Yup, that’s part of the “conservative mythology of wokeness”, seeing it as some kind of loony socialistic sorcery that can summon up “mobs” after the fashion of the Magician’s Apprentice but then can’t “control” them.
Nobody is actually playing such games. People are voluntarily complaining about and protesting things that seem to them reprehensible. And because of the amplifying nature of modern social media, such complaints and protests can snowball. That can happen to anybody, liberals as well as conservatives, when something negative comes out about them (see also: Gov. Cuomo). Nobody imagines that they can or should “control” it.
But that’s the thing. You said them in private. Not on Twitter, which is public. The people who get fired are people who say these things in public under their real names, and then never bothered to go back and remove it.
The same comment you might have said in private and learned from takes on a different dimension if you were willing to own that comment in public. There’s this idea that, in that case, you should have either deleted it (when possible) or publicly repudiated it.
Finally, there’s just the idea that maybe we should be teaching people not to say or do these things in the first place. The best way not to have something come back and bite you is to never do it in the first place. Seeing these other people face consequences may help with that.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for forgiveness and such. But I think the dynamics here of there being public consequences for public actions that have not previously been repudiated makes sense.
But nobody is saying that it’s okay for anybody to spy on what you say in private and try to use it against you. What people are getting fired or “canceled” for nowadays is criticism of remarks that they made in public online forums that are potentially accessible to the whole world.
Yes, people have to learn not to say their regrettable shit in public. I really don’t think that’s too much to ask, especially for public figures.
If we’re talking about a 37-year-old and not a 17-year-old, I’m less sympathetic to someone ranting on twitter or FB. But Christ, we’re digging up shit that was said when she was 17, and that was in 2011.
I still say it needs to be confronted: people need to have her on the record disavowing these comments, but once she does that, put her in some kind of ‘therapy’ and be done with it.
One problem - not the only one, not the biggest one, but one nevertheless - with racial issues is that we treat racism with symbolic overtures; we don’t actually really do much in the way of constructive problem solving.
Okay, so someone records me saying an offensive joke at a “private” party, posts it on twitter, and now it’s not so private anymore. What’s the distinction? Not defending whatever I’ve said in the past, but making a point (I think)
As an undergraduate, I took an Anthropology of Food course and I wrote my paper about the raw foodist movement and that’s where I first became acquainted with David Wolfe. I thought he was a douche bag then and I can’t believe I’m still hearing about him after so many years.
IIRC, and I do, someones already on record opposing the Democratic Party becoming the anti-racist party.
Wouldn’t want to alienate that part of the electorate don’t you know.
BTW, that person doesn’t have eight arms.
Is that really such a high bar to clear? I mean, personally, I didn’t make bigoted remarks against gay or Asian people in public or private when I was 17, and that was in fucking 1981.
It’s not at all obvious to me that 2011 is too early to expect even 17-year-olds not to make homophobic or anti-Asian remarks on publicly accessible online forums.
I don’t know the legality specifics of recording a fellow guest at a party, but “at a party” = “in public” as far as I’m concerned.
And the point is not that we should be telling people “hey, if you want to be offensive in private that’s just fine, we won’t hold it against you!” The point is simply that people should have a reasonable expectation of not being spied on by snoops trying to discredit them when they’re truly in private, where it’s nobody else’s business what they’re doing or saying.
But that expectation is not always fulfilled, and when that happens, it’s not reasonable to expect the public to pretend not to notice things that are now public knowledge. To take an extreme example: You might enjoy making offensive remarks in the company of your wife in otherwise complete privacy, and then your wife might decide to leave you and tell the world all the circumstantial and credible details of your offensive remarks. You don’t get to declare that the public’s not allowed to take any notice of those revelations because at the time you thought you were speaking in private.
In other words, you were an offensive bigot and thought you were keeping it sufficiently quiet, and now it’s come out against your will, and the public knows you’re an offensive bigot. Tough luck on you, especially since a lot of other people are as bad or worse in private and don’t get found out.
But the public’s not obligated to refrain from criticizing your offensive bigotry because of your (ex)wife’s betrayal of your reasonable expectation of privacy.
The real problem still stands. Her (and Anna Wintour’s and other’s) first reaction back in 2019 was more or less to try sweeping this under the rug. And that started to be the reaction in 2021 until money got involved. No, that’s not the ideal way it could have gone down.
Is there room for improvement on how we deal with issues on race in our society? Absolutely
Does that mean the “solution” is to basically not to do anything because anything less than a perfect solution has too many performative aspects? Fuck no
The hypothetical is also weak sauce. These are not ‘private’ remarks somebody else posted. There’s no need to come up with some alternate hypothetical situation somebody might agree with. Many of us (or at least I hope many of us) who were 17 well before 2011 knew better to say these kinds of things in public or at all. It’s a low fucking bar. So low that a less objectionable standard has to be presented to even defend what happened.
The polite way of phrasing my reaction to that is that it is disappointing somebody would attempt that sort of sophistry. By which I mean it’s a disgusting and cowardly argument.
That’s a reasonable argument, and businesses are certainly entitled to formulate policies of compromise in their reactions to public complaints. In fact, that already happens all the time, it’s just that the anti-“wokeness” whiners ignore it because it would undercut their narratives of oh noes the woke mobs are terrorizing the poor companies.
For example, as discussed in several places round these boards, there have been various complaints on the internet for the past several years back-and-forthing about racism in the work of Dr. Seuss. In response, Dr. Seuss Enterprises didn’t just throw up its hands and apologize for ever publishing any Dr. Seuss book and go out of business, the way the “tyranny of the woke mobs” mythology would suggest.
Instead, the route they took was the eminently reasonable compromise of announcing the removal of a few of the most problematic Dr. Seuss children’s books from their publication list, and continuing to publish (and make buckets of money from) all the rest.
That’s great and all but when telling time and addition are oppressive elements of the white supremacy patriarchy it’s hard to take any claims from the goofy woke seriously.
I would expect there to be possible consequences in the months and years that follow, not for the rest of their fucking lives. Shit, murderers and drug traffickers get paroled after as little as five years and sometimes even rejoin the workforce and make something of themselves. A person shouldn’t be defined at 27 for what she said when she was 17.
I think circumstances matter. If someone recorded a racist rant in “private”, shared it with friends, and it somehow went viral, well, tough shit - be less racist, maybe.
I know few people who’ve never said something that couldn’t be turned into cringe under the wrong circumstances. I can think of very non-racist people of both genders, of multiple ethnic backgrounds, who’ve said “jokes” or made “comments” that some might take offense to.
I don’t see any way in which McCammond can be reasonably described as “being defined” by this public controversy. Her nascent position as editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue has been rescinded on account of it, sure. But plenty of other people have lost a job due to similar controversies and gone on to continued successful careers, and it seems very likely that McCammond will as well.
Has it occurred to you that Teen Vogue has as its primary target audience very liberal and socially conscious young women in precisely the same age category that McCammond was in when she made those bigoted tweets? Saying that Teen Vogue readers should simply give a pass to the magazine’s new editor-in-chief for making racist tweets at age 17 is both condescending and unrealistic.
Why shouldn’t the readership expect to hold an editor to the same ethical standards that they consider applicable to themselves? Why should teenage anti-racism be considered too much to ask in the editor-in-chief of a publication marketed primarily to teenage anti-racists?