Karen Attiah, the only Black full-time columnist for the Washington Post’s Opinion section, has been fired from the paper, according to posts made by Attiah on social media and Substack. Attiah claims that her firing came as a result of a series of posts she made in response to the killing of conservative talking head Charlie Kirk. She was the paper’s last remaining full-time Black Opinions section columnist.
Attiah says she was fired after posting about gun violence, quoting Charlie Kirk
Attiah announced Monday that she had been fired from the Washington Post, sharing an article published on her Substack account that explains the circumstances around her firing. Attiah posted screenshots of a series of posts she made on the social media platform BlueSky in relation to shootings in Colorado and Utah in which she denounced political violence and denounced “white America” for “empty rhetoric” surrounding public shootings while gun control efforts are blocked or rejected.
Attiah says that “my commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash.” Nevertheless, she says that the Washington Post fired her over her remarks. “The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable,’ ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
Attiah notes that her series of posts made only one direct reference to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, listing a quote she attributes to him: “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.”
The quote appears to be a slight paraphrase of a comment Kirk made on his show as part of a larger monologue that criticized other prominent Black women as achieving their positions through affirmative action. “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” Kirk said after naming First Lady Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, journalist Joy Reid and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. “You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” Snopes recently verified the statement, which Kirk made in 2023.
The Washington Post and Attiah in the era of Donald Trump
The Washington Post has been owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos since 2013. The paper was heavily criticized when it announced last October that it would no longer endorse presidential candidates as it had in the past; the move, reportedly coming directly from Bezos, prevented the paper’s editorial board from publishing its planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since Trump took office again in January, other major media companies have taken actions that some have viewed as silencing or retaliating against critics of Trump. Washington Post Opinion Editor Jeff Shipley resigned from the paper in February after Bezos issued a directive for the editorial section to support “personal liberties and free markets,” a nod toward pushing it in the more conservative direction of publications like the Wall Street Journal.
Attiah joined the Washington Post in 2014, and in 2016 she became the founding editor of the paper’s Global Opinions section. As noted in the announcement of her role as inaugural Global Opinions Editor, Attiah previously worked as a social media consultant for the World Bank and a freelance journalist for the Associated Press.
In 2024, Attiah stepped down as co-chair of the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists over their decision to invite then-candidate Trump to the meeting. It was at this appearance that Trump made controversial comments claiming that Vice President Harris had previously downplayed her Black racial identity.
Now, Attiah appears to have been fired after posting a negative but accurate comment about Kirk, a close Trump ally. Despite being let go from the Washington Post, Attiah has pledged to continue engaging in public discourse, including through her Substack account and through a series of online lectures and discussions she hosts as part of the Resistance Summer School series.