Why the Cinnabon Story Doesn’t Make Me Happy: The left should be promoting working-class solidarity, not delighting in seeing workers dismissed

[RamsayBolton]

Why the Cinnabon Story Doesn’t Make Me Happy

The left should be promoting working-class solidarity, not delighting in seeing workers summarily dismissed.

www.theatlantic.com

Crystal Wilsey, a cashier at a Cinnabon franchise in Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin, said some unforgivable things to a Somali couple who had the temerity to request more caramel on a pecan cinnamon roll. But I don’t think she should have been summarily fired.

Cinnabon was quick to terminate Wilsey’s employment and declare that her actions didn’t reflect the “values of Cinnabon.” Progressives who abhor racism may applaud this move. But as a socialist, I can’t easily take the side of a billion-dollar corporation over that of an ordinary worker. (Cinnabon is owned by the Georgia-based conglomerate GoTo Foods, which also owns Auntie Anne’s, Schlotzsky’s, and many other brands popular in the South.)

Sure, Wilsey might not be a great fit for a customer-facing position. Her critics online also point to her long rap sheet, which includes charges of child endangerment, disorderly conduct, marijuana possession, and driving while intoxicated. We should nevertheless resist the urge to tell a simple moral story that celebrates someone losing their livelihood. That job at the shopping mall may be the bare minimum she needs to support herself.

Those of us on the left should be fighting to improve protections for workers of all races, and thereby for the betterment of people’s material conditions regardless of their views. Progressives should not write off any segment of the working class as beyond the pale. We should instead sow working-class solidarity as an antidote to the racial divisions the right cynically promotes.
Maybe I’m naive, or an incurable socialist. But I’d like to think that even if a worker is racist to my face, I’ll never ask for their dismissal. I’ll try instead to appeal to our common interest in improving the conditions of our lives.

 

[RamsayBolton]

By Arash Azizi

 

[Cloutius Maximus]

couldn't you use the same argument for Sherrone Moore? He's working class too, he just had a higher salary. I stand with Sherrone, not a University football program that pulls in 140 million a year.

 

[Jimmy from Linkedin]

Fortunately this guy is getting cooked for this dumb opinion.

 

[Scustin Bieburr]

This has to be satire. If it isnt, raise your head if you are a writer and recognize that you've been too hard on yourself. Submit that draft you've been scared to send. If someone with a room temperature IQ and a brain with as many grooves on it as an ice-rink like this "author" can get paid to write, so can you.


And on the off chance youre someone who doesn't know why this person is getting absolutely flamed:

Anti-racism is a central component of actual leftist theory and practice. Leftists understand that race and racism are tools used by the capitalist class to maintain division among and control of the working class. If you are arguing that a racist is entitled to a job, you are out of touch with socialist theory and you are not someone that should be taken seriously. Racism is a fundamentally anti-social, divisive ideology and a direct barrier to achieving worker solidarity and control of the means of production.

 

[acri1]

couldn't you use the same argument for Sherrone Moore? He's working class too, he just had a higher salary. I stand with Sherrone, not a University football program that pulls in 140 million a year.

When people say "working class" they're really just talking about trying to appeal to broke racist white people.

 

[Wargames]

This the definition of “was anyone black in the room?” Cause someone black should have told the writer he’s out of his fukking mind trying to argue this

 

[LadyJ2]

Th writer and that ugly ass white bytch can hold hands while jumping off a cliff!

 

[Rekkapryde]

This the definition of “was anyone black in the room?” Cause someone black should have told the writer he’s out of his fukking mind trying to argue this

these Apu's are getting out of hand with their c00nin for crackaz.

 

[num123]

This the definition of “was anyone black in the room?” Cause someone black should have told the writer he’s out of his fukking mind trying to argue this

If you need someone in a room to tell you what you are about to do is retarded, then you are retarded and eventually it will catch up to you.

"Oh, trying to make a racist bytch getting fired a worker solidarity story was stupid? Damn, i did not know that."

 

[Adeptus Astartes]

The 'anti woke' Leftists don't give a shyt about racism, especially racism against those of African descent.

The general attitude of thinking members of the party has been this: We must not turn aside from the great objects of Socialism to take up this issue of the American Negro; let the question wait; when the objects of Socialism are achieved, this problem will be settled along with other problems.

-W.E.B DuBois

 

[Pull Up the Roots]

What a stupid fukking article. People like her value their place in the racial hierarchy over any notion of working-class solidarity. And honestly, people like the author are also a barrier to building class solidarity across racial lines, because they center the discomfort of white workers while treating everyone else's experience as negotiable. I don't want to say it, but this is a class-reductionist take.

Treating racist harm as a secondary inconvenience, something we are just supposed to grin and bear for the supposed greater good of "the working class," actually undermines their calls for solidarity. I'm sick of people demanding we subsidize our dignity for someone else's livelihood. You can't ignore how race and class intersect, even at the lowest levels of the "structure of power."

 

[EBK String]

The left isn’t a friend of the black man either, don’t be fooled.

 

[Wargames]

If you need someone in a room to tell you what you are about to do is retarded, then you are retarded and eventually it will catch up to you.

"Oh, trying to make a racist bytch getting fired a worker solidarity story was stupid? Damn, i did not know that."

Bro most of America is stupid as shyt. The black person in the decision room is usually the smartest person there, unless they got in for being a c00n. I can 100% see an editor ok’ing this thinking it’s a different POV and a black person would have told them shut the fukk up, the bytch was getting fired regardless. There is no way Cinnabon could not fire her and not avoid a PR nightmare and lawsuits. Now we all looking at the Atlantic like “are they racists?” cause they let that idiot publish this story.

 

[Richard Glidewell]

Pure mental illness........