One is more salacious and politically juicy while the other is unfortunate but mundane and boring. I wish we fundamentally altered our capitalist work system for the better but I won’t hold my breath.
But in the meantime, lets do what we can to protect racists from getting fired?
There are other options when it comes to worker misbehavior other than doing nothing and firing them. Obviously, there are things a worker can do that are sufficiently bad enough to be fired for immediately with no probation or second chance. Most cases of worker misbehavior don’t fall into that category though.
I feel like you’re really missing the my point, here.
In the US, outside of a very narrow range of “protected classes,” you can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all. I am entirely onboard with efforts to change this, even if it incidentally makes it harder to fire someone for being a bigot.
But people complaining about “cancel culture” seem, instead, to be going for a solution where “being a bigot” is added to that small list of protected classes, while still leaving all those other, much more bullshitty reasons people get fired intact. This does very little on the “protect people from being fired for bullshit reasons” front, and can easily be confused with, “protect racists from getting fired.” Given how widespread shitty treatment of workers in the US is, it seems like it would be a much smarter tactic to spend less time arguing about how unfair it is that a racist got fired for being racist, which is a very unsympathetic example, and focus instead on, say, single mothers getting fired because they couldn’t find child-care options that were compatible with their work schedule.
But, somehow, the conversation always ends up being about people caught shouting a racial slur in a TikTok video.
I agree. We should focus on both and one is worse and more common than the other. The issue is that this thread is explicitly about cancel culture, political correctness and its effects on people, not the injustice of corporate power overall.
This is a very good post. The problem is that these people are not protesting getting fired for trivial reasons, nor are they claiming racism is trivial. Their complaint is about being reported for something they did away from work that gets them fired from work.
If somebody says the n-word on the clock, sure, fire them. But what if they scrupulously avoid any display of racism at work, but someone catches them out at a ballgame where tempers get heated and words exchanged and they light up their opponent over race?
How associated is that employee with your business, your brand? What level of response is warranted, and what is excessive?
Example- reddit is full of rage-baiting posts. Saw one with one woman throwing a temper tantrum on an airplane because her seat was next to a “fat lady”. Screaming, raging, spitting on the woman, kicking, and saying the meanest most spiteful things she could think of about the other woman.
Now she probably got herself on the no-fly list, or at least banned from that airline. And the police took her away, do she still have legal repercussions. Not to mention there are solid grounds for a personal lawsuit regarding violence and emotional distress.
But what personal outcome from the video getting out is appropriate, and what is excessive?
I would argue she really shouldn’t face any work sanctions unless it was a business trip.
But what if I’m some acquaintance who recognizes her? Am I unjustified in avoiding interacting with her because she displayed a nasty personality trait? Would I be justified telling people who ask why I don’t like her? Going off on a crusade to embarrass her and tell everyone about it? That’s probably excessive.
What level of “ask her her version of events before judging” should I partake?
A few years ago I saw a meme on Twitter, which I can’t find again. The gist was that there used to be a shared agreement to suppress extreme ideas - illustrated with a bell curve of opinions from left to right with a small section at each end shaded. But in the last few years that has changed. Now, amplified by social media, people are getting fired for a single racist joke or dumb action. People are getting penalised for opinions that are well within the Overton window, maybe even shared by the majority. And that’s why there was suddenly a fuss about cancel culture. When it was literal Nazis and NAMBLA members getting cancelled, virtually no one objected. When people started to get cancelled for dumb shit, and for normie conservative and even centrist opinions, many turned against it. Neither side should get to abuse their institutional power to force their political beliefs on an unwilling majority. No one should be allowed to short circuit debate on important issues by declaring any and all disagreement offensive, hateful, or bigoted. Those actions are what we can’t afford to tolerate, because it makes society less tolerant. But that’s what the left has been doing. And they’ve made liberal use of pejorative labels to do it.
So there are two issues with your example. These terms lack nuance: what specifically does ‘white supremacist’ mean here? And if it actually is as bad as it sounds, will you stick to only censoring the really extreme people, or will you use my agreement to legitimise censoring more and more reasonable opinions? Because if the choice is don’t censor the Nazis, or having to spend your life walking on eggshells lest some busybody take exception to a poorly phrased comment, I’m going with the former.
