"We don’t even tolerate people brining up concerns of racism here." Translation: "we don't want to admit that we have a toxic, racist corporate culture so we're going to blame the messenger."
The emphasis here is on racism, but there's a ton of casual sexism -- and I'd be surprised if ageism wasn't present, too.
This is, at best, a company where HR have taken their eye off the ball. More likely, there are serious institutional failings (and probable harrassment lawsuits coming down the pipe in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... if they don't do something about the corporate culture fast).
Note: this is me trying to stay dispassionate and non-angry. If I was the author of this piece I'd be incandescent. Props to him for staying calm and documenting this stuff rather than simply walking out. Or exploding.
It's hyperbole meant to express my profound outrage at an apparently outrageous situation. To be clear, I do not endorse murder but when reading the article, I empathized with the author in a way that made me feel murderously angry.
I think this company is not such a great place to work... if you are black. Having mentioned that... uh... MURDER???
We should try to keep in mind that this company really may be no worse than the average SF company full of people accustomed to getting their own way. Oftentimes, people just don't know they are being offensive. It is not malice, so much as the obliviousness that accompanies any privilege. These people DO NOT deserve to die. I personally don't think anyone does.
People have a right to be disappointed here, but really, let's try to elevate the tone.
I totally agree that nobody deserves to die. I do not actually endorse murder, or any form of violent response to oppression.
As I stated earlier, I was being hyperbolic. I had a strong emotional response to the article and I made a joke about it. I did not mean to debase the quality of the conversation here and I regret the callous way I expressed what I said.
I ask if that’s the word he used verbatim, and Mike says yes. I say if he wants to say that to me I’ll take that comment and all the rest to HR because I’ve been documenting everything racist he’s said, and Mike nods and says “yeah” and “ok” like he understands or like he cares.
Also, at some point after this conversation took place, one of the women looked at my prized necklace and said “Hey, that looks like a calculator, is that a calculator?”
I said “um no, it’s a necklace, it’s African, from Nairobi.”
And she replies “Oh, huh…..well, it looks like a calculator.”
Dumbwhite------
If this is an accurate recollection, the author is a seriously disturbed person who should not be in this or any other workplace. If this is not an accurate recollection... I'm not sure the conclusion is any different.
Certainly there are workplace shootings where the perpetrator appears to have a very similar attitude - the Omar Thornton case, for instance:
Kixeye is obviously a company with a corporate culture in which people vigorously insult each other in a typical young male style. A similar institution is the US military - at least at the enlisted level. Race relations in the military are and always have been excellent, so perhaps the hypothesis that coarse humor is the cause of racial hostility could use a little more exploring.
I wouldn't want to work at a company like Kixeye, though. It's obviously an even worse fit for the OP. And that's not even to mention that this kind of office culture is actually illegal in our great nation, land of the free and home of the brave. This is irresponsible toward the investors, at least...
> If this is an accurate recollection, the author is a seriously disturbed person
So you're saying that an overly defensive reaction to someone misunderstanding a fashion object means he's likely to shoot the place up? That a guy gets systematically discriminated against at the workplace, and you're worried he's too angry about it? And that he might get violent about it because one single other person one time did? And that the U.S. military, which features numerous official directives against racial discrimination, is an aptly analogous institution?
Numerous of his comments reek of pure dehumanizing hate. He sounds exactly like Omar Thornton. Or Colin Ferguson. It actually wouldn't be difficult to suggest further examples.
Furthermore, right below us on the thread, and also above us in a more allusive context, are comments encouraging him to react in an "incandescent," murderous rage.
Should I assume the white person is Italian, Irish, German, Russian, or what?
"Whiteness" is defined in contrast to a person's blackness. You can't talk about racism against whites without first acknowledging a previous racism by whites.
This isn't "typical young male style"; it's typical douchebag style. If only they had the wit to at least be funny. Sometimes witty charm can go a long way. But these guys just seem like boring, unintelligent, run-of-the-mill idiots. Oh, and I wouldn't even dare call this "humor", coarse or not. You've now insulted the rich, long history of the term.
> Note: this is me trying to stay dispassionate and non-angry. If I was the author of this piece I'd be incandescent. Props to him for staying calm and documenting this stuff rather than simply walking out. Or exploding
I couldn't even make it to the end, I think I just managed to read 80% of the whole piece, I'm pretty, pretty f.ing mad, and I've never even been to the States.
A little OT: And while we're on this, I guess this is a moment as good as any to get it off my chest, that is to say that nasty s.it like this happens not only in the States, but here in (Eastern) Europe, too.
