Woke Netflix Shuns Macon and Tucson

The company’s woke employees don’t see the irony of being headquartered in wealthy Los Gatos.

 

The Wall Street Journal ran a news story recently about demonstrations at Netflix in response to comedian Dave Chappelle’s supposed transgressions against transsexuals.

Here’s an excerpt: “In a list of demands sent to Netflix management, a group of transgender employees called on the company to create a new fund to develop trans and nonbinary talent, recruit more trans people into leadership roles, and add a disclaimer ‘before transphobic titles that specifically flag transphobic language, misogyny, homophobia, hate speech, etc. as required.’”

I’m trying to juxtapose the hullabaloo with a personal experience, circa 1985. A guy in one of my departments began wearing dresses to work as the first step in sexually transitioning. This was in a fairly macho mining and manufacturing company headquartered in a gritty, industrial part of northern New Jersey.

It was basically a non-event in those dark ages before people became woke. I met with him to see how he wanted to be treated and what employee restroom he preferred to use. There was some snickering from his female coworkers over his taste in clothes, but I quickly quashed it.

Thankfully, that was it. We had bigger “people issues” to deal with, such as how to teach literacy to our black plant workers in the heart of the former Confederacy, Macon, Georgia, so they could operate new computer controls and keep their jobs and pensions, which were so rich that blue-collar workers could retire with a million-dollar pension if they stayed with the company over their working life.

In spite of their wokeness and virtue-signaling, Netflix employees who work remotely would never think of working in Macon. And Netflix would never think of moving its headquarters to Macon from Los Gatos, Calif.  A comparison of demographics between the two towns shows why:

	Macon	Los Gatos
Black Population	54.4%	.9%
Median Household Income	$41,334	$155,863
Poverty Rate	24.9%	3.8%

Incidentally, my hometown of Tucson wouldn’t be a destination for Netflix, either. It has a poverty rate nearly as high as Macon’s, and while its black population of 5.2% isn’t large compared to Macon’s black population, it’s almost six times as large in percentage terms than Los Gatos’s. And Tucson’s Latino population of 43.6% is more than five times as large in percentage terms as Los Gatos’s Latino population.

Anyway, to return to New Jersey, circa 1985, I was in a network of some of the biggest companies in northern NJ (and the world). At one of our periodic meetings, I asked my peers how they would’ve handled the transgender issue. They said the same way. No big deal.

Today, that wouldn’t be sufficient. Companies now have to placate the woke mob, which keeps upping the ante into fanaticism while working in such white and wealthy enclaves as Los Gatos.