An opinion columnist with the Wall Street Journal has been accused of racism after penning an article initially titled “Are there ‘too many Asians’?”
In his piece published Monday, William “Bill” McGurn, who served as chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, describes ideas behind population control as a “Western import,” much like Marxism. His writing focuses on China, whose declining population in recent years has raised alarms over a demographic time bomb.
The article’s headline now appears to have been changed to “China and the Population Bomb That Wasn’t.”
However, McGurn’s tweet promoting the original headline remains live, and his subsequent posts do not reflect the modified title.
“@wsj allowing a racist to write articles and work for you? How many more of you are there at @wsj?” one user questioned.
“No,” another user wrote as a response to the original headline. “But there’s too many racists like you.”
Others took offense to the article’s publication on the heels of the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay mass shootings.
The incidents, which occurred on Saturday — the eve of the Lunar New Year — and Monday afternoon, respectively, left 17 Asian people dead.
Another tweeted sarcastically, “Thank god we had multiple mass shootings of Asians over the weekend to take care of the problem of there being too many Asians.”
Meanwhile, some users pointed to McGurn’s Wikipedia page, which noted that McGurn has adopted three children from China, and questioned how they would react to his original headline.
McGurn has yet to publicly address the controversy.