I work in a small company, I'm IT, and around last week or so one of my (female, white) colleagues just out of the blue proffered somth. like "I'd kill all the gipsies, they're not human". I (white male, early 30s) at first tried to take it easy, made a little fun of her, to see if she was serious (she was), and then 10-15 minutes later I confronted her directly. The part that did it for me, at which even now, when I'm remembering the whole thing, makes me angry, it's the "they're not human" part. She is a really nice person otherwise, happily married, no children yet, but yet she said that nasty phrase as the most natural thing ever.
A friend once advised me, to seriously and intently ask such people "what the fuck is wrong with you?" (and possibly shake your head a bit in a confused mildly disgusted manner). Then walk away, because whatever they have to say is not going to be worth your time.
The one time I applied this, it netted me a rather sincere apology half an hour later, so I guess it has some merit in at least some of the situations.
(note that I was not in the group being discriminated against, I don't think it'd be a good approach if I were)
Interesting read. The number of times the author mentions "white men" honestly made me uncomfortable. How is a statement like "Steve then proceeds to do what white men always can’t help but do: “educate.”" not racist in and of itself?
Without a doubt it's racist. But if you consider power structures and privilege, not all racism is equally bad. As a white male, I'd rather he not have that opinion of me based solely on my race, but I'm willing to give him some leeway due to his experiences.
Meh that is bullshit. What makes that more acceptable than calling someones dress thuggish because it appears similar to what all the gang members you went to school with wore?
I think if he were wearing baggy jeans and gold-chains, the thuggish comment would have made more sense. His dress is more reminiscent of a gay san franciscan than a gang-banging Angeleno.
On the other hand, he's black and he's dressing different from other people at the office, so it's "thuggish"
His racist comments and the thuggish comment are both on the "bad" side of the moral scale when taken alone. But when we look at the overall situation in the US, racism against black people is worse to me than racism against white people, systemically speaking.
I wish that neither Kixeye employees nor the blogger made racist comments, but we can decry one as worse than the other.
>What makes that more acceptable than calling someones dress thuggish because it appears similar to what all the gang members you went to school with wore?
The power differential between them. This guy's racism exists on tumblr and is targeted at noone, the racism he suffered at work was going from a manager to a lower employee. It's the same reason teacher-pupil relationships are never acceptable, no matter the age or maturity of the student.
Is it racist on a micro level? Yes. However, keep in mind this a black man telling you about his personal experiences working in the valley, so you can imagine how often this happens to him (read: this happens a lot).
Also, that judgement really doesn't affect the manager, as he was just able to walk out of that meeting and continue to be a shithead.
> How is a statement like "Steve then proceeds to do what white men always can’t help but do: “educate.”" not racist in and of itself?
It is racist. Anti-white racism is a common feature of modern black culture, but it's not considered controversial because of the traditional oppression of black people and the lingering effects that has today.
There are several definitions of racist talk, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)". Lots of people like this definition because it's nice and simple and it means black people in the USA can be racist to white people if they say things like "Dumbwhite".
There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist talk is talk that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/white/black/g and make it just as racist.
So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
I thought their ads were bad enough. Assuming this story is true, it sounds like Kixeye is the absolute epitome of the worst that our profession has to offer.
I quit reading once I realized I was reading a gay man denouncing gentrifiers as being "neoliberal colonizers". Ugh... he may have experienced racism but he's also suffering from self delusion.
I agree - s/he had a complaint about "denouncing gentrifiers as being "neoliberal colonizers"". But the sexual orientation is extraneous, unless s/he is going to relate sexual orientation to gentrification or colonization.
I dunno if he's just angry, I guess it makes sense, but I agree that some of his comments seem off, like he has "problems" beyond the situation, these are just as racist:
Also, at some point after this conversation took
place, one of the women looked at my prized necklace
and said “Hey, that looks like a calculator, is that a calculator?”
I said “um no, it’s a necklace, it’s African, from Nairobi.”
And she replies “Oh, huh…..well, it looks like a calculator.”
Dumbwhite**********
and then:
do what white men always can’t help but do: “educate.”
I get that he had a bad experience, but it seems he's descending into pointless casual racism too.
edit: this too
I cannot afford to take white people’s shit anymore.
It might. I'm also sure that if this were my problem, I might realize that 'doing what they do, while calling them out for doing it' might be seen as something of a double standard.
Much like some of the worst extremes of feminism, where it was forgotten that the goal was "equality", not "favorable treatment for women at the expense of men as recompense".
In my experience once people get to the point where they want to shout out their hurt/anger to the world they have gone past the 'civil' stage. This person has a pretty much slam dunk case for a hostile work environment, the lawsuit would wake up management to that fact.
Now it may be true that work was just the part that took them over the top, but I am not going to dismiss his clearly painful experience because of that.
