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Duke VP gets coffee shop employees fired for their music; world's gonna end

Beau Vine

By Beau Vine
in Daily Texan

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54238

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Outrage has flowed freely over the story of Larry Moneta, the Duke University administrator whose distaste for a rap song featuring the N-word reportedly led to the firing of two baristas (one of whom is black) at a campus coffee shop.

Experts in hip-hop culture (and the university’s critics) point to this as a contemporary example of racism, a white man who has publicly professed to cherish free expression -- but only when he doesn’t find the speech offensive.

Some have called for Moneta's firing. A university spokesman, Michael Schoenfeld, told Inside Higher Ed that Duke supports Moneta.

Moneta, the vice president of student affairs, last week swung by Joe Van Gogh, one of Duke’s contracted coffee shops, to pick up his regular order, a hot tea and vegan muffin. At the time, the song “Get Paid,” by Young Dolph, was playing -- a rap that repeats the N-word continually in its refrain. Britni Brown, who was manning the register at the time, had picked the Spotify playlist that contained the song, according to the Durham alt-weekly, Indy Week, which first reported the scandal.

He was “shocked” to hear the lyrics, Moneta said in a statement he released this week. He told Brown the words he heard were inappropriate, and Brown, according to Indy Week, apologized earnestly and immediately shut the music off. Brown, who is black, apologized a second time and offered Moneta the muffin on the house, but he refused and insisted Brown charge him.

After Moneta left, he contacted Robert Coffey, executive director of Duke’s dining services, to complain. This led to a phone call from the coffee shop owner, Robbie Roberts, to Brown, asking about the incident, for which, Indy Weekly reported, Brown took full responsibility.

On Monday, both Brown and the other barista working the shift, Kevin Simmons, were asked to meet with human resources, and they were informed that Duke had requested they be let go, according to local press accounts. Schoenfeld, in his interview with Inside Higher Ed, denied this and said that Joe Van Gogh solely controls the hiring and firing of employees.

As the story spread, backlash was instantaneous. Moneta already took digital flak last month for his adamant defense of free speech following multiple racially charged incidents on campus.

In April he posted to Twitter, “Freedom of expression protects the oppressed far more than the oppressors,” and wrote that universities considering banning hate speech should read a book on the matter by two prominent law scholars.

Last year, Moneta also was derided for equating the destruction of a Confederate statue in North Carolina to vandalism of a Holocaust memorial in Boston. He wrote in an opinion piece to Inside Higher Ed he wanted the statues taken down through “legitimate, law-abiding processes,” not sabotage.

In his public statement this week, he said, “To those who feel that I’ve flipped on my positions on free expression, I say this. The artist who wrote, recorded and performed the music is absolutely entitled to do so, however offensive I might find the lyrics. The employees who chose to play the song in a business establishment on the Duke campus made a poor decision which was conveyed to the Joe Van Gogh management. How they responded to the employees’ behavior was solely at their discretion.”

Students were still displeased. They stormed Moneta's office in protest Wednesday after gathering outside the coffee shop, playing the very song he found objectionable, and demanded a mea culpa.

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, Moneta posted an apology on his personal Facebookpage, writing that "he never intended" for the employees to be fired and that he hoped they would be reinstated. (One Duke student wrote on Twitterthat she "didn't wanna hear anything else" unless it was about Moneta resigning.)

The coffee shop owner, Roberts, has also since apologized and said in his public statement he has “taken steps to remedy the matter,” though his personnel decisions remain private. He told BuzzFeed, however, that the two baristas would be welcome back at the company. Brown said in an interviewwith The News & Observer she didn't want her job back -- calling Duke a "white supremacist" campus.

No policies expressly prohibit what music is played at facilities such as the coffee shop, Schoenfeld told Inside Higher Ed. But there is a “general expectation” that background music be appropriate for a setting families and their children may frequent, he said.

