Is The New York Times Racist?

What does America's most powerful newspaper using a race scientist as a source mean for journalism?

(Envato.com)

Mark Myrie does not believe he’s a drug dealer.

In July 2009, Myrie, a Jamaican living in Miami, met a real drug dealer, a Colombian immigrant who introduced himself as “Junior.” After the two men struck up a conversation during an eight-hour international flight, Junior revealed he was an international drug trafficker. Over the next five months, Junior repeatedly called Myrie asking if Myrie had drug connections in the Caribbean. Finally, on Dec. 8, 2009, after months of badgering, Myrie agreed to bring one of his drug-dealing homeboys to see Junior’s new sailboat.

When Myrie and his homeboy arrived at the warehouse where Junior stored his boat, Junior’s white associate in the narcotics sales industry was already there. There was just one problem: Myrie’s homeboy was also not a drug dealer. So when the white man pulled out 20 kilos of cocaine, Myrie’s friend did what he’d seen drug dealers do in movies – he dipped a knife into the coke and handed it to Myrie so he could taste-test the product. A few minutes later, Myrie’s homeboy called up an actual drug dealer from Georgia, when Myrie yelled: “Yo, find out how much he wants!”

The U.S. government had finally found someone to sell cocaine in a Black community. And if this sounds like a conspiracy theory, it was. Junior was actually Alex Johnson — “an ex-con who, according to court records, made millions of dollars working over 14 years as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement agencies,” ABC news reports. Even worse, Junior’s white friend was an undercover Sarasota, Fla., police officer posing as a drug dealer.

Junior met with Myrie’s friend to negotiate the drug deal the next day. Myrie didn’t show up because, again, Mark Myrie was not a drug dealer. “He does not want to do nothing, man," Myrie’s friend told the informant when they met the next day. "That's not him, you know?” In Myrie’s absence, the two agreed to sell five kilos to the Georgia dealer the next day, but the deal never took place.

On Feb. 22, 2011, a jury convicted Myrie on federal charges of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine and aiding and abetting the use of a communication facility during a drug trafficking crime. During his trial, the ”world’s largest drug enforcement agency” did not produce a shred of evidence showing that Myrie intended to distribute cocaine or used a communication device to traffic drugs. Still, just before sentencing Myrie to 121 months in federal prison, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. summed up the DEA’s entire case, writing: “Myrie introduced a co-conspirator to a confidential source, which resulted in the undercover sale of five kilograms of cocaine for $135,000.00.”

Mark Myrie considers himself to be a good person who made a bad decision. To him, vouching for someone does not make you guilty of their crimes. Those who know Myrie regard him as a talented musician trying to achieve the American dream. He never sold drugs. He never intended to buy the drugs that the government agents were trying to push. At worst, he was simply an accomplice to a drug deal that never actually happened. But, according to the rules of the American justice system …

Buju Banton is a drug dealer.

The staff of the New York Times doesn’t consider themselves to be racists.

On July 3, The Times published a story revealing that New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani checked a box identifying himself as both “Asian” and “African American” on his application to Columbia University. There was just one problem. Not only was Mamdani never accepted to Columbia, but he is actually an American of South Asian descent who was born in Uganda.

While the tale of how an Africa-born, Asian-American high school student got absolutely nothing by correctly identifying himself flabbered exactly zero gasts, The Times casually mentioned the source of its unremarkable story. To create its report on Mamdani, The Times obtained data from an anonymous source who shared information from a June cyberattack on Columbia University, noting:

Last month’s cyberattack appears to have been carried out in order to see if Columbia was still using race-conscious affirmative action in its admission policies after the Supreme Court effectively barred the practice in 2023.

While Mr. Mamdani was not a target of the hack, the information about him was included in a database of millions of student applications to Columbia going back decades. The data was shared with The Times by an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X. He provided the data under condition of anonymity, although his identity has been made public elsewhere. He is an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race.

According to multiple reports, Crémieux — the pseudonym for the “academic who opposes affirmative action”— is a self-described “scientific racist” named Jordan Lasker. It's bad enough that Lasker travels the world promoting the white supremacist conspiracy theory that Black people are genetically inferior to mutants who can be killed by sunlight. But by agreeing to conceal the identity of a white supremacist conspiracy theorist, The New York Times flouted the high journalistic standards set by one of America’s foremost journalistic standard-bearers:

The New York Times.

