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Elon Musk's mom blasts NYT article on son's 'white privilege' growing up in apartheid South Africa

“@nytimes are you going to blame children for decisions made by governments?” Maye Musk asked

Elon Musk’s mother Maye Musk has taken offense to a New York Times article that said the Tesla CEO did not face issues while growing up in apartheid-era South Africa because he was white. The 74-year-old Canadian-South African model lashed out at the piece for suggesting Elon could have done something against the segregation and anti-black government propaganda that engulfed the country from 1948 until the early 1990s, despite the fact that the entrepreneur left South Africa at the age of 17.

Sharing the piece on Twitter, NYT wrote: “Elon Musk grew up in elite white communities in South Africa, detached from apartheid’s atrocities and surrounded by anti-Black propaganda. He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation.”

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Maye fired back at the tweet by writing: “In South Africa, if you publicly opposed apartheid, you went to jail. In Russia, if you publicly oppose the war, you go to jail. @nytimes are you going to blame children for decisions made by governments? #StopTheWar 🇺🇦.”

The article included interviews of Elon’s classmates from South Africa, as one of them named Melanie Cheary claimed: “We were really clueless as white South African teenagers. Really clueless.” Terence Beney, another classmate of Musk, added: “It’s telling — white kids were insulated from the harsh reality of it.”

The piece noted that the 50-year-old’s “suburban communities were largely shrouded in misinformation. Newspapers sometimes arrived on doorsteps with whole sections blacked out, and nightly news bulletins ended with the national anthem and an image of the national flag flapping as the names of white young men who were killed fighting for the government scrolled on the screen.” The article also appeared to suggest that his recent purchase of Twitter might have something to do with his growing up in a racially segregated South Africa.

Meanwhile, several others joined Maye to slam the NYT piece. Johnna Crider, author at CleanTechnica, shared: “The fact that the New York Times is blaming Elon Musk for not speaking out against apartheid when he was a baby is insane.” Posting a photo of young Elon, a user sarcastically tweeted: “3 year old Elon would rather play with this toy cars than think about his white privilege & end Apartheid. How dare he?! 😤🙃” “I've always thought highly of #ElonMusk, but I must thank the article ultimately convince me he's definitely not able to do evil, even as a child, under relentless pressure. Nice job @nytimes ! We know twitter will be in good hands, which is great,” another user noted.

A tweet supporting Elon read: “They want to blame this man for anything they can, because he has power. Doesn't matter what it is, but at the end of the day, he is a son, father and man with a heart, and he managed to change the world with what little time he was given.” Geoffrey Franklin Miller, an American evolutionary psychologist, added: “This is one of the most unethically cringe & toxically stupid smears the @nytimes has ever published. Shame on you, you sociopathic ghouls.”