I didn't mean to imply his experience should be dismissed or considered any less "real", just that his own issues seem to extend beyond this situation. I think this post would do much better if he were to remove all his own racism, because it devalues his point.
I can't relate to his experience (middle class, white, male) but what I can do is read what he wrote and what jumps out most at me is his own racism. I think that for a post like this to truly achieve anything (as in, explain the issue to those that have no way to understand or relate) it needs to be without any sort of... I guess distraction.
It reflects poorly on me and everyone else that is unable to separate what is ultimately meaningless (his own racism) from the general point (kixeye has bad employees / management) and I think your point about his level of anger could be the reason why this actually has value (shows he is so angry / upset he lets himself become racist) to the post.
I want to care about his problem but I can't relate so I'm stuck trying to take value from what he has said and I can't do that without being overwhelmed by his own racism. I think what tptacek said above is right though, he doesn't matter, the post isn't about him, it's about the people at kixeye.
I'll leave my comment just for the sake of not destroying the conversation, but I no longer think it has value here.
I think your comment does have value, its why I responded to it, to add context.
Racism and all *ism has an interesting (as in sociological) property that like electric charge is simulates the opposite charge on the other side of the dielectric. I happen to fall into the last unprotected class on the planet (old fat white guys :-) but having worked with and at times managed a very diverse set of folks my entire life it became clear there are people who are racists by 'choice' and people who are reflexively racist.
Lets postulate for the sake of example that racism had a measurable quantity, from 1.0 which is some sort of 'my race is the only one worth anything' to the 0.0 which is complete blindness to race in thought, speech, or action.
The perception of racism or sexism for people whom have discussed the experience with me was that one person could exhibit say 0.5 units of bias, and they they fall into a thought process that everyone is 0.5 racist. It very much shares a sort of 'herd immunity' reflex. If 90% percent of the folks in the group are blind to race issues then the 10% who aren't will stick out. What percentage of people have to be tolerably racist before its toxic? Does it matter? Why would anyone tolerate any sort racism in the work place?
So if person A is racist by choice, which is to say they have done some sort of evaluation and decided that race has an effect which transcends environment or skills, their actions and comments will create in people of that 'other' race a reflexive alter-racism (and always people are not perfect reflectors, for some it bounces off, for others it gets amplified). Now you get something like racism amplification by stimulated emission of insults [1} or something. That sort of situation is, painful, toxic to morale, and legally actionable.
The critical point though is we have to see this sort of missive not as 'professional victims' (although there are such people, painting any individual into that group without first hand knowledge is probably wrong) but as a signal that you have a problem. And getting everyone to buy into the notion that we're all individuals and not everyone finds ethnic jokes or sex jokes funny, is one of the more important jobs for management. As an individual you're best off trying not to be part of the problem.
There is a huge chunk of Tumblr that sounds identical in tone and language. They all feed off of each other. He came into his job sounding like this, it didn't happen recently. Tumblr is their outlet.
Not that that in any way justifies his treatment, which is beyond bad and well into legally actionable.
I agree with the general point that the author's own baggage nudges him toward an archetype I find exhausting.
But the 'educate' bit is on-point. It's similar to womens complaints about "mansplaining". It's not tit-for-tat racism; it's identifying a common behavior that objectively (and for nigh-on-tautological reasons) is something only really done by white men.
And as to the "white people's shit": that does strike me as tit-for-tat racism.
But just as I wouldn't judge any of the dude-bros at that company for their failure to be perfectly enlightened beings when they hurl a given thoughtless remark, I certainly can't find the moral high-ground to judge anyone who's, daily, on the receiving end of such nonsense for lashing out in kind while venting.
>It's not tit-for-tat racism; it's identifying a common behavior that objectively (and for nigh-on-tautological reasons) is something only really done by white men.
Yes? When something is statistically and objectively perpetrated by one group, it's not racist to note as much when someone of said group does said thing.
e.g. "Mansplaining" describes a behavior perpetrated overhwelmingly by men. By not by all men. And it's not right to automatically assume a given man is going to mansplain something.
But when a man starts mansplaining, it's not misandry to note that mansplaining is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men.
If crime were perpetrated, objectively and statistically overwhelmingly, by black people, or black people were objectively and statistically overwhelmingly criminals, it would be fair to talk about crime being a thing black people do.
The crucial difference is the statistics do not remotely support such assertions. In fact, they flatly reject such relationships.
