I just watched the video in this article. A lady is recorded making vile statements about Muslims and Obama. What’s worse is that she was directing her hatred towards a person who let her cut in line.
Not gonna lie–I hope this woman catches some shit. I hope she gets fired from her job. I hope her friends ghost her. I hope she gets the cold shoulder at PTA meetings. I hope people point and laugh at her. Not forever. But for at least a few months, though a year or two would be great. I don’t believe in karma, but I do think there should be consequences for shitty behavior. She’s entitled to as many shitty opinions as she wants. But I believe once she started spouted off in public, in front of a camera, she gave everyone permission to judge her and thus act on those judgments.
But I know there are probably people who think she should be left alone.
My question:
Do you think spreading videos like this around one does anything to deter ignorance and bigotry? Or does it just inflame tensions?
If it helps at all it is worth it. We will never rid the world of bigots but we can certainly make them less relevant. They deserve shaming and some will hopefully see themselves but I doubt it.
I think that the public shaming that some people are getting on the internet lately can be out of proportion to the misbehavior. People are losing their jobs and having their lives threatened for something that in the past might have passed without note.
Look, for instance, at the case of Justine Sacco. She was a marketing exec at IAC who tweeted before a flight to South Africa, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Of course she lost her job and became the target of the week for the sort of people who like to rant about others.
Here is an article by Jon Ronson about this sort of thing, and here is the book on which the article is based.
Do you remember reading The Scarlet Letter in school and thinking how backwards those people must have been? Isn’t this the same thing?
Seems like a great way to increase bigotry and racism. When you rob someone the ability to change their way and grow as a person it’s hard to bring them over to your side. Let’s take for example racism. If everyone who had been racist in the 50s had their story told for all time then it would have hardened them against change since what’s the point, no matter how much change you go through no one will ever care because they judged you already for all time.
Seeing as how she worked in PR, I think she deserved everything she got. It’s not that her attempt at humor simply failed. It’s that it was blatantly offensive, and joined by other offensive tweets. It was like she was begging for someone to fire her ass.
No, it’s not the same thing. They aren’t even in the same universe. For the analogy to be even halfway apt, the lady in the video would be going to prison. We’re talking about someone who will be laughed at and ridiculed, whose employment may be at risk. But it will eventually blow over. Hester Prynee had to wear her scarlet letter for the rest of her life. People in her society weren’t given a chance to forgive and forget. (Not to mention, Hester’s crime was victimless. She didn’t deserve shaming in the first place. But Trader Joe’s Lady does. At the barest minimum, she was being undeniably rude to the person recording the video.)
People used to get a social pass on all kinds of shitty things. Sixty years ago, the lady in the OP could have shouted her venom on a bullhorn and been greeted with thunderous applause. And? The past was the past, today is today. Today, we have a diverse society. We all need to get along with each other. We need unity, solidarity. It is in society’s best interest for everyone to stand up against those who wish to sow discord and divisiveness. As long as laws aren’t broken, I’m all for people doing whatever it takes to make bigots have second thoughts before spreading their toxicity to others.
In the first case, it was a joke although admittedly one in poor taste. Black Africans really do have a serious AIDS problem exacerbated by many different types of horrible social problems including child rape that are not caused by any white American. Blacklisting a single white American woman is not going to change that. She shouldn’t have sent that but, then again, I probably shouldn’t have told all of those Space Shuttle Challenger jokes back in the day as well. Glass houses and rocks and all that.
There was also Tim Hunt, the Nobel Prize winning biochemist who lost his job because he made a comment about women that would only be offensive if you were a true Victorian with a fainting couch handy in case anyone caught the vapors.
The Scarlet Letter analogy is a very good one. Once you are branded as racist, sexist or anything else, there is no way out of it. That is not the way to get people to improve their behavior because everyone makes mistakes. I am dead serious when I say that is the reason that Trump won the presidency. When you call people “deplorable”, they will respond to it often by doubling down.
Identity politics is dead as it should be. Just act like an adult and take things as they come. Not every perceived slight should result in schizophrenic, leftist mob response.
Try it in person to see how it works. There are real people behind the keyboards and most of them react just as predictably online as they do in person. It doesn’t work at all. It just pisses people off and causes them to polarize even more for even the most trivial matters.
i dont know how to reply to this. . .if someone is not doing something because they’re afraid of ridicule what is this really doing to that person? most likely fostering resent and alienation, to quote that psychol today article i linked
it seems to me it is making things worse in the long run.
General case? Someone being brave enough to stand up publicly, in the moment, and state that such behavior, that that “joke”, is unacceptable and not funny, to someone’s face, not knowing how the crowd feels? That is a good thing. And a hard thing to do. Scary to not stay the quiet bystander. But that is how we most effectively fight these sorts of behaviors.
This idea of let’s, as a big group, put their head on a pike as a message to others? Get them fired, harassed in email, social media, and if they dare to go in public. Make them rue the day. That’s waving a team flag as our crowd stones a captured enemy. It feels good to be part of the mob doing that (“I’m one of the Good Guys! I’m us! I hate haters! Yea me!”) but it is, in the general case anyway … not a good thing.
Agreed with QtM it can often result in extreme and disproportionate responses.
The specific link in the op? Yeah, I do wonder if that specific woman is mentally ill.
For those who answered in the negative in general: what do you think should have been done in a case like the OP example, where someone willingly does this in public, knowing that she’s got a high chance of being recorded? What about in cases where all the “shaming” is is sharing something publicly posted on social media? Sure, there’s the PR woman example above, but we all know that plenty of people share undeniably racist and fascist opinions online all the time, sometimes even politicians.
I guess it’s a matter of degrees, because I’m sure a lot of the opinions would be different if the case in question was a sitting House representative posting “I think we need to deport all Muslims from this country immediately” on Facebook. It’s just a matter of where you draw the line. The default assumption so far seems to be “what if the behavior being shamed isn’t bad enough?” I’m not 100% sure that’s the question to ask.
I wouldn’t support shaming someone who disagrees with me about, say, whether school lunches should be designed to provide adequate nutrition rather solely catering to children’s tastebuds. Personally, I think the person who espouses the latter view is stupid. But I wouldn’t call them stupid to their face. And I wouldn’t think their stupidity merited shaming, since they haven’t breached social etiquette or said anything that’s insulting or offensive.
But once a person starts going out in public loudly broadcasting their stupidity, then yes, I’m all for them being shamed. No one is entitled to a judgment-free existence. If a person wants a nice, peaceful life, then they shouldn’t be mean and hateful to others–especially when those others are equipped with recording equipment.
I’m curious if you think Daddyofive deserves all the public ridicule he’s received. I admit, at first I thought the outrage was a bit overwrought, but then I realized that by shaming this guy and his wife, society is putting copycats on notice. We don’t need other jerkwads exploiting their children for a few bucks, damned the consequences. Shaming, of course, can go too far. But it has a useful role in establishing basic decorum and policing obnoxiousness that isn’t against the law.
Bigotry will always be around. But I fail to see what the value is in allowing it–in a social sense, not legal sense–to be flagrant. Muslims and anyone else should be able to patronize grocery stores without people giving them a hard time. So yes, I’m all for shaming someone who doesn’t understand something as basic as this.
I don’t care about the feelings of people who are bigoted. They don’t care about my feelings, so why should I care about theirs?
Most people don’t seem to have a problem shaming people for littering or spanking their kids in public. I don’t know why need to treat bigots with more respect than any other obnoxious person.