Latest / All About The Joy / Carmen Talk: Grace or Exile - A Cultural Reckoning and the Cost of Cutting People Off

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Carmen Talk: Grace or Exile - A Cultural Reckoning and the Cost of Cutting People Off · All About The Joy

• 0:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Hey everyone, it's Carmen Lezeth and welcome to All About the Joy.
• 0:04
  Carmen Lezeth: This is Carmen Talk.
• 0:06
  Carmen Lezeth: Let me say this up front we're going to stay divided as a country if we don't start getting honest about the cost of cutting people off.
• 0:27
  Carmen Lezeth: This isn't about defending public figures or giving passes to problematic behavior.
• 0:32
  Carmen Lezeth: It's about calling out the cultural impulse to cancel, erase and exile people, without pausing to ask whether someone might actually be trying to grow.
• 0:44
  Carmen Lezeth: The latest example Joey Swoll.
• 0:46
  Carmen Lezeth: Maybe you've seen him on your FYP page.
• 0:50
  Carmen Lezeth: He's a fitness guy, a self-appointed gym etiquette enforcer.
• 0:55
  Carmen Lezeth: He's an influencer and he's popped up enough on my For you page that I know who he is and I've always admired a lot of his work.
• 1:06
  Carmen Lezeth: He makes gyms safer, especially for people who quote-unquote shouldn't be in the gym.
• 1:12
  Carmen Lezeth: He makes it clear that everyone should be there.
• 1:15
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not really my jam, but I've always appreciated whenever I was able to watch his videos.
• 1:22
  Carmen Lezeth: And then this week he said something.
• 1:24
  Carmen Lezeth: He said a lot of things that made many people pause, me included.
• 1:28
  Carmen Lezeth: Joey used the word colored Instead of saying people of color.
• 1:32
  Carmen Lezeth: He said the word colored while discussing why he liked or admired Hulk Hogan, who had recently passed away.
• 1:40
  Carmen Lezeth: Now, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of problems with his video, but let's just stick with the word colored for a moment, because for me it was the ease, right, that unbothered familiarity.
• 1:53
  Carmen Lezeth: It was that that made me pause, because when something rolls out that easily out of your mouth, that smoothly, it's not something new, right, it's part of his everyday conversation, it's something that's baked into his vernacular.
• 2:11
  Carmen Lezeth: So he apologized pretty quickly, publicly, in his own voice.
• 2:17
  Carmen Lezeth: I thought he did a very good apology.
• 2:20
  Carmen Lezeth: And then he still got backlash for that and other things.
• 2:24
  Carmen Lezeth: And so the other day he said he's going to quit social media altogether.
• 2:29
  Carmen Lezeth: Now look, maybe that's the start of some real reflection.
• 2:33
  Carmen Lezeth: I have no idea.
• 2:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Or maybe it's a tactic to, you know, avoid deeper accountability, who knows?
• 2:40
  Carmen Lezeth: Here's the thing Joey is not the point of this conversation, he's just a mirror, because this pattern of messing up, calling out and then exiling everyone is everywhere, especially now as I'm seeing former Trump supporters begin to speak out saying I didn't know, I was misled, this isn't what I voted for.
• 3:02
  Carmen Lezeth: I see things differently now, right, and my first instinct, honestly, is skepticism.
• 3:07
  Carmen Lezeth: For sure, but if we believe people are capable of change, we have to do better than you're dead to me, right, and we're never talking to you again, and there's no way in hell we're ever going to let you part of the culture or part of the society, or part of the family.
• 3:27
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm not asking you to forget harm.
• 3:31
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm asking whether we're willing to stay in the room long enough to witness real transformation, because the way we respond to regret matters, the way we respond to apologies matters.
• 3:46
  Carmen Lezeth: If someone tells you they're sorry and your only response is to block shame and dismiss them, what kind of future are we building?
• 3:55
  Carmen Lezeth: The truth is, most of us have done something harmful, spoken out of ignorance, reacted in fear and we've been given grace Okay, not always by the Internet, but by someone that grace has shaped us.
• 4:09
  Carmen Lezeth: And we've been given grace Okay, not always by the internet, but by someone that grace has shaped us.
• 4:11
  Carmen Lezeth: It didn't excuse us, but it did keep us in the community long enough to learn something new.
