Since people are complaining about lack of good examples of “cancel culture”, whatever that may be, I think the example of someone like Emmanuel Cafferty seems to be pretty egregious.
Recap: allegedly someone goaded him to show the “OK” hand gesture, which got apparently got him fired, even though he had no idea it had been co-opted by racists. The article has other interesting cases too.
I find it funny that when a company fires a person to absolve themselves of whatever the person did or said, even if it turns out that wrong doing was BS, people are always defending the company and castigating “cancel culture” rather than the other way around. Why can’t we demand greater due diligence for companies firing people or sponsors walking away? Maybe the problem is not with cancel culture but pussyfooting corporations that don’t actually care about their employees or the people they sponsor. But that is just what corporations “are” and it would anathema to go against cherished capitalist dogma to strive for better accountability or responsibility in that domaine.
This is a really weird case. The company refuses to say anything except, “Trust us, it’s not just the hand gesture, there’s more to it than that.” The fired dude claims it was completely out of the blue. The guy that took the video deleted his account and says maybe he got wound up.
What the fuck was going on? If it weren’t for the company saying that there was something more, I’d be convinced that the video-taker was a 4chan asshole just fucking around. And that may still be the case, because I and this may be a shock don’t trust HR to tell me the unvarnished truth.
But that also means we only have one side of the story–the side of the guy who got fired. Was there something else going on as well?
Hell if I know.
But take him at his word: he got goaded into making a symbol that he didn’t know was white supremacist, and then an organized group got him fired. That’s not cancel culture. That’s 4chan shitbaggery, that’s a less-awful version of SWATting. And of course that’s terrible.
This, I absolutely agree with. Companies need to know that there are bad faith players out there who will try to manipulate them into hurting people. Companies need to show some goddamned spine, and they need to evaluate for themselves whether someone is really acting in a way that they don’t want to associate with that employee, or whether they’re being manipulated. Taking this Atlantic story at face value, his employer fucked up bad.
I dug into one of them, reading an article that’s not an opinion piece: it’s the guy whose food business was destroyed by a boycott after his daughter’s super racist posts were publicized.
The Atlantic article makes it sound like even though he fired his daughter, the SJWs destroyed him because of his daughter’s racism. It’s a little more complicated than that:
When someone says that they don’t recall using the n-word, I tend to be pretty skeptical. If it’s something where you just can’t remember if it happened or not, that suggests it’s something you might sometimes do.
Someone accuses me of dressing myself in a coat made of the skin of Dalmatians I killed, I’m not gonna say, “I don’t recall doing that.” I’m gonna call them a damn liar, because that’s not the kind of thing I do.
So, I dunno. A teenage daughter of a dude whose business you frequent spouts off racist shit and says her dad spouts off racist shit, and you stop going to his business? I’m not sure that’s super outrageous.
That’s the same argument made upthread about Ford and the Wright Brothers, and that was poo-pooed. Apparently being the first to do something does make you special.
I disagree. If the employee cannot be bothered to ensure they are on the right side of acceptable behavior then why put the onus on the employer to fully suss out the truth before taking action? If an employee engages in an action that has the potential to damage the companies image/reputation/bottom line/whatever, why should they care why the employee did what they did?
Can people try and set you up to take a fall? Yes. However, in my personal experience, it’s very difficult to screw someone over when they are clearly on the right side of acceptable behavior.
I have lived my entire life knowing that one significant mistake can and will change the entire course of my life and the only thing I can do about that is to simply not screw up too badly. It feels like the folks who are complaining about cancel culture all believe they are entitled to their jobs/wealth/fame/whatever and that they should be granted an infinite number of mulligans no matter the magnitude or frequency of their fuck ups.
You’re not being canceled. You’re being critiqued, criticized and found wanting.
As I said early on in this thread, that if the objective of this movement is for employers to think twice about firing someone for perceived optics, then I’d agree. That’s why I brought up Shirley Sherrod. That was a coordinated attack from the right for the specific purpose of disrupting left leaning government institutions. Her employers screwed the pooch, and fired her before all the details came out. Didn’t happen again. I’m sure that the Obama admin looked more carefully about reports of misconduct of employees after that.
This may be a similar story, but I have my doubts as to the details of it. According to the employee, there are roving gangs of trolls who will use road rage to goad random people into making “OK” signs and then try to get them fired. Not saying that I know that it is not true, but if it is true, that’s a far bigger worry than cancel culture.
See, we are trying to make the world a better place by calling out hate and bigotry when we see it. If we were convinced that doing so makes the world a worse place, then we would stop. that is the argument that has been presented here, and it is an argument that I have not found compelling.
If the trolls know that they are making the world a worse place, then they are overjoyed.
Do you think that Shirley Sherrod should have been fired, or do you think that the employer should have spent a bit of sussing to get to the truth of the matter?
If this utility worker’s story is true, then he should not have been fired. All we have heard is his side of the story though, so I don’t know for sure whether the company overreacted, or if it was in the right and just doesn’t want to air all the laundry. Could even be in his best interest. It is easier to get a new job if you can plausibly claim that it was a misunderstanding. If your previous employer has to publicize your disciplinary record in order to justify your firing, then it may be a bit harder.
A few years ago I had a weird thing happen: driving home, I pulled up at an exit ramp stoplight. A truck to my left had a bunch of dudes maybe in their late teens, early twenties in it. They were waving at me and grinning with these wide-eyed manic grins. I smiled back, waved, and turned away. A moment later they banged on their window to get my attention, and when I looked back, one of them slowly, still with an enormous grin, flipped me off.
As near as I can tell, they were just some douchebags out on the town douchebagging it up. But having that happen makes me find the “roving band of trolls” narrative not completely unlikely.
And Shirley Sherrod is a great example of how cancel culture actually works: conservatives misrepresent professionals in an attempt to get them fired.
Hell, it’s happening this week in North Carolina. A member of the State Board of Education made a reference that linked “white moderates” to the system of “white supremacy.” Based on that, our useless snivelling state superintendent sent every single public school employee an email with an open letter to the school board member. It demanded either his resignation or a public apology with an assurance he wouldn’t ever say anything like that again.
When right-wingers push back hard against this sort of vicious nonsense, maybe I’ll start believing they care about free speech. But stuff like this has been going on for at least a decade in North Carolina public education, and I’ve seen no sign yet of Republicans or conservatives offering even the gentlest criticism of it.
What do you think? Threats are wrong. AFAICT, other than threats, she got some criticism. Are you saying it was wrong to criticize her? Or something else? Not sure what you’re trying to say with this one.
If social bigotry is the norm, and bigots are never decent people… why do you support democracy again? Surely letting all those bigots vote is a terrible threat to minorities?
