They just keep coming in like ocean waves.
Reports continue to surface about people in key leadership positions who express unpopular and sometimes deplorable opinions.
Our culture has spoken, and it will no longer accept such behavior.
When Mozilla promoted JavaScript creator Brendan Eich to CEO, a controversy that first surfaced in 2012 quickly reemerged.
So quickly, in fact, that he served as CEO for only 11 days.
Eich, who may otherwise have been good at his job, donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8 campaign in 2008.
Six years later, that decision proved to be a fatal career mistake.
Public scrutiny, protests and organized boycotts followed. Soon afterward, Eich resigned from Mozilla.
Our culture spoke up, and he was no longer CEO.
Not long afterward, TMZ released a secretly recorded conversation involving Donald Sterling, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
On the recording, Sterling expressed racist views about a group of people who represented most of his own franchise and much of the NBA.
Four days later, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling from the league for life.
Silver also fined him the maximum allowable penalty of $2.5 million and urged the other owners to force Sterling to sell the Clippers.
Our culture spoke up, and the league moved to remove him.
Of course, many other examples exist beyond these two.
Still, our culture should ask itself two questions: Were these punishments sufficient, and did we respond quickly enough?
Perhaps we can answer those questions by asking a few more.
Have these men learned their lessons? Do they no longer think the way they once did?
Did removing them from positions of influence produce the change we wanted?
Those answers may help us approach similar situations in the future.
How Should We Handle the Next One?
For example, how should we handle the multitude of recordings from one of Apple’s newest additions?
To understand the magnitude of the situation, this man has used racial slurs and seriously questionable language.
He has promoted gun violence, the objectification of women and illegal drug use.
How can someone join the world’s most valuable brand and still receive a pass for thinking and speaking that way?
Now our culture must decide how it will provide justice.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about Dr. Dre.
These weren’t secret recordings made by a friend.
They weren’t private comments captured without his knowledge.
They were records.
He released them.
We bought them.
Millions of people have heard the recordings I’m talking about.
Will our response differ when the conduct appears worse than other offenses we have already punished?
If so, why?
This Is Not an Attack
This is not meant to attack Dr. Dre.
In fact, although I have never met him, his name conjures up the warmth of Southern California sunshine.
When I hear it, I return to a much simpler time when he largely provided the soundtrack to my life.
I immediately picture myself driving around in my lowered truck with the windows down and palm trees whipping by on both sides.
The Alpine deck is turned as high as it can go, causing the Fosgates to move violently.
My body gets a back massage while my eardrums slowly deteriorate.
Thankfully, I survived the massive indoctrination packaged with the music and its accompanying lifestyle branding.
And why not?
I also survived the public school system.
The Standard Keeps Moving
Rather, this is an attempt to examine the framework we use to process these controversies.
Why does that framework change depending on the situation?
We cannot claim that a person’s private beliefs or recorded words make him unfit for leadership, then quietly make exceptions when that person remains culturally useful, commercially valuable or personally entertaining.
Perhaps the standard is not really the severity of the offense.
Perhaps it depends on who committed it, which tribe he belongs to and what we stand to lose by condemning him.
That does not mean every offense is identical or deserves the same consequence.
However, it does mean we should honestly examine the standards we apply and the distinctions we make.
We should also ask whether those distinctions remain consistent when the person involved is culturally useful, commercially valuable or personally entertaining.
Removing someone from a company may satisfy our desire to act.
So might forcing the sale of a team or generating enough public outrage to end a career.
But punishment alone cannot change the human heart.
That does not excuse racism, sexual degradation, violence or any other wrongdoing.
It simply means public consequences and public shame are not the same as repentance, restoration or justice.
If our standards change according to the person, company or cultural tribe involved, then we are not applying a moral standard.
We are protecting our own.