On June 11, 2025, three weeks before the Times conspired with racism dealers who used a communications device with the intent to distribute racism, the newspaper’s editorial board explained the four questions it contemplate before using an anonymous source:

What we consider before using anonymous sources

• How do they know the information?

• What’s their motivation for telling us?

• Have they proved reliable in the past?

• Can we corroborate the information they provide?

Because using anonymous sources puts great strain on our most valuable asset: our readers’ trust, the reporter and at least one editor is required to know the identity of the source. A senior newsroom editor must also approve the use of the information the source provides.

In the case of the unexplosive Mamdani exposè, we know the answers to The New York Times’ test. The Times’ source had the data because racists stole it from Columbia University. Lasker was motivated by Mamdani’s race to share the data with The Times. The general scientific consensus does not consider race science to be reliable, credible or even rational. To be fair, this high standard is not unique to The Times. It’s why legitimate news organizations, including The Times, refused to use leaked campaign files from an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign. A statement by the outlet’s assistant managing editor in charge of whitesplaining still doesn’t adequately explain why the paper disregarded its own rules.

I can.

I initially reported on Mark “Buju Banton” Myrie’s 2012 appeal, which was based on a simple premise:

He wasn’t a drug dealer.

On appeal, Myrie argues that the government did not establish that he was part of a drug conspiracy because there was never an agreement in place and mere presence is insufficient to sustain his conviction. Further, he argues that he did not aid and abet his codefendant, Ian Thomas, in using a phone to facilitate a drug crime because his only involvement with a phone was directing Thomas to ask a question with regard to a drug deal that never happened. Myrie also argues that his convictions should be overturned because Alexander Johnson, a government confidential informant, pursued him to engage in drug dealing over a six-month period, which constituted entrapment as a matter of law.

During my initial reporting, I spoke to a legal scholar who explained why, because of the American jury system, Buju Banton is a certified drug dealer. Initially created by King Henry II to preserve power for royal families and powerful aristocrats, the English jury system was enshrined in the Magna Carta because it allowed English citizens to impose their collective privileges on outsiders.

Although there was no royalty in America, the founders installed this system into the Constitution to preserve whiteness. The legal scholar noted that, when writing about the jury system, Supreme Court Justice Harlan Williams wrote: “Those who emigrated to this country from England brought with them this great privilege as their birthright and inheritance.” According to my expert, excluding Black people from juries was the point of the grandfather clause, poll taxes, felony disenfranchisement, racial gerrymandering and other forms of Black suppression. In America’s legal system, juries don’t just preserve power, they are considered “finders of fact.” Once a jury issues a verdict, a person’s guilt or innocence becomes a legal fact. And as far as America, the founding fathers and the entire legal system were concerned, it is a fact that Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam didn’t murder Till. It is a fact that George Zimmerman didn’t murder Trayvon Martin …

But Buju Banton is a certified drug dealer.

What does this have to do with The New York Times?

Well, when I submitted the story to my editor, who was white, he called me back to his desk and told me that we couldn’t use one of my sources. Apparently, my “legal scholar” had been suspended for having students read a book called “White Devil.”

“But if the information he provided was accurate, why does it matter?” I argued. “Does assigning a book mean he’s racist?”

“I’m not saying he’s racist,” replied the editor. “I’m saying, as a journalist, he’s not a credible source.”

I’m not saying The New York Times is racist.

I’m saying, as a journalist, that The Times obtained information from someone who conspired to distribute racism. I’m saying The New York Times knowingly and intentionally aided and abetted racists who used a communication device to facilitate racism. I’m saying The Times vouched for a racist. I’m saying it used a racist as a credible source. I don’t make the rules, but The New York Times did. Then it broke them to collude with an undercover informant who was pushing racism into the white community. And according to the rules of journalism, America and the public declaration that The New York Times created to preserve journalistic integrity …

I can legally call Buju Banton a drug dealer.

Because it is a fact.

Now, what should we call The New York Times?