“It’s a commercial enterprise place, where individuals representing all age ranges come in, and there are general expectations when you go into a shop like that, that you will -- unless you choose to find yourself listening to it yourself -- you will not be subjected to that explicit language,” Schoenfeld said.

He declined to comment whether Duke felt the firing was an appropriate response, referring a reporter to the coffee shop’s statement. The institution has not considered disciplining or firing Moneta, he said. He wrote in a later email that the institution was glad the coffee shop had accepted responsibility for the incident.

Schoenfeld added in his interview that issues of free speech and what is suitable in a public place are “always complicated” and are “rarely able to be settled definitively.”

But some academics see what transpired at Duke as racism.

A. D. Carson, an assistant professor of hip-hop and the global South at the University of Virginia, and a rapper himself, was puzzled how Moneta could demand such a temperate response about Confederate statutes -- which many associate with their racist history -- and then react as he did over a rap song being played publicly. Moneta believing in only “law-abiding” activism, said Carson (a reference to Moneta’s opinion on the statues), means he is oblivious to the reality where someone in power can make a single phone call and have someone fired for a song he found unpleasant.

This situation happened in the same time that black men are having the police called on them for trying to use a Starbucks restroom, and where they are shot for merely existing in their backyards -- a racist society, he said.

“It’s really odd to think that free speech is being dictated by people who have the power to essentially say what legitimate activism is,” Carson said.

Carson guessed if the coffee shop broadcasted radio coverage of Donald Trump's now notorious leaked audio about “grabbing [women] by the pussy,” there wouldn’t be a problem.

“It’s not necessarily about the appropriateness, it’s how it was presented,” Carson said.

Duke has been helped by hip-hop, pointed out Ahmad Washington, an assistant professor in the University of Louisville’s department of counseling and human development. He specializes in “critical hip-hop school counseling” and has researched how hip-hop culture and rap music are used in social justice movements.

The institution employs Mark Anthony Neal, a renowned professor of African and African-American studies and founder of Duke's Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship. Patrick Denard Douthit, better known as rapper/producer 9th Wonder, teaches there, too, and has worked with some of hip-hop’s biggest names, including Mary J. Blige and Jay Z.

So while Duke may benefit from these names, the institution, and Moneta, have clearly not recognized how hip-hop could be a legitimate discipline in higher education, Washington said. Hip-hop is not just rap music, he said. It is everything from “street entrepreneurship” to what it means to exist on the margins of society, to how one moves their body.

This type of incident overshadows hip-hop history, Washington said. Duke is dismissing rap music as “grotesque” and not worth of scholarly interrogation, he said.

“Rhetorically, they may embrace diversity and inclusion, but they still dictate the terms around which the diversity -- the speed and aesthetic and optics of what it looks like,” Washington said.

For the rapper Young Dolph's part, he theorized in a tweet that Moneta was trying to teach students to be selfish.

“Whoever that VP is,” Dolph wrote on Twitter, with thumbs-down and exasperated emoji, “he don’t give a dam about nobody but his self.”

And here is the song they were playing:

Spoiler

Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Whatever you do, just make sure you get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Crib so big, that it came with a maid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Rule number 1, get the money first
Rule number 2, don't forget to get the money
Play by these rules and everything will be okay
Still in my trap, flipping my Frito-Lays
Go get the money, it ain't nothing else important to me
I showed her a Xanax, she hurried up and took
I fucked her so good, she got up and started cooking
Rolling up big blunts, out a pound of cookies
If you ain't got 40 bands, then you can't book me
Pulled up on the side of your bitch, she wouldn't stop looking
That bitch good as tooken, good as gone
I guarantee tonight my nigga, that bitch ain't coming home
I got money to count, I got bitches to fuck
I got packs to flip, pistols to bust
When I was small, I ain't have nothing
Started selling dope, and prayed to God for a plug
He showed up and said
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Whatever you do, just make sure you get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Crib so big, that it came with a maid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid nigga, get paid bitch
You on some rich nigga shit, we on the same shit
Me and my Memphis Grizzly partners fuck the same bitches
The only difference is I'm a trap nigga
Don't you hear it in my voice when I rap nigga?
I'm on South Beach with E Feezy throwing stacks nigga
Turn to the Macs nigga, facts nigga
She met me for the first time, didn't know how to act nigga
Double R, parked in my motherfucking front yard
Trap jumping like the motherfucking Million Man March
If she ain't got a fat ass, the she can't get up in this car
I can tell if that ass real or fake by how she walk
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Whatever you do, just make sure you get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid
Crib so big, that it came with a maid
Get paid, young nigga, get paid