Pretty much all the cancel culture cases that made the news were for things not on this list. How many did you think were unreasonable, and object to at the time?
You still didn’t really answer the question. If you agree that, sometimes, in certain circumstances, it’s actually reasonable for a private citizen to say “hey that guy’s a Nazi, don’t go to his shop”, then the discussion is just about the details, not the overall philosophy.
Could you give some examples (not cites) of these poorly phrased comments?
I think it’s fine for a message board to ban certain topics. The problem arises when private actors have so much power they are effectively able to censor ideas (and this power can also be a problem for other reasons). Especially now we know the US government was leaning on social media companies to do their censorship for them.
I used to follow some usenet groups long ago, and I never saw this. There was a problem with conspiracy theorists posting, though.
That’s fine, I just wanted to make clear I wasn’t trying to catch anyone out.
As we can see, everyone thinks what they want to say or do is important enough that a small statistical probability of driving someone to suicide shouldn’t stop them. I believe people should be able to speak important and relevant truths, even if some find them offensive, and you assumedly believe people should be punished for saying things you find objectionable.
And those would be?
I don’t accept that, aside from a very, very few fringe examples, regular people are getting fired or otherwise “canceled” willy-nilly for extremely minor mistakes (like one off color joke). If this were true, then Trump would have lost overwhelmingly, Twitter would have sunk (along with Musk), there would be no successful right-wing influencers, Fox News would have crashed, etc., under the weight of a million cancelings.
@DemonTree, I think you’re just accepting the right-wing talking points uncritically and without real evidence. I don’t buy it. They’re very good at spreading ideas like these - which definitely helped Trump get elected - but that doesn’t make them true. It strikes me as very similar to the Tea Party backlash in 2010 - there was no actual substance, just lies and innuendo in reaction to the first Black president, and yet it helped the Republicans win big in 2010.
Hey, I’d vote for worker protections for you if I could. But I live in a country where you can’t be legally fired for bullshit reasons, but you can be fined for burning a Quran or jailed for putting up inflammatory stickers, and that informs my priorities.
Not even if he’s flying swastika flags and calling for the extermination of Jews and Blacks?
The Hawaiian shirts and the Nazi haircuts are a tell but
mostly it’s the speaking important and relevant truths, mostly.
So if someone is calling for the extermination of Jews and Blacks, then you’re okay with calling them a Nazi?
So that’s the difference, then; I think it’s okay to call Nazis Nazis. I’m not sure why anyone would think that’s wrong.
I disagree with both of those statements. Cancel culture is alive and well because of social media, which can condemn anyone at any time based only on rumours and innuendo, and can take on a life of its own if rumours are promulgated by well-known influencers.
The second statement is incorrect because movements like MeToo have been part of a tsunami of societal changes that have, for instance, made unwanted “flirting” directed against women socially unacceptable. Once regarded as natural “fun”, they can now be firing offenses. And I think that’s fine and the right kind of change, but what I find very disturbing about cancel culture is the lack of due process and the absence of recourse. Justifiable “consequences for actions” is only possible when there is due process.
In many cases it may be preferable to be charged with a crime than to be blackballed by social media, because in the former case at least you have the opportunity to defend yourself and be exonerated. The court of public opinion tends to be far less forgiving than actual courts. Look what happened to Woody Allen based on the flimsiest of evidence, or Chris Hardwick, who was able to salvage his reputation against cancel culture slurs from his ex-wife only because he was famous and influential and a powerful television network had faith in him.
It’s only fair, you haven’t really answered mine, either.
As I said, if you are going to use my agreement to justify a generally censorious society, with a narrowing band of ‘acceptable’ discourse, then I don’t agree. Since you have refused to articulate any kind of general principles for when it is okay to cancel someone and when not, and are either denying or excusing examples, I see no reason to believe this wouldn’t be the result if you had your way.
One principle, for example, is that it’s okay to make an exception in free speech laws for calls for violence. I’m also good with firing people for this.
And now I’ve stayed up far too late. I knew this would take more time to reply to than I had.
There’s no way to stop people from having opinions and sharing them. Social media just means it happens much, much faster than before.