Cafe cancelled

In social media, the latest “news-not-news” is that a private cafe has now been cancelled after its owners posted a video of their manager asking him to speak in “proper English”. What, these women thought was a great social media marketing move blew up in their face as people called out the video for being classist and emblematic of a colonial hangover many in Pakistan still suffer from. I argue, though, that the video and the cancel culture it has elicited offers a much more complex microcosm into our society.

Cancel culture on social media is inherently thorny as it feeds into the polarisation of thought and on social media and echo chambers, making the ring of our own convictions louder till all we hear is ourselves. It’s also an outlet for trolls, and people become synonymous with their online transgression. We should all be allowed to make internet mistakes and learn from them.

That being said, the cafe owners had a moment to reflect and apologise but they went on the defensive. Their apology was unfortunately tone-deaf as they didn’t understand what was so problematic with their gup-shup video. As many rightly pointed out, this is a case of a colonial hangover, classism and thinking English is a mark of quality, entrenched deeply within our institutions and citizens.

The outrage over the English-centrism is clear but what is being less talked about is the element of class privilege and an accepted culture of worker-wage exploitation. In the video and apology, it is stated that the “staff are treated and paid well”.

The fact that employers are patting themselves on the back for paying a fair wage speaks to our exploitative upper classes that often profits at the cost of their staff. To this I highly doubt the manager gets paid his due even if he’s paid more than the market rate which is woefully exploitative. Secondly, employers are often confused where they desire a “cosmopolitan” English-speaking employee but aren’t willing to pay for it, which is problematic. Competence doesn’t have a language.

Language is an epistemological violence and is weaponised by colonisers and elites to maintain the status quo and exercise their perceived superiority. This is not just a matter of language, but of status and class, translated into the everyday micro-aggressions carried out by the powerful without realising. When these owners say they didn’t have malicious intent, I believe them but having such little self-reflexivity is not okay when in a position of power.

In sociological research, a growing body of consensus is questioning how and why we study the people and things we do. It’s no secret, that in much research in the world, the poor and middle class are most studied because their privacy is not protected by class privilege. Social media is becoming an extended symptom of this phenomenon. The café manager is seen in videos now, interviewed to defend the video and his language skills, it is as cringeworthy as the original video. While, the owners can hide behind a static “apology” and aren’t the subject of interviews, the manager unwittingly became an overnight victim of online vigilantism.

This video is also quite dystopian as it shows how Covid-19 has cemented barriers of class. The manager is of course wearing a mask, the owners aren’t. The rich aren’t Covid-spreaders, apparently. This is visible everywhere, even in my own home. Pointing fingers at others is easy but we should ask ourselves what this video says about us as a society. As consumers, it is our right and responsibility to not support businesses that perpetuate an elitist society but we must realise that boycotting doesn’t create change, discourse does.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2021.

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