A Jordanian American writer is facing a backlash after she posted a picture on Twitter of a public transit worker eating on a train and reported details about the woman to her bosses.
Natasha Tynes apologized a day later on Twitter and deleted her post before making her account private, but the publishing house distributing her debut novel dropped her and her publisher delayed the planned release of the book.
The response to Friday's post was almost immediate, with people upset that someone who called herself a "minority writer" in a recent column at Writer's Digest would shame another minority woman and possibly cause her to lose her job.
Tynes' post showed the woman in her work uniform eating on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority train. The authority doesn't allow drinking or eating on its trains and buses, although officials on Wednesday had advised police officers to stop issuing tickets for those violations.
"When you're on your morning commute & see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope @wmata responds," Tynes wrote.
When the authority's Twitter account reached out for more information, Tynes replied with the time, the train and the direction it was traveling, The Washington Post reported.
Tynes "did something truly horrible today in tweeting a picture of a metro worker eating her breakfast on the train this morning and drawing attention to her employer.
Black women face a constant barrage of this kind of inappropriate behavior directed toward them and a constant policing of their bodies," Tynes' publishing house, Rare Birds Books, said in a statement.
Tynes' publisher, California Coldblood, also issued a statement, saying "we do not condone her actions and hope Natasha learns from this experience that black women feel the effects of systematic racism the most and that we have to be allies, not oppressors."