbing me of my humanity'
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.
5 Jonathan Capehart is a Washington Post opinion columnist.
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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.
5 Capehart reportedly clashed with fellow editorial board member Karen Tumulty.
Lisa Lake
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.
5 According to his new book, Capehart took issue with an editorial criticizing remarks by then-President Joe Biden.
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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.
5 Then-President Joe Biden described the 2021 Georgia voting law as 'Jim Crow 2.0' — which Tumulty thought was 'hyperbolic.'
Reuters
'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.
5 Capehart's book has reportedly rankled staffers at the Washington Post.
Christopher Sadowski
'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.
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'And Les Misérables is so rich that you can read a great number of different things into it.' As such, Trump critics have offered alternative readings. Some see him and his administration as the merciless Javert using the power of law to tyrannize the American people — and themselves as the persecuted revolutionaries fighting back. Others see him as Thénardier, the dealmaking innkeeper who serves as the musical's comic relief. Like Thénardier, Trump is always onstage, always selling — and no matter how many times he's knocked down, he's always left standing. And there are challenges with MAGA's reading of itself as the victorious French revolutionaries. For one, the revolutionaries don't win. The musical's favorite rebels, Enjolras, Gavroche and Éponine among them, are all killed by French soldiers during the climactic battle at the barricade; Valjean himself later dies sequestered in a convent, having spent his life hiding from the law. (And the book ends, literally, with Valjean going unremembered, his tombstone blank.) And while Les Mis is indeed populist, MAGA's affinity for it would seem to sit uncomfortably with the liberal causes that the protagonists champion. One of the themes more explicitly outlined in Hugo's book than the musical calls for universal property rights and the redistribution of wealth. (Hugo might have raised an eyebrow at the fact that some theatergoers Wednesday night paid $2 million to sit in a performance box and attend a VIP reception with Trump before the show, though the proceeds do go to support the Kennedy Center.) It's an apparent contradiction some in the movement hold in one hand with their love for the musical in the other. 'It's very populist. It appeals to our sensibilities in that regard,' said one Trump ally who is a musical theater fan, reflecting on that tension. 'But,' the person acknowledged, 'also it's crazy radical lefties — or at least that's implied in the musical — so that's not us.' Hugo scholar Kathryn Grossman, a professor of French at Penn State University, described the tension bluntly: 'Trump has turned the Kennedy Center into an anti-woke arena. This musical is the most woke thing you could ever imagine. Totally woke.' And as much as Wednesday night was a victory for Trump world, it was not an unmitigated one. A handful of cast members boycotted the show. And some critics pointed out the uncomfortable parallels from the day's headlines — armed troops squaring off against protesters in Los Angeles while on a Washington stage actors playing French soldiers assaulted the revolutionaries' barricades. The creators of Les Mis have themselves shied away from taking political stances vis-à-vis Trump. Cameron Mackintosh — who in addition to Les Mis produced Cats and Phantom — was asked by Washingtonian before the play opened at the Kennedy Center during Trump's first term whether the musical had a particular resonance in Washington at that moment. 'You mean because of the political situation? Well, only that it's all about passionate beliefs, which certainly on both sides of the divide is what's happening in your country and indeed in ours,' Mackintosh said. 'People — particularly younger people — are feeling stronger about the way the world is governed than ever, and that is one of the themes that run through it.' Milling in the halls of the Kennedy Center before the show, one Les Mis attendee, who voted for Trump, acknowledged the musical's political undertones, and its resonance for the MAGA movement. 'Look, I understand that there are some songs from Les Mis that are meaningful to him, that draw correlations. But isn't that what the arts are about?' said the attendee, who asked to remain anonymous. 'Like, it can mean something for one person and then mean another thing for another. That is what art is. Why do we have to look at it like, 'Oh, it's now all of a sudden evil, because this one person sees it in one way.' This is art.' As for what he likes about Les Mis, his answer was simple: 'I just love a crescendo.'
