Karen Attiah reveals Washington Post firing tied to her comments about white men

The former Washington Post columnist was fired on September 11 for her social media posts reacting to the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah revealed the publication’s true reason for firing her by posting the termination email she was sent. Attiah wrote that she posted the email to clear up misinformation that one of her posts, in which she quoted a racist comment made by Charlie Kirk, was what led to her termination.

“A narrative that has taken hold is that I was fired for mentioning Charlie Kirk’s views on Black women,” Attiah wrote on Substack. “And because I care about the truth, and even though this letter is already public, I wanted to clear things up myself.”

In the letter, which she shared on her Substack, Washington Post’s human resources chief stated that her posts on social media following the murder of Kirk “violate The Post’s social media policies, harm the integrity of our organization, and potentially endanger the physical safety of our staff.” According to Attiah, she was fired via email and did not have a conversation with her employer when the decision was made.

The termination letter cited multiple “public comments,” and the examples used were two posts on Bluesky where Attiah wrote, “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is… not the same as violence,” and “Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and abosolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.”

Attiah was fired from the legacy newspaper on September 11, and posted her response on Substack on Monday, which was titled “The Washington Post Fired Me – But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced.” She had been on the Opinions team at The Post for 11 years, and worked as the Global Opinions Editor before becoming a columnist. While at The Post, she won the 2019 George Polk Award and was selected as the 2019 Journalist of the Year from the National Association of Black Journalists.

On her Substack, she discussed the several posts she made on Bluesky where she reacted to the aftermath of Kirk’s death. There was just one post where she mentioned him by name, in which she quoted his comment that “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously.”

According to the email from The Post, Attiah violated the newspaper’s social media policy with her comments about white men in response to Kirk’s murder; it did not cite any direct comment about Kirk himself. In addition, the letter said the firing was also related to “documented performance concerns” that were already brought up to Attiah.

Attiah’s firing is also significant because she was the last remaining full-time Black opinion columnist at the newspaper. This comes at a time when the publication is losing many of its longtime, prominent staffers. At least 60 Washington Post staffers have taken buyouts this year, including acclaimed Black journalists such as fashion editor Robin Givhan and Krissah Thompson, the highest-ranking Black editor and the first Black managing editor at The Post.

In her Substack post from September 15, Attiah said she “rejected” the claims from The Post that her social media posts were “unacceptable,” “gross misconduct,” and endangered her colleagues’ physical safety. And she maintains that those posts have been proven correct in the time since she made them.

“What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic,” she wrote. “But this is not the end of my work. I still believe in the power of the pen. My values have not changed.”