Swift exits appease online critics but absolve all parties of necessary DEI work.

In early March of 2022, Estée Lauder senior executive John Demsey was fired just days after sharing an offensive meme on his Instagram account[1].  The now-deleted post – a satirical but tasteless take on a classic Sesame Street children’s book cover – referred to a beloved character using the N-word.  Demsey – who is white – was swiftly accused of racism and suspended, eventually losing his job and concluding cancel culture’s all-too-familiar boom-and-bust cycle.

From one view, it makes sense that Demsey was fired.  High-ranking officials have a duty to uphold company values, even when they’re not “on the clock”.  And with the 2020 racial reckoning still fresh on everyone’s mind, no organization wants to be seen as culturally insensitive or permissive of its employees’ toxic behavior.  Removing Demsey from the org chart was the fastest way for Estée Lauder to show an irate public that it took the matter seriously.

But the company’s speedy response begs the question – will Demsey’s firing change anything?

The paradox of cancel culture

Quite often, “canceling” an executive, celebrity, or other public figure for an offensive action is a satisfactory sentence in the court of public opinion.  Just a week before Demsey’s post, Columbia University psychiatry department head Jeffrey Lieberman was also fired, after tweeting that African model Nyakim Gatwech was “a work of art or freak of nature”[2].  In this instance, and so many others, the only way to help an ignorant yet influential person see the error of their ways was to ruin any and all of their career prospects.  However, perhaps the punishment shouldn’t always be business as usual.

At 65 years old and with a supposed multi-million-dollar net worth[3], Demsey’s perfectly positioned to give a standard-issue apology, wait for the dust to settle, and then sail off into retirement – without doing any of the introspective work necessary to understand why people are so outraged.  In a sense, his firing reflects his own intolerance right back at him; his lack of meaningful engagement with Black communities led him to share the offensive meme in the first place, and his employer’s unwillingness to engage him about it denies him an opportunity to learn and grow.  No one in this scenario is doing the actual hard work of diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

That’s because the firing doesn’t only let Demsey off the hook.  By terminating him, Estée Lauder’s leadership gets to paint this controversy as a one-off issue.  Racism is his problem, not the company’s.  But Demsey obviously felt a level of comfort posting that meme, without fear of consequences.  Had he been part of a truly inclusive environment where all views, cultures, and lived experiences were respected, he wouldn’t have shared such content, at least not publicly.  Without those cultural guardrails in place, we can only wonder who else within the company behaves like Demsey.  Is the entire executive team engaging in similar conduct?  And are their attitudes impacting who does and doesn’t succeed at all levels?

And, with Demsey out of the picture and Estée Lauder still in the public’s good graces, who’s left to heal the offended employees?  For all those Black and Brown folks, will Demsey’s removal help transform the culture?  Or will it just appease Black Twitter until the next controversy? 

Ultimately, that should be an organization’s focus.  When an incidence of racism occurs, the company must interrogate its culture.  If there’s one problematic executive, there are more.  If there are multiple close-minded people at the helm, their biases – implicit and explicit – are affecting the way the company recruits, hires, and develops its talent.  One bad apple should alert the powers that be to a more pervasive issue.

A speedy firing provides some great PR, but when the news cycle moves on, that’s when the real work begins.  For Estée Lauder, if this high-profile dust-up doesn’t lead to more widespread organizational change, then it’s just a lost opportunity to live out the values it thinks it’s defending.

[1] Kirsch, Noah. (February 28, 2022). ‘Widespread Offense’: Makeup Mogul Axed Over Racist Instagram Post. Retrieved from: https://www.thedailybeast.com/estee-lauder-makeup-mogul-john-demsey-axed-over-racist-instagram-post?via=twitter_page

[2] Lenthang, Marlene. (February 24, 2022). Columbia University suspends psychiatry head after ‘freak of nature’ tweet about dark-skinned model. Retrieved from: https://www.yahoo.com/now/columbia-university-suspends-psychiatry-head-132700270.html

[3] Bain, Ellissa. (March 1, 2022). Inside John Demsey’s Impressive Net Worth And Estée Lauder Salary. Retrieved from: https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2022/03/01/john-demsey-net-worth/