Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal lands self in racism row on day one

On Monday, Parag Agrawal took over as the CEO of Twitter after its co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down at the helm of the San Francisco-headquartered microblogging platform. Parag is an IIT-Bombay and Stanford University alumnus. He had worked in Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T labs before joining Twitter in 2011.

As soon as Parag took over he has landed himself in controversy as right wing trolls and some media houses have found his 10 year old tweet where has said that all white people are racist. 

The tweet that is in the news was tweeted on October 26, 2010, read “If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists?” However in the thread he can also be seen clarifying that he was only quoting the comedian Aasif Mandvi who had said something on these lines on the Daily Show. "I was quoting Asif Mandvi from The Daily Show," he tweeted less than 20 minutes after the now-controversial Oct. 26 tweet.

Right-wing media outlets like Brietbart picked up on the tweet, declaring it to be "anti-white racism" while at the same time admitting "it was unclear who he was quoting."

Here's the tweet: 

"If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists."

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) October 26, 2010

So, Twitter's new CEO is a racist. Why am I not surprised? https://t.co/KHFVx3CZGc— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) November 29, 2021