Perception Matters: Assessing Our Response to Hate Crimes, Woke Culture, and the Gig-Economy
Two recent incidents in the last fortnight have highlighted the precarious lives of workers under gig economy. The Uber driver attack in San Francisco and the accusations of physical assault against a Zomato food delivery personnel in Bengaluru should serve as timely reminders of the need for policy changes to better protect workers engaged in these essential service roles who for the time being have to rely on the goodwill of the customers. And while a modicum of mutual respect is indispensable to any of our interactions, customer-centric policies together with job insecurity, which is a structural feature of the gig-economy, have opened up floodgates for such victimization. These incidents simply bear out what is a disturbing but very real possibility in a business model that continues to alter the landscape of the service industry.
Kadka, the aggrieved Uber personnel, has received numerous testimonies ever since the video of the altercation went viral. Kadka states, “It’s not just the people in Ubers and Lyfts, it’s also people who work in gas stations. People from all over the world reach out to tell me they’ve experienced and report this type of behavior but because of lack of evidence it doesn’t go anywhere and people learn to live with it,” Khadka said.
However, in our media savvy age, more often than not, optics dictates the direction of the ensuing discussion. The two incidents have been under scrutiny for their gender dynamics — the instigating parties were women and the victimized workers men. This fact has received a lot of commentary from factions which more or less view it as an outcome of feminism, and more broadly, of woke culture run amok.
Broadly speaking, identity and its material consequences for our social existence has become an issue of partisan dispute. The emerging coalition of progressive politics strives to recognize gender as one of the key parameter of inclusivity in society or its lack thereof. The resulting struggle to redress the skewed gender dynamics has been perceived as hostile to men. The recent incidents present the opposing side with ample fodder to malign the feminism movement and parade the incident as a result of its excesses.
But why dispute my initial argument on the ills of gig-economy that is rapidly altering worker conditions and the nature of jobs in the 21st century? Why provide a platform within my work to misogynists with an axe to grind? Quite simply to situate these alarm bells of a looming feminist totalitarianism within the larger reality of our supposedly secular and democratic societies.
I offer three more incidents of far graver nature from roughly the same fortnight. All these are incidents of alleged hate crimes. The most grievous of these is the recent shooting in Atlanta that targeted the Asian-American community and left 8 individuals dead. The other two are from North India, one from the North-East of Delhi, the national capital, and the other from its outskirts, in Ghaziabad. In North-Delhi a riot accused out on bail was caught on camera brutally beating a Muslim man and forcing him to chant anti-Pakistan slogans. In Ghaziabad a Hindu man savagely attacked a Muslim boy on accusations of entering a Hindu temple premises and drinking water.
While the gravity of these crimes might vary, all three share the bedrock of communal hatred that has been steadily fanned by the ruling political factions in both nations. Anti-Muslim sentiment has been on the rise in India for quite some time now. Each election cycle sees new levels of flagrant fear mongering aimed at the Hindu majority.
US has seen record levels of death and widespread suffering due to grave administrative lapses, scatter-brained initial response and vicious partisan politics in an election year. The erstwhile ruling Republican party has redirected populist rage into anti-Asian sentiment that took a life of its own after initial reports of the virus originating in China.
Let us compare the aftermath of these hate crimes with those of the worker attacks. The Atlanta police briefing conspicuously failed to term the incident a hate crime and accused of downplaying its severity. They instead chose to run with the narrative based on shooter’s testimony. And so a potentially devious last ditch effort to avoid the gravest penal punishment has received state sanction. The personal profile being circulated in media of the Atlanta shooter has also benefited from the humane face-lift that white perpetrators usually receive. In India the temple attack accused in already out on bail, while the riot accused in communal violence out one bail managed to commit another hate crime.
Meanwhile, the so called excesses engendered by woke culture are being treated with the due procedures under law. At the time of writing, the women involved in the San Francisco altercation have either surrendered or have been apprehended by the police. The police have already registered the Zomato personnel’s complaint against the woman accuser.
The bitter but unavoidable truth of our society remains the same. Those accused of crimes against minorities and women continue to be treated with kid-gloves is amply demonstrated by these three cases. Clearly, the various arms of the state are involved in such thinly veiled attempts to downplay the gravity and nature of the attack on minorities and on top of that stage manage its reception. The prevailing attitude and discourse around cultural difference, be it based on race or religion, continues to remain anti-democratic, anti-minority, racist and xenophobic.
Complaints about feminism gone rogue are either deeply ignorant of structural issues that govern our world. Or they are malicious and deliberately try to distract us from the urgent issues that threaten our harmonious collective existence and aspirations of a just society. woke politics has a long way to go before it gains the inertia of institutionalized attitudes and common-place beliefs. Meanwhile collective life continues to labor under a lop-sided, discriminatory order that validates cultural and social biases.
