A quick warning.
This episode includes references to racial slurs and offensive language.
If you were to ask employees at Netflix when the civil war began inside their company, a lot of them would probably point to an afternoon in February of 2018.
There were about 30 people gathered inside a conference room, and the company's chief communication officer stood up to speak.
The executive told everyone that Netflix had recently released a new comedy special that was particularly offensive.
In this special, the comedian Tom Segura makes fun of people with down syndrome.
He complains that you can't say words like so.
The Netflix executive told everyone that they need to expect complaints and, and that they needed to treat those complaints seriously.
Everyone should appreciate how hurtful those offensive words can be.
And then to drive home his point, he offered an analogy.
Hearing those kinds of slurs, he said, would be, quote, as if an African American person had heard.
And then he said the N word.
Netflix has fired its top communications executive.
Jonathan Friedland has been the company's chief communications officer for the past six years and is now leaving Netflix after allegedly using racial slurs and insensitive remarks to his team during at least two meetings.
To the outside world, this seemed like a very simple story.
But inside Netflix, the executive's firing was very, very divisive.
Some people thought it was unfair that this executive was being blamed for using that word in a non offensive way and that firing him was way out of proportion.
However, other employees felt exactly the opposite, that using this word was completely unacceptable.
And if people don't understand that, it just shows how little they understand their black co workers and how they feel about the word.
That this was evidence of racism at the company.