Posted on 10/06/2015 6:08:12 AM PDT by Faith Presses On
Full title: Atlanta marketing company fires employee after viral selfie surfaces with racist comments about co-worker’s son
A former employee at an Atlanta-based marketing firm is at the center of a firestorm after a photo he posted of himself online with a colleague's black son unleashed a wave of racist bile from the man's friends and other Internet hatemongers.
Polaris Marketing Group employee Gerod Roth was fired after snapping a seemingly innocuous selfie alongside 3-year-old Cayden Jenkins and posting it to Facebook on Sept. 16, triggering an immediate torrent of hateful comments, including "I didn't know you were a slave owner" and "But Massuh, I dindu nuffin" while also calling the young boy "Kunta Kinte."
It was unclear what prompted the string of hateful jibes, but at some point Roth - who goes by the name Geris Hilton on Facebook - replied to a friend asking "Dude where the hell did you get a black kid??" by saying, "He was feral."
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Not at all.
All of our sins are sins against God, but as the Ten Commandments show, some of them are more directly against Him, and some more directly against other people. But that some sins are more directly against other people doesn’t make them gods in importance.
This man took a photo of someone else’s child and put it on the internet, without the parent’s permission or even her knowledge. Then when racist remarks were made about the child, he kept the photo rather than deleting it, and made a racist remark of his own. And much of what he said about the whole incident doesn’t logically add up, while he also calls himself a victim. He is someone who was fired because his boss couldn’t trust his judgment when dealing with other people in the course of his work.
From the question one might conclude that you believe that: posting a friend's child's picture on FB (w/o permission), keeping it posted after racist comments and then making racist comments himself was a smart thing to do?
Then why categorize as dumb? Why not categorize as wrong? What about the moral dimension?
Apparently, at least one too many.Was it wrong for him to post a pic of a kid without mom's permission? Yes.Too many people are idiots with social media. In this case, I would guess one of his FaceBook "friends" was a lefty who decided to screw him.
Stay off facebook. Or at least, post with the viewpoint that anything you post WILL be seen by a humorless HR person at your job
Do I think he should be made unemployable as a result? No, but that's what happened. Hence my comment that people should stay the hell off of Facebook and Twitter, as it's too easy to say or do something that will be very damaging to your future employment prospects. The Internet never forgets.
Am I interested in hearing further from you, trying to convince me that what he did was so horrible that he should be forever shunned by mankind? No.
And Facebook seems to be a prime carrier.
It’s all right for someone to say that they don’t want to talk about something anymore, if they don’t say anything more themselves. But if someone does say more, then they shouldn’t say they don’t want to hear anymore. This is especially true when someone is on a discussion board voluntarily.
On what you wrote this time, I intended to go back to your original post, too:
—Apparently, at least one too many.
Too many people are idiots with social media. In this case, I would guess one of his FaceBook “friends” was a lefty who decided to screw him.
—Stay off facebook. Or at least, post with the viewpoint that anything you post WILL be seen by a humorless HR person at your job.
Yes, you talked about staying off Facebook. What you are still leaving out now are the parts about “one of his FaceBook “friends” was a lefty who decided to screw him,” and “... anything you post WILL be seen by a humorless HR person at your job.”
So, according to you, he was victimized by a false friend, a leftist.
And second, he was victimized by the “humorless HR person,” if not an actual person, then that “humorless HR person” mentality.
Did you read his “apology” that I linked to, and posted. Here’s the link again since it was apparently removed:
http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/30427294-story
On his friends:
“It may be too soon, but I did just want to let you know this entire fiasco has been created due to the people that I called friends and their harsh words online, I was let go from both of my positions of work, and now have a tarnished name and reputation due to the actions of the individuals that were commenting on that picture as well as the people who decided to make fake profiles to help instigate the situation even further into a disaster.”
So he didn’t do anything. It was all the fault of his friends, if anyone was at fault. He was just a victim throughout, with no responsibility of his own.
And this from his “apology,” too:
“ Since it was the first photo that I came across where my girlfriend and I were not present together I decided to make it my profile picture because it was adorable. However after a period of inactivity on Facebook I came back only to realize that many members of my network on my friends list were spreading hate and being disgusting in their actions, to which I instantly removed them from my friends list.”
