In my email to Lewis, I wrote that my email was “not a quote or a response.” My response was for her benefit. I am a trained journalist, as well as a trained historian and researcher, and I was already made aware that Lewis was working from an audio transcript that was redacted — the names of the other attendants were not published, except for Nancy Spector’s — and a major part of the audio was missing. Lewis’s brief message to me signalled a lot of red flags, and I knew that in desperation, Lewis would more than likely quote what I wrote. In the event of this, I wanted to to be clear how unqualified Lewis is, and how manipulative and unethical her practices are.
A trained journalist would have understood that my email was background. There were lots of signs to re-think writing the piece. In the email, I brought up the fact that a woman of color had pitched an article about the Guggenheim’ culture of retaliation, racism and other harms. The Atlantic passed on that. It’s a difficult leap to understand how Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief arrived at a point where Lewis, a White woman with a track record of harm and based in London, was more qualified than an art-world insider who would’ve been able to get people close to the story, to speak. As Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic’s Executive Editor was cc’d on all of these emails, it’s hard to understand how she thought so as well.
Back to the transcript. In 2022 to use it as a primary source of timeline and truth is risky; it is best used to exhibit the dysfunction and the resources used to silence me, and the fact that the Guggenheim curatorial team openly strategized, on company time, how best to do this. Spector, Joan Young (the Director of Curatorial Affairs who mostly acted as her high-level assistant) and others are mostly lying on the transcript, and the casual racism, (internalized) anti-Blackness and (internalized) misogynies are on full and breathtakingly candid display. My email to Lewis was for due diligence, which I consider to be an ethical responsibility. As a writer, historian, Basquiat scholar and a main subject and main source for this story, I have an ethical responsibility to say, “You do not have all of the facts, skills or range with which to write this story at all.” And I did say this. These warnings were ignored.
These decisions and actions call into question the judgment of Jeffery Goldberg, the Editor-in-Chief at The Atlantic. During his tenure, there has been an increasingly hard-to-ignore reputation for killing stories to protect the interests of the ruling class, and Goldberg is known for severe cultural blindspots that he is unwilling to do anything about, except the Listening and Learning song-and-dance. It’s worth reading this article by Jennifer Bennett, a former Executive Editor at The Atlantic who was forced out of the publication for bringing up the issues about sexism, the toxic work environment and ethical reporting. Bennett’s firing happened during Goldberg’s tenure. This is to say, I knew that The Atlantic would run at full-speed into this canyon, despite every reason not to. Lewis also knew that she was writing an article about me, and as a subject, I was telling her no, I will not participate. Part of Lewis’s job as a journalist is to be good enough to get the information needed to write her story, and in this requirement, she failed. When you read her correspondence and consider the timeline, Lewis is failing at her story, and she knows this. And Lewis is failing with Adrienne LaFrance, Executive Editor, as witness. But the first failure was that The Atlantic, signed off by Goldberg, hired Lewis at all. It adds a new example to the maxim that White people are allowed to fail upwards.
Lewis makes no mention of what her blog post is centered to me; she is lying so much through omission, that she doesn’t even bother to say what the article is about. This is not just a red flag, but a crimson one. “I’d be grateful for your time to discuss this further” is disingenuous if you’ve already told me, “I plan to discuss your experience” — and demanded that I speak to you, no matter who dressed up in politesse it is. This is the sort of manipulation which is considered not only dangerous, but is against the professional guidelines publicly outlined by The Society of Professional Journalists: “…oversimplification that removes integral facts, or is in the service of manipulation is a violation of some of the Society’s basic principles….” This is not even an oversimplification; it says nothing. Inherent in Lewis’s summoning is a recognition of the power imbalance, further fortified by LaFrance’s presence — and that in an effort to not be abused by this power, I, the subject and source, will fold and speak to Lewis, helping her shore up a blog post that is not achievable by other means. Here, Lewis’s failures as a journalist are on fully display. It is my belief that for a British White woman with the noted track record of hate that Lewis has, to be called out, in front of her superiors, further enraged her. Especially considering that she thought that she was entitled to a response. My experience at the Guggenheim had well prepared me, to be prepared for what happens when White women who think they’re feminists are told “no.” Hence, I warned Lewis that I would be publishing her correspondence.
As I further explain in the page, “Helen Lewis Begging”, Lewis knew that her piece was in big trouble. I could certainly see this, and it influenced my responses and next steps. Lewis was dangerously close to printing incorrect information, and I believe that she thinks that she is a serious and important journalist, and I think that she thinks she is up to the challenge of reporting on infamously insular worlds such as the art-world. The truth is, Lewis isn’t, and her reputation for bullying women of color in the U.K. — her racism, one could say — makes her unqualified and unable to report on one of the hardest stories to crack in the art world, which centers on the story, scholarship and humanity of a Black woman. It’s unclear why The Atlantic dispatched one of their weakest soldiers for one of the most difficult stories to get right. It’s clear that Lewis is struggling, and without the material she needed to properly vet or fact check this piece. So, Lewis lied and published information that she knew was not correct. The Atlantic thought that it was important enough to defame and silence me, and further contribute to the Guggenheim’s efforts, that Goldberg willingly risked the reputation of his publication to publish information that they knew was not correct and that had not been properly fact checked.
This was never about facts, so much as it was re-affirming a world view in which Whiteness sits atop a collapsing hierarchy, and protecting the Guggenheim, an institution publicly, privately and historically devoted to this mission of Whiteness, by any means.