Yesterday I Was Levi’s Brand President. I Quit So I Could Be Free
bariweiss.substack.com
bariweiss.substack.com
Based on that alone, beliefs totally aside, she was clearly unfit for the role.
In this case, there's a mob of people willing to demonize her and the company. Should mobs rule dominate company politics?
Should mobs rule? Probably not. Should a "Brand President" be capable of dealing with situations like this: absolutely. Should a CEO be capable of doing so? Yes.
It sounds like the obverse of this may be true: the roel was unfit for her because it did not allow her sufficient choice in how to manage the situation.
A brand manager for a major brand should be able to influence what policies the brand takes a position on and what policies it does not. It sounds like that has been the case to this point, but in this case one of two things happened: either the latitude that she was given in the position was curtailed, or it was the first time where her personal beliefs diverged from the positions of the rest of the company.
In the interest of exposing my own biases, I stopped financially supporting Levi’s in 2018 after their CEO publicly came out in support of additional, stricter gun laws: https://fortune.com/2018/09/04/levi-strauss-gun-violence-par...
Corporations have more than enough power already. We do not also need to allow them to dictate the political views of their employees.
> Based on that alone, beliefs totally aside, she was clearly unfit for the role.
Correct. The role does not fit anyone willing to speak out about issues when they see something wrong or have the integrity to refuse to recant their true beliefs to keep their job.
They don't.
“Views” of “employees" are different than “public activism” of “corporate officers”.
Non-competes used to be for high level executives. Now they are forced on people making sandwiches at Jimmy John's.
But it is sad that the company cowered to the demands to an online mob. Based on her description (which is obvious biased so take w/ a grain of salt), nothing she said is controversial. It's a reasonable disagreement on policy position.
If their policy was "don't talk about politics or policy at all" then that is one thing. But the policy really more like, "its okay unless some people on twitter are butthurt and now you have prostrate yourself as a racist" (at which point we'll fire you for being an admitted racist).
And I'm sure it won't end their headaches, as she'll probably go on Fox News routinely to shit talk Levi's for hating America.
Although it does not seem to work for journalism ironically. Any opinion article is seen as the opinion of the whole journal.
But I don't see her as unfit for the role. Sometimes you have to accept the things like they are and sometimes you have to take a stand. To generally criticise this behavior would be wrong as it would promote CEOs that are braggarts.
I also think this will damage the brand image and that is not because of the CEO.
Absolutely. This issue is bi-partisan and affects everyone.
"Conservatism" in modern US political parlance is just a bundle of beliefs. The two party system makes a false dichotomy, but that is not how the average person operates.
> It’s trapped trying to please the mob.
That is exactly what many people connect to DIE. It was predictable, it is about PR, it is dishonest and you don't want to work at a corporation that has such a position. Money well spend in my opinion.
At some point the brand will feel that, it is only a matter of time. It will not be the cool jeans it tries to be. It will be a compliant and fearful corporation that is dishonest in its self presentation.
"This time, I was called a racist—a strange accusation given that I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist."
The section set between - hyphens - is too long, so the before and after got separated in my mind. The result was reading the later part as: "I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist" which struck me as comically incorrect, so I had to back up to put it together correctly.
Pedantic, but: while you use hyphens here, the part quoted is actually set between dashes.
There's a global pandemic on. People are scared. The world doesn't know how to fix this.
This is the wrong approach to a topic that scares people and with good reason.
October 2020 -- not like it was April. Much of the country had at least some in-person schooling going on. It should have been at least discussable without saying she's racist and doesn't care if all the minority children die.
This doesn't sound like something a health society would want to embrace.
This woman publicly went against the establishment narrative, which is a dangerous play in modern America (see Joe Rogan e.g.).
Well, turns out, her views were generally CORRECT. She was right. The mob was wrong.
Or at least, her opinions were as valid as the rest of us, since we're watching in real time as the last two year's of covid hysteria are memory-holed now that they're deemed a political liability in the next election. IOW, "Trust the Science" has, therefore, been shown to have been mostly bullsh*t.
A healthy society would generally reward someone who was proven to be right, especially when they risked so much calling out that the emperor was naked.