This post was up for days, with almost a hundred comments, hundreds of likes and thousands of shares. The “period of inactivity” comment makes it seem like he was unaware for quite awhile what was going on, but he himself left his “feral” comment in reply to others on the very same day he posted the picture. He never mentions the possibility of him just deleting the whole photo, with the comments, at any time. He conveniently leaves out all mention of that.
I will say this. I had read his “apology” earlier yesterday but forgot to include much consideration of it in my last reply to you.
So, if there is some truth, as he says in his “apology,” to his claim that he took the picture sometime prior to when he posted it, when his co-worker was in a meeting and he was watching the boy, then perhaps he could have thought it was all right to take a picture of him.
But there are some big “ifs” to that. Everything else he’s said he seems to twist into a statement that he believes will help. They’re rationalizations. As someone who is 25 and in marketing, he might think that he can stretch the truth like that, if it’s convenient to him.
So if this is somewhat true that he watched the boy for awhile, and he thought it was all right to take his picture, then the proper thing to do would be to have shared the photo with the boy’s mother. He mentions being a parent himself, so he should know that. I have a picture of myself starting kindergarten, I believe, because a neighbor took the photo. She took it to share with my parents and I.
But suppose he somehow made a mistake on that. That doesn’t excuse taking the step of putting the boy’s picture up on Facebook. It was his profile picture, which is public, for anyone to see. It’s a reasonable expectation, with most people having cell phones today, that acquaintances just won’t be snapping pictures of other people’s children and putting them on the internet.
And then he allowed all those racist comments directed at the boy to remain. He didn’t have to. He could have simply deleted the photo, as I’ve said. And he made one of the comments himself, and his explanation for that is not convincing.
“Am I interested in hearing further from you, trying to convince me that what he did was so horrible that he should be forever shunned by mankind? No.”
Although I could be wrong, from what I’ve seen, if it wouldn’t have been this incident, it would have been something else with this young man, at least at this point in his life. And that is a straw man argument to say that I’m arguing that he “should be forever shunned by mankind.” I’m arguing no such thing, and I don’t believe that he can’t overcome this incident and the consequences he’s brought on himself. He’s just made things a lot harder for himself, especially in the immediate future. But he broke a trust, and as I replied to you or someone else, I don’t recall, he wasn’t trustworthy to his employer, who needs to know that he can be trusted to act sensibly in how he deals with other people. And where he really went from just possibly making mistakes to using poor and unethical judgment was to not remove that photo the minute he saw that it was getting racist comments. But they apparently amused him and he probably thought no one would ever know, outside of his circle of friends. So he didn’t do what was right, and took a risk. And now he’s paying for it.
Do I consider being rude and upsetting to be an offense so bad that I wish him to be unemployed (and potentially unemployable due to the Internet never forgetting)? No.
That's all I have to say.
It wasn’t just that he was rude and upsetting. He showed very poor judgment over and over, including after the whole matter came to light. Considering he created this situation where there was none, what can his employer expect when (not if) he encounters more difficult situations and people in the course of his job? In his email “apology,” he makes mention of being involved in interviewing the co-worker for her job. So, he also had advanced to a certain level of responsibility in this company, responsibility which this incident shows he can’t handle.
And he allowed the racist comments to remain, and added one himself, I believe. On racial matters, the Bible is the standard for me, and his remarks and the remarks he apparently tolerated and approved of were wrong. When the Trayvon Martin shooting happened, I didn’t happen to be working then, and I spent a great amount of time online for months arguing against the media’s completely unjust rush to judgment, if it could be called that, since it was even worse than that. It was more like a kangaroo court prosecution of Zimmerman by the media, with President Obama and some other Democrats also involved. But in this case, which is a firing, not a criminal prosecution, I believe what he did merited the consequences. And I also don’t believe he will be unemployable, even with the internet “never forgetting.” He knew the perils of the internet, though. In his “apology,” he claims he changed his profile picture because the previous one of himself included his girlfriend, and she was going through a final interview for a job and wanted her social media presence scrubbed for the time being.
OK. Still don’t think the offense merited what’s going to be happening to him.
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