Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal's Old Tweets Shared Without Context

In the now-controversial tweet, Agrawal quotes comedian Asif Mandvi from The Daily Show by Jon Stewart.

After Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down as the microblogging website's chief executive officer (CEO), the company announced that Parag Agrawal, who was the chief technical officer, would take Dorsey's place at the helm of the company.

Shortly after the news broke, an old tweet from Agrawal's verified Twitter account started doing the rounds on social media, which appeared controversial in its nature.

In the tweet, Agrawal states, "If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists. (sic)"

Agrawal's tweet was shared across social media platforms, where Indian users criticised him for being "woke" in their posts.

The tweet was picked up by many right-wing outlets in the United States (US) and a few members of the Republican Party quote-tweeted Agrawal criticising him.

(Note: Swipe right to view tweets.)

But we saw that Agrawal's now-controversial tweet from 11 years ago had quotation marks around it and looked for more context around the tweet.

What Was Agrawal Talking About?

We looked at Agrawal's Twitter timeline, filtering using Twitter Advanced Search to obtain more tweets from around the same time – October 2010.

By doing so we came across a reply from Agrawal's account around 12 minutes after the said tweet, where he noted that he was quoting comedian Asif Mandvi from The Daily Show.

We also came across a tweet by CNN journalist Andrew Kaczynski, who noted that Agrawal had quoted a "Daily Show segment that aired that night about stereotypes." The tweet further stated that it was a joke on absurd stereotypes and wasn't a factual statement.

Kaczynski also provided a link to the episode from which Mandvi's quote was taken, which discussed the firing of NPR's Juan Williams after his appearance on Fox News, where he made controversial statements about Muslims.

The full episode of 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart', which aired on 15 October 2010, discussed the firing and Williams' statement where he said that he is 'little scared when he saw people dressed in 'Muslim garb' on airplanes.'

The last segment of the show included comedian Larry William on 'Team Black' and Asif Mandvi on 'Team Muslim', so as to include viewpoints on the matter from both sides.

Around the nine-minute mark in this video, Mandvi remarks on having fun with discriminatory treatment on airlines and says the following, which is a near-match for Agrawal's now-controversial, out-of-context tweet:

"Now Jon, if they're not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and violent extremists, then why should I take the time to distinguish between decent, fearful white people and racists?"

Asif Mandvi on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal shared a quote from a segment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart nearly 11 years ago, where comedian Asif Mandvi was commenting on the unfair treatment that Muslims (or people of colour) are subjected to while travelling by air in the US.

The tweet is being shared by people across social media platforms to claim that Agrawal is a racist person, and a section of users are of the opinion that such a person should not be put at the helm of a public platform.