• 4:16
  Carmen Lezeth: And look, don't get it twisted.
• 4:18
  Carmen Lezeth: Sometimes, cancel culture is necessary.
• 4:21
  Carmen Lezeth: I ain't even gonna lie about it.
• 4:23
  Carmen Lezeth: Target is a perfect example.
• 4:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Now, this is not a person.
• 4:26
  Carmen Lezeth: This is a perfect example.
• 4:30
  Carmen Lezeth: Now, this is not a person.
• 4:31
  Carmen Lezeth: This is a corporation.
• 4:31
  Carmen Lezeth: And after George Floyd's murder in 2020, right there in Minneapolis, where Target is headquartered.
• 4:35
  Carmen Lezeth: They stepped forward, they pledged racial equity, they rolled out DEI initiatives, they celebrated Black employees and spotlighted Black-owned businesses.
• 4:45
  Carmen Lezeth: For a moment, target became the corporate face of we hear you and people believed it.
• 4:51
  Carmen Lezeth: I believed it.
• 4:52
  Carmen Lezeth: But fast forward to 2025, and the silence is louder than any press release.
• 4:57
  Carmen Lezeth: The DEI programs dismantled, the partnerships paused or canceled.
• 5:02
  Carmen Lezeth: The language now is all about changing landscapes and streamlining priorities.
• 5:06
  Carmen Lezeth: The language now is all about changing landscapes and streamlining priorities.
• 5:08
  Carmen Lezeth: Translation is basically political pressure shifted and target folded to protect its bottom line.
• 5:14
  Carmen Lezeth: That's not accountability, that's opportunism.
• 5:17
  Carmen Lezeth: They used the death, the murder of a Black man to build trust, then abandoned that trust as soon as it became inconvenient.
• 5:26
  Carmen Lezeth: They played both sides for profit.
• 5:29
  Carmen Lezeth: And that kind of betrayal, that performative allyship, is why I will never step into a target anymore and I'm happy to watch them go through the pain of people not going into their stores, not because I'm boycotting them, but because they deserve what's happening to them right now.
• 5:50
  Carmen Lezeth: And look, they're a corporation.
• 5:51
  Carmen Lezeth: They'll be fine, they will.
• 5:53
  Carmen Lezeth: But I am done being played.
• 5:55
  Carmen Lezeth: I am done being played by companies and I am not spending my money where people are being inauthentic.
• 6:04
  Carmen Lezeth: But when canceling becomes I'm going to go back to my original soundbite here when canceling becomes our default, when it's our go-to reaction for every misstep, especially for individual people, it robs us of something deeper.
• 6:21
  Carmen Lezeth: It robs us of healing.
• 6:23
  Carmen Lezeth: Forgiveness isn't weakness.
• 6:25
  Carmen Lezeth: Forgiveness isn't about pretending the harm didn't happen.
• 6:28
  Carmen Lezeth: Forgiveness is about choosing discernment over erasure, boundaries over exile.
• 6:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Forgiveness says I see the damage and now I'm watching what you do next.
• 6:40
  Carmen Lezeth: And that's the bite.
• 6:42
  Carmen Lezeth: I want us to sit with right, not just when we forgive, but why we forgive and what happens when we don't allow people to have a moment where they made a mistake.
• 6:55
  Carmen Lezeth: If we want reconciliation, if we want a culture that makes room for real growth, we can't just burn every bridge and call it justice, every bridge and call it justice.
• 7:06
  Carmen Lezeth: So maybe the next time someone says I'm sorry, maybe we listen, maybe we evaluate, maybe we observe and maybe just maybe, we stay long enough in the room to see who they are becoming.
• 7:21
  Carmen Lezeth: The last thing I'll say is this Grace is what shows up when someone messes up and you choose compassion over punishment.
• 7:30
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the pause before judgment, the softness and strength, the ability to hold boundaries without the cruelty.
• 7:37
  Carmen Lezeth: Basically, it's the counterweight to cancellation.
• 7:40
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not about letting people off the hook at all, but it is about giving people the chance to grow, change and be better than we used to be.
• 7:51
  Carmen Lezeth: Thanks for stopping by.
• 7:54
  Carmen Lezeth: All About the Joy.
• 7:55
  Carmen Lezeth: Be better and stay beautiful folks, have a sweet day.