 

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ButtFumble

ButtFumble 5180

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I find it odd that people are so upset that someone was fired for allowing that song to be played in a university owned facility......well other than the fact that it was a white SJW that complained about it

but wait it was a white person that was responsible for the "perpetrator" of this incident being fired as well

https://lawandcrime.com/race-relations/black-college-student-identified-as-n-word-on-campus-dining-hall-receipt/

and one needs to pay attention to a key fact that comes from the mouth of the white person that aided in the firing

In an email later sent to students, Smatresk elaborated on the incident. He wrote, “From listening to discussions in social media, it appears as though assumptions are being made about the race of the person responsible. It is important to know that both the customer and employee were the same race, and regardless of other societal views it is my belief that the use of this term is never OK.”

or are we leaning on the "er Vs A" debate.......so if the receipt had the word with the A at the end all would be OK with it being on the receipt and we are all suppose to be outraged at the white person that limited free expression of an under paid chicken "chef" and had him fired

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SDG

SDG 3319

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This VP guy sounds like a DB for escalating, but those employees have to know what’s appropriate for public places.  Every song that’s played on the radio has a clean version and most streaming platforms allow you to filter.  Common sense really isn’t that common...

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RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26446

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First, somebody needs to be struck repeatedly for naming a coffee shop "Joe van Gogh". Then the real van Gogh can rise from his grave and start slicing ears off with a coffee stirrer.

Second, those regards at the counter need to be locked in a room with a flickering fluorescent bulb and Wilson Phillips piped in for 96 hours straight. Because fuck them.

And to hell with Duke. Durham's a pestilential little hoodlum town.

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SDG

SDG 3319

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9 minutes ago, Spankytoes said:

Now racism has spread to those of the same race? 

Maybe coffee is the problem.

Some like it black and some with cream. Hardly anyone goes both ways.  

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54238

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I feel like I'm taking crazy pills:

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Vincent Price, president of Duke University, issued an apology Thursday for a series of incidents on campus, including one in which a vice president's comments led to the firings of two baristas at a coffee shop. The latter incident took place when Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, complained about a rap song featuring the N-word that he heard when he visited a campus coffee shop. Many have said his reaction -- whatever his views about the song -- was inappropriate.

Price's statement agreed with that criticism and also noted other concerns on campus about race and inclusion.

"When we learn a racial slur has been scrawled on a dorm door, a social media posting has used abhorrent language, anti-Semitic posters have been distributed in Durham, or workers on our campus have been treated unfairly, we feel angry, discouraged, and disappointed. Duke should be a place where these things don’t happen," Price wrote.

He said that Duke "will not succumb to a rush to judgment that demands instant retribution absent context and deliberation." But at the same time, he said, he was bothered by recent events and the university needed to change.

"I will simply say that I am deeply sorry that we are not where we want to be as a university. I am, in particular, sorry that the words of one of my senior administrators recently resulted in two individuals working for one of our on-campus vendors losing their jobs; and while I am pleased that the vendor has taken steps to reverse this action, I apologize for the precipitous and unfair treatment these employees experienced. We must do better," Price said. "We have somehow lost the sense of compassion and human tolerance that should define our community. This is reflected in the ways we interact with each other, the ways we hold ourselves and others accountable for our conduct, and in our words and deeds as scholars, students and employees."

 

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