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 ...
The guy really was fired for being an idiot.
How so?
I was with the guy until this comment. I didn't think he should be held responsible for other people's racism...then he joined in. I still don't think folks should lose their jobs over what they privately post on social media. I just think this guy's a first class creep for that comment about a little boy.
Just posting a photo of someone else’s child on your Facebook page without permission is wrong. Maybe if you’re in a public place and there are children a distance a way, that’s one thing. Many times, though, when people are closer, they can see someone is about to take a photo and get themselves and their children out of the way if they don’t want to be photographed. But this? That’s just wrong to begin with.
I have a lot of friends on FB but they never post stupid stuff like this.
I agree, but that would be a matter for the parents to sort out. Not a firing offense in my opinion unless he used company resources to post the pic or posted it to a company page.
If liberals can blame “guns” and “SUV” for killing people..how soon before they blame “Facebook” for killing careers?
It seems more wrong than stupid. His photo got a lot of comments and likes. I’ll have to see if I can the screenshot photo I saw of that. And he says now he’s a victim, too, and had no racist intentions, even though after the first few comments he could have simply deleted the photo. That was within his power on his own Facebook page.
at least as of now, it’s not illegal to be a jackass or a racist. I would think that he has grounds to seek damages from the employer. I may not want to be friends with this guy, but his rights were just violated and he was financially harmed at the same time. the only real exceptions are public officials/cops, etc who are expected to be full time representatives of their employer
There is very little that is private about social media.
He posted a picture he took of a co-worker’s child without her permission and proceeded to write and encourage insults about the child. Would you want to work with that guy?
I’m not sure if it’s a firing offense or not, but I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility without hearing more. It’s one thing to include an adult without someone’s permission. A comparable example would be to include a co-worker or perhaps a co-workers spouse visiting the offense on your Facebook page without their knowledge that a picture was taken. If someone found that out, that a co-worker had done that, you could be displeased if you’re not a close friend of that co-worker. It depends on the relationship between the two people perhaps. And it’s definitely something that a boss might have to say something to an employee about. But having so little regard for a co-worker AND the co-worker’s child by taking a close-up picture of a child without the parent’s permission and putting it on Facebook? It sounds like a potential firing offense to me. And the rest of the story confirms his conduct. He kept the picture up despite the comments of friends, when it was simply in his power to remove it, if he had no racist intent, as he claims. And as he is quoted here saying, he feels he is a victim also. But again, he could have just removed the photo once it got racist remarks. That shows, to me, that he got the remarks that he wanted from taking the photo in the first place. It’s very clear that he took the photo with the boy deliberately in the shot, and apparently then he put it on Facebook as his profile picture, no less, expecting to get such a reaction from his friends.
Well, the picture was taken at work. The child’s mother had him in the office. Why pick on a three year old child?
The stupid virus is alive and well and continues to spread.
Was he fired for illegal activity? Is that the only reason a person can or should be fired?
How was it stupid, rather than just plain wrong for him to do this?
Once we start looking the other way because the we don't approve of the guy who got fired and he's not the kind of guy we'd want to work with, it won't be long before guys we like who share our opinions and persuations start getting fired for saying what we believe. How long before we start reading about people losing their jobs because of support for Traditional Marriage, for instance?
PR and Marketing firms might be especially sensitive about anything that reflects badly on them. On the other hand he didn’t use his real name on his Facebook page, so how many people were aware it was him?
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