Amid the COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter chaos of June 2020, Brett Craig was ousted as the chief creative officer from the largest ad agency on the West Coast. He wrote an email in response to a voice casting recommendation from a member of his team: “Not so urban.” His point was that the voice felt stereotypically “black” and that this particular voice would read as racist and pandering.

But that summer, it was posted on Instagram as an indictment. A nothing email, held on to for five years, was opportunistically blasted in the heat of the BLM riots to paint Craig as an unrepentant racist.