“I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: ‘The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough.”
“Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”
“That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”
Thanks for sharing that, this is the first time I've seen this quote.
I think most adults feel the same way about social media activism, but they probably don't think it's worth their time to call it out even if it annoys them. You would just be begging the social media mob to turn on you next.
Wow never read that. Reminds me of “he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her”. Then we had the crusades. Seems like this is history repeating itself.
There's an important conversation to be had over how activism should operate, in which areas, about what's effective, what turns people off and leaves them hostile, and what measures are justified on what issues, versus what measures are completely disproportionate.
That said, this person stood up for their principles (rightly or wrongly) and lost their job because of it. Your quotation about people "casting stones" in a cavalier way, just to feel good about themselves without it actually risking them anything probably describes a lot of online "woke" flamewars but (to me) doesn't very well characterize what happened here.
I think there's a difference between "standing up for your principles" and "bullying".
The fired employee didn't make a political statement about what they believe - They harassed someone else's private choice, and then pressured them to publicly cow to his political will through social media.
As if anyone who doesn't publicly virtue signal with the movement is also the enemy.
"Your either with us or against us" -- Famously said by Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, George W Bush, and Recep Erdoğan. What wonderful company he's keeping.
It was malicious and ugly. ...and its becoming more commonly accepted on social media.
"He stood up for his principles" is an incorrect abstraction of what happened.
Huge difference between "I'm waving the BLM flag because I believe in it." vs "Hey look everyone, Pryce refused wave the same flag as I do, get the pitchforks!"
The other developer, for all we know, could be in total agreement with BLM!
> "He stood up for his principles" is an incorrect abstraction of what happened.
Absolutely, my phrasing here actually reductive to the point where it doesn't tell us whether he had moral standing to do so - (and that's by design; I actually don't know enough from this article, or others to know whether I agree with his behaviour or not, so I haven't weighed in on that). I'd agree that "standing up for their principles" describes segregationists too- i don't think it tells us who has the right side of an issue.
Whether Dail is right or wrong here is actually irrelevant to my critique above: my intended point was supposed to be:
that the comparison between this person (whose activism at their workplace cost them their job), versus Obama's critique (of people issuing issuing barely-thought-through rebukes online that they aren't invested in), is a pretty unhelpful comparison.
People asserting changes to what is or isn't acceptable in their workplace are absolutely risking blowback for it, and I maintain that's not remotely the same thing as the online brigading / mob justice / cancel-culture conducted by people who can often be trigger-happy as they stand to face no adverse consequences if their critiques are rejected.
I apologise if my phrasing above made this less than clear. It looks to have been interpreted as clearly siding with Dail's position on matters.
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EDIT: Your choice of example is also interesting though: "Hey look everyone, Pryce refused wave the same flag as I do, get the pitchforks!" is a clever choice on a BLM-related issue; as regardless of what happens in Dails case, it actually quite well characterizes the President's position (and his support bases position) on kneeling in the NFL -and now other sports-, to the point where he has called for the firing of people who refuse to stand for the anthem (and/or) flag.
“Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”
“That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”
- Barack Obama
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-ca...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM