For the past week, Kiandria Demone, an Atlanta-based mom and entrepreneur, has been locked in a battle with payment processor Stripe.
Her goal? To prevent a woman in Rochester, Minnesota, from financially benefiting after calling a 5-year-old an overused racial slur.
In late April, a woman at a public park in Minnesota was observed hurling the n-word at a child with autism. The woman, who was filmed with a baby in her arms, said she was provoked when she found the 5-year-old looking in her diaper bag.
After a video of the scene went viral, the woman went to a crowdfunding site to raise money for her “protection” and has since received more than $750,000 in donations.
Her supporters have said this marks the end of “cancel culture,” even though it is unclear how the woman was canceled. Attempts to reach her by phone and email were unsuccessful.
As far as we know, she didn’t lose a job or a house. She isn’t currently facing legal action. If she is dealing with emotional distress, I would say that is a situation of her own making.
The behavior she exhibited that day in the park and the response of her supporters are indicative of the new norm of American society. We have lost our moral compass. Guided by politicians who have demonstrated that morals are secondary to power and ambition, some of us seek only to engage with and support people who prove themselves to be cruel.
The crowdfunding site where the woman launched her campaign claims to support Christian values and even offers prayers to users. The site has also become the go-to platform for extremist fundraising.
Active campaigns on the site included a police officer who was killed in a traffic accident while on the way home from the hospital after the birth of his fifth child. Another plea for support came from a family in danger of being displaced from their trailer home just after the mom had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Each of these campaigns had received paltry sums compared to $750,000.
When did supporting the demise of an abstract concept like “cancel culture” become more important than supporting real people in need? This would be a good time to ask WWJD.
In a recent article for the Atlantic, conservative writer David Brooks offered some insight into how bullying has become so profitable.
“A prominent publisher of right-wing authors once told me that the way to sell conservative books is not to write a good book — it’s to write a book that will offend the left, thereby causing the reactionaries to rally to your side and buy it,” Brooks wrote.
I thought this was an apt comparison to the fundraising drama. An adult calling a child a racial slur isn’t a good thing; it’s a reprehensible thing for an adult to do. What makes it a cause some Americans consider worthy of support is that it offends other people.
Some of you will insist the woman has a right to free speech, including hate speech. However, even the owners of the fundraising platform GiveSendGo recognized that free speech has its limits.
They professed to be staunch supporters of free speech until that same free speech began appearing on their website. The “volume and intensity of racial and offensive language” forced them to disable the comments on her page, they told Newsweek magazine. Goodbye, free speech!
Since it is a useless endeavor to reason with bullies and their enablers, I reached out to Demone, the Atlanta-based activist, who is making it her mission to battle them.
Credit: Kiandria Demone
Credit: Kiandria Demone
Demone said it was pointless to go after the fundraising platform because they would just figure out how to keep operating. Instead, she focused on Stripe, the payment processor that she alleges is responsible for payouts from the fundraising platform used by the Minnesota woman. Stripe has not confirmed or denied that it is the payment processor. The company did not respond to my emailed request for comment.
“We have demanded a statement from them and they have stayed silent and ignored us,” Demone said when we talked by phone. “The goal is to freeze funds. (Stripe) is run by an algorithm, and enough complaints will freeze it and force them to investigate.”
The idea is to use technology to trigger an investigation by a human, forcing the company to determine if a given transaction violates company policies.
On Wednesday, Demone issued a public statement to Stripe, reminding the company of its 2020 pledge to stand against racism. She asked company representatives to release a public statement acknowledging that they are processing payments for the fundraising platform and making payouts to the Minnesota woman. And she asked that they issue an apology and a resolution that makes amends.
I’m sure if the Minnesota woman has collected any part of this money, she is laughing at all the suckers willing to give their last dollar for her potty mouth to serve as a conduit for their feelings of power.
Only after realizing the potential for grift did she raise her request from a modest $20,000 to an exorbitant $1 million. She had grossly underestimated how willing people would be to support child abuse, cruelty and a general lack of human decency.
It isn’t “cancel culture” that needs to be canceled; it is the high value that we put on hate.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
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