Trigger Warnings: Racism, Sexual Assault, Colonialism  

NBC’s “The Office” is a cultural icon. The television show debuted many iconic actors—Steve Carell, Mindy Kaling, and John Krasinski to name a few—and boasted an interestingly intimate show design that made all the characters lovable in their own way. It has been a large part of most people’s childhoods, as many have devoted chunks of their lives to binge watching this show countless times. Although I am one of those people, I believe that with the removal of “The Office” from Netflix, we should rethink the role of this show in 2021. I believe with a new administration on the verge of immeasurable change, we need to let go of the past to make the most equitable future. “The Office” is an icon of an antiquated culture that normalizes racism and sexism, inequitably benefitting white actors over actors of color, and too readily extends grace for ignorant behaviors. Though I am sure “The Office” hasn’t played a significant role in our lives since its removal from Netflix, if we just let “The Office” fade off into the past without morally condemning it, we will not realize to what extent we may have internalized its bigotry. I believe NBC should remove “The Office” from its streaming platform Peacock so we can all remove our role in its overt bigotry.  

Now if you watch almost every episode of the series you will find some egregious examples of bigotry; however, I will only touch on some of the major examples and plot points I came across. Look no further than the second episode “Diversity Day” to find the overt racism this show presents. The episode starts with a presentation to cover the company legally from the antics of Michael Scott, the office’s lovable but blundering boss. Once Mr. Brown, the company-hired presenter, leaves, Michael quickly takes over with a game designed to bring up racist stereotypes in order to confront them. This plan eventually blows up in his face, when Kelly slaps him for his horrific rendition of the Indian American store clerk stereotype.

Now, one may think that the rejection of Michael Scott’s racism would be the entire joke; however, I raise the point that normalizing racism is, in fact, not funny. It gives white viewers an outlet to indulge in their biases without accepting moral culpability. White people can have it both ways: they can laugh at all the racist jokes and then flip over and enjoy Mindy’s condemnation of his behavior. They get to indulge in their biases while being morally vindicated by the minority characters on the show. The problematic nature of this plot is then furthered by the fact that Michael faces no occupational repercussions for his fireable actions, which are not only company negligence, but also a culture complacent with its racism.

Episodes that push the idea of bigotry as funny are plentiful. These include “Gay Witch Hunt,” in which Michael Scott not only jokes about Oscar’s sexuality, but even sexually assaults him by forcibly kissing him (again, with no repercussions). Another shocking episode in today’s social context would be “Benihana Christmas.” Here, Michael gets dumped, and Andy takes him to Benihana’s to cheer him up. They end up taking the waitresses they had to the office party, and Michael insinuates the age-old Asian stereotype of all Asian people looking the same by marking one of them to tell the difference. Even the casting director seemed to have believed this when he cast two separate sets of Asian women to play the same exact characters (there was supposed to be an attractive and unattractive version which is also extremely problematic). It has also come out that the Hollywood machine that forces these women to play these roles has caused immeasurable emotional damage to one of the actors in this episode. Kat Ahn, the actress playing one of the waitress, refers to her role as nothing more than punchlines about her Asian identity. With violent crimes being committed towards Asian people in increasing numbers because of the pandemic, pushing this rhetoric on television only normalizes hatred against Asian people. When white supremacists hear rhetoric similar to that of Trump, it only confirms their preconceived biases and normalizes violence. For evidence of how language can lead to violence, look no further than this uptick in Anti-Asian hate crimes across the U.S. since the pandemic.

Again, there are countless episodes that include jokes which are based around harmful and hateful stereotypes, so the idea of censoring certain episodes will only get you so far. I believe to normalize equity and inclusion we must call for our cultural institutions to remove “The Office” from the sphere of acceptable content. Though I believe it won’t stop hate crimes, removing it will lead people to ask questions about their internalized bigotry and will no longer give equal weight and time to offensive media that perpetuate hate speech and microaggressions.   

I would also be remiss if I didn’t comment on how the show treats their actors of color. I do quickly want to address the diversity of the cast. While the cast is quite diverse—especially for its time—none of the actors of color seem to have any depth in their roles. Though over time characters like Oscar and Darryl get more screen time, this is only out of necessity, as they look to other characters to fill Michael’s absence on the show. These plot lines are often not desirable. While Darryl’s character progression is admirable, Stanley’s main plot contribution was being a serial cheater, and Oscar’s was having an affair with Angela’s Republican husband.

The least flattering minority character in my opinion is Kelly. The extremely talented Mindy Kaling played a role of a ditzy young Indian American customer service rep. I will gloss over the obvious stereotype here to get to the main point I want to address: her relationship with Ryan. Ryan throughout the course of the show continuously emotionally abuses her to the point that he essentially owns her. Watching a white man emotionally control an Indian American woman just denotes colonialism and perpetuates the colonial values that subconsciously dominate Western culture. Near the end of the show, there seems to be some personal growth, as she finally finds someone else (though it is the only other Indian person Pam knows). However, any character development is thrown out the window when she inevitably leaves her husband to run off with Ryan in the last episode.

The writers’ mistreatment of their minority actors led to a lack of equitable success among the cast. While Mindy Kaling is the exception, all the other actors of color have not reached any comparable fame. While you have the likes of John Krasinski, Steve Carell, Ed Helms, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, and Ellie Kemper starring in countless movies, the only minority actor besides Mindy to see any real success beyond “The Office” would be Craig Robinson. This success didn’t last long, and Robinson has not done anything of note besides some cameos and commercials in the last five years. While some of this disparity could be attributable to talent, the actors themselves were pigeonholed into playing these poor roles that did not give them anything to act with. The mistreatment of the show’s actors of color created inequitable outcomes that stunted the growth of the actors of color’s careers and ambitions. 

While I may have touched on it earlier, I want to stress the point of the show portraying no repercussions for racist behavior. If you were to ask fans of the show their favorite character, on average you would probably find that one of their favorite characters is Michael Scott. And, as I pointed out before, he is the character who commits most of the bigotry. So why is he almost universally adored? It comes down to the way our society extends grace to and humanizes those least deserving. Michael Scott is objectively a bad person in the sense that he constantly perpetuates micro- and macro-aggressions, abuses his position of power, and positions the women in his life as objects. How can Michael commit such atrocious acts and then be redeemed in any way? It is because our society is so ready to extend grace to bigots.

Granted, a lot of Michael’s ignorance does stem from his immense lack of emotional and situational intelligence. This does remove him of some culpability, but whatever the cause of bigotry, the outcome is always just as harmful. So then why are we humanizing the perpetrator rather than the victims? Especially when Michael’s growth throughout the show doesn’t involve any atonement for his racism, how can anyone continue to support this show? Although Michael from “The Office” is not the disease, he is the symptom of our inequitable culture designed to grant whiteness grace without any repercussions or any thought given to the victims. We see this play out in real life with Chris Harrison’s attempt to extend grace to the blatant racist “Bachelor” contestant Rachael Kirkonnell. Why should we excuse racists just because they were young when they were partying on a plantation? This extension of grace is fueling the right fighting this “culture war” to strip human rights away from Black voters, Asian Americans, and trans people.

In order to fight back in this war against racial inequity, we must start with denouncing and removing outgrowths of cultural bigotry and racism on which we stood in the past. Though at the time these jokes may have seemed harmless, it is now evident that they spit in the face of the anti-racist society we strive for. We need to remove antiquated values from our mainstream culture, so they no longer influence those in the present. I implore you all to join me in my call to remove “The Office” from mainstream culture, so we can travel into the future unencumbered. 

Robby Greenspan can be reached at rgreenspan@wesleyan.edu