There are many, many angles to explore Chris Rock being assaulted by Will Smith at the recent Oscars, an example of a complex situation where multiple things are true at the same time. Here I want to highlight this perspective:

What we saw was an interaction between three people who were at work. This situation is analogous to a trade show attendee assaulting someone staffing a booth. Two of them likely felt verbally harassed, and the third was physically assaulted. 

There is much discussion about who was right and who was wrong in this situation, and this post is not an attempt to answer that question. In fact this is a significant example of where seemingly contradictory thoughts and complexities of the situation should be held together and not dichotomized in the simplicity of right or wrong. I will say two things: violence is never justified except to prevent harm from violence (e.g. self-defense), and if one went through life never making a joke about someone’s medical condition, nothing of value would be lost. Making jokes about other people’s bodies erodes sense of safety and respect within that space/community.

What I want to draw attention to are the responsibilities that were shirked by the employer in this situation. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, like all contract employers has a responsibility to maintain the physical safety of their workers, and the fact that Will Smith was allowed to remain in the building where the assault on a worker took place is an incredible failure on their part. I firmly believe that absolute freedom of speech has never existed and never will, since in any community of more than one person there are consequences for what people say, and yet if those consequences are physical violence then we have crossed over into a realm of assault and an employer must respond clearly and decisively to communicate that such actions are unacceptable. 

And what happens when employers don’t respond to events with a priority for safety? They send the message that this should be expected, and that workers are on their own if this happens. This can lead to workplace-trauma, where an event or an action which should have been immediately addressed to reduce the harm, is swept under the rug. And what we know about trauma and grief that are not worked through and addressed (read: also Will Smith’s childhood trauma of witnessing domestic violence) is that they manifest themselves in different and at times unpredictable ways. Any future presenter at the Oscars will be aware of this, and it is a lesson that will be very hard for the Academy to undo. This goes for this incident and all employers: Do you pay your employees enough to risk assault? Because if you are not working actively against violence and harassment in your workplace, you will be implicitly supporting it when it happens.