“Maybe I’m Naive, or an Incurable Socialist”
By 
This is the dumbest goddamn thing I’ve ever read.
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.
Wilsey’s is just the latest high-profile tale of an American who lost her job on account of a viral video. The racism she’s accused of is not debatable. In the TikTok video that circulated last week, Wilsey, a 43-year-old white woman, hurled a racist epithet at her customers and declared, “I am racist, and I’ll say it to the whole entire world.” She gestured to her crotch and added: “Suck it!”
According to the Somali couple, before the camera started rolling, Wilsey had called the woman’s hijab a “witchcraft bandana.” Wilsey alleges that the couple had been harassing her, but she has not provided any details to substantiate that claim.
When I saw the video, I naturally sympathized with the Somali couple. The slurs came at a time when Somali Americans are being persistently targeted in racist attacks from the right, including by President Donald Trump himself. And yet, as repugnant as Wilsey’s behavior was, I couldn’t help but consider that she was a single mother whose wages helped feed a child.
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.
The author goes on to note that he doesn’t believe that workers should be guaranteed employment for life… but also doesn’t think they should be fired for a single racist transgression, without bothering to note the intervening point that refraining from launching racist screeds against customers is in fact one of the core duties of a Cinnabon customer service representative.
Leave it to the Atlantic to troll progressives by finding the world’s stupidest self-identified socialist.