But it seems like we've entered a period where, even if you're later proven to have been correct, the mere act of defying the mob, is enough to permanently cancel you. It is an unforgivable sin.
There’s an old saw about “you can be right, or you can be married.” Being right isn’t everything. Perceptions, relationships, and influence matters - and the higher you are in the career ladder, the most impact you have. You have to think about that impact with all the stakeholders in mind. It’s not just about you - it’s about your fellow employees and others who you influence, directly or indirectly (to the point of being able to put food on the table) by your actions.
Employers should not be allowed to control their employees speech, outside of their role of officially speaking for the company.
> There’s an old saw about “you can be right, or you can be married.”
If you are given your employment relationship the same value as your marriage, I think that's very sad.
Should schools be closed so firmly now that discussion of the subject is racist? At what point are people even allowed to discuss it?
The only person who has been bringing up racism is you. If you want to participate in a culture war by complaining about culture wars, go right ahead. If you want to discuss pandemic response, please join the conversation. Better yet, join the campaign to get people vaccinated. It will save lives and we can re-open more quickly.
The article directly addresses her being called racist for considering opening the schools. There are multiple paragraphs addressing this in the article.
> If you want to participate...
> If you want to discuss pandemic response
> Better yet, join the campaign to get people vaccinated
Thanks for telling me what I should do, without knowing what I've been doing.
> Thanks for telling me what I should do, without knowing what I've been doing.
I can't read your mind. So far it's all emotions and no content, so hopefully you have been doing something more than that.
Allowing a small number of people complaining on Twitter to silence opposing political views of people through pressuring their employer, is a stain on our culture and we need to find a way to change it.
I have started seeing people that camp out in these echo chambers as uncompassionate, immoral and fundamentally dangerous people. Dangerous in the sense that they’re toxic for a peaceful democracy.
The suppression is coming from "moderate" liberals. They're the ones who captured the ACLU when they suddenly got lots of money and grew and became the anti-Trump league. I'm not a Trumper, but he's much less of a threat to civil liberties than those moderate liberals.
In the same way the ACLU has flipped, perceptions of a simple left/right divide need to change. Old labels don't make sense.
Agree 100%. This is a bipartisan issue and our discourse is being dictated more and more by the political fringes.
There is no satisfying solution to stop this because of course we generally want businesses to be capable of responding to public pressure, though we might not always agree with the outrage or like the people it comes from.
Do we?
The public pressure generally comes from a small but very motivated minority, that rarely reflects the opinions of the broader population.
It may fit a narrow legal reading of the First Amendment, but that's not necessarily the same as the ideal of "Free Speech".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Of course that does not mean that companies don't violate the principle in favor of PR. But in a dialogue it is seen as a weakness and inability to discuss if you threaten consequences for an opinion. And rightly so.
Can we mandate masks in schools? No. Can we at least make a plan to improve ventilation? No. Can we improve contact tracing and testing? Also no.
None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t conform to your statements above. Surely I’m not alone.
I want to see schools opened.
I oppose state and federal mask mandates, but if a school wants to mandate them, that’s their business.
One of the big takeaways for me from COVID is that we should be doing more as a rule to consider airflow and ventilation in all public spaces. I’ve not gone to great lengths to validate my instinct with data, but I strongly suspect doing so would result in a significant decrease in the spread of many airborne illnesses. Schools should absolutely work to improve in this area.
I oppose mandatory contact tracing, but if an individual wants to opt in to one of the schemes, by all means go for it! I wouldn’t even be philosophically opposed to a scheme implemented and/or “blessed” by a government - as long as it’s opt-in.
> None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours.
Yeah, about that… we homeschool. Our children have never been enrolled in a government school, and they will never be - with the possible exception of is they decide they want to be and have a reasonable justification for it.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t have opinions about government policy.
Schools are a net good for most people that attend them. Closing them means that not only do those kids lose the opportunity to learn and develop social skills, but also that their parents’ lives are disrupted to the point where they are likely to be completely unable to provide for their families.
This doesn’t mean that it’s never appropriate to close them; it means that they shouldn’t be closed without very good reason, and that they should be re-opened as soon as possible.
In short, I want schools open because closing them demonstrably hurts people.