Nor is being a criminal remotely causally linked to being black, the way being ignorant of straight white male privilege is almost (again: almost tautologically) causally linked to being a straight white man, or the way being a 'mansplainer' is almost causally linked to mansplaining. [1]
[1] To state it more explicitly: you can't likely grow up mansplaining and reach maturity without having the tendency pointed out to you if you're not a man. Because our cultural baggage is that women defer to men and thus face more scrutiny/skepticism/criticism than men when they do disagree.
So even if we assume that everyone starts off equally likely to be a 'mansplainer' by mere chance, the female mansplainers are overwhelmingly going to have that tendency pointed out, challenged and be made aware of it.
Mansplaining adults will, thus, be almost entirely men because of said cultural baggage.
Similarly, it's pretty much impossible to grow up and reach maturity ignorant of remaining straight white male privilege in the US unless you happen to be a straight white male. If we again assume that the tendency to be 'blind' to remaining racism/sexism/homophobia is randomly distributed, only those with that 'blindness' who are straight/white/males are likely to reach maturity without having encountered situations that made it impossible to remain ignorant of such remaining tensions.
Applying the same considerations: if we assume the tendency to commit crimes is evenly/randomly distributed at birth, there's no evidence that non-black would-be criminals overwhelmingly receive some life experience that steers them away from crime. To the contrary we find that white would-be criminals are much more likely to have life experiences that result in the crimes they do commit being excused or ignored.
So not only is there no evidence that being black makes you more likely to commit crime, there is evidence that being white makes you far less likely to be charged, prosecuted and found guilty.
That is: a black person is no more likely to commit crime, refuting the assertion, and they have the deck stacked against them, meaning that asserting such a link is not only wholly unfounded by the data, but it takes a further act of white privilege to ignore the existence of the stacked deck.
He seems to have anger and martyrdom issues all over - even the start of the story. In a coffee shop on a laptop, man asks "Hey, do you play video games?", gives him a card as an IT recruiter looking for video games testers.
His thoughts on this? "Is this guy for real, or an uber-creep [hitting on me]"...
Which I gotta say, even from his telling of what happened, wasn't a possibility that entered my mind.
You're right, he should have avoided confusion/inaccuracy by just saying "neoliberal subjugators". If you think that's delusional, I have some bad news for you.
> I quit reading once I realized I was reading a gay man denouncing gentrifiers as being "neoliberal colonizers". Ugh... he may have experienced racism but he's also suffering from self delusion.
In other words, you just stopped reading and don't care about the alleged racism.
I don't agree with your tone. Should we all be forced to read alleged racism stories or what is you point?
IDC about that, and for what's worth try watching Frost / Nixon with no sound. Would you still find it awesome? Doubt it.
The same goes for reading through an article and trying to ignore his rage induced ramblings. As more than one commenter before me pointed out, he is biased and it shows. Badly.
I agree mostly. He may have experienced some racism just like everyone will at some point. However, he is obviously just as racist. He is constantly stereotyping throughout the entire post. It's almost comical. He doesn't understand that which is different and he is part of the problem.
Gentrification is huge problem that affects the black community much more than others, mostly due to systemic racism and economic oppression that keeps black community poor and without the ability to affect those communities.
I know another dev who used to work for another small gaming company in SF. He was non-chinese asian, and the management was mostly Han-Chinese and he also got a lot of vaguely racial comments and despite being a rather productive employee, quit a few months later in disgust at disrespect.
I can only imagine this kind of attitude can be go unchecked in an insular frat-boy-ish culture where strong ties and long hours are valued more than respect and work output.
Definitely something to watch out for - even if you're in the in-group and not being harassed, it's not fun witnessing this kind of petty abuse.
I agree with taking up a lawsuit. He is a racist dick.
On that same note, don't bring yourself to his level and start throwing out racist slurs too. Your words are public domain now, and if they get a lawyer with any sense, they might find a defense in your offense.
kick his teeth in in court though! (figuratively of course)
Thanks for submitting this, and having the courage to speak out about a really awful corporate culture. I had a feeling they were like this from their horrible, obnoxious recruiting billboards, and it's kind of sad vindication to see how terrible they truly are in practice. I hope the author finds a nice job that fits with his moral compass and treats him (and everyone else) with the respect he deserves.
This really isn't that surprising to me. Game testers are the same young kids who are running around xbox games going out of their way to be as offensive as possible to everyone. It should come as no shock that they act the same way at work when work is just an extension of their regular gaming life. I'm not defending it, mind you, since Kixeye is going way too far with it, but the 'culture' he speaks of is the online gaming culture.
It should come as a shock when they act the same way at work. Why? Because we're trying to be a civilized society and that kind of bullshit is expressly illegal.
You can't (and shouldn't) regulate online gaming culture, which isn't tragic because you can opt out of it (I don't play Xbox games online for that very reason) but you can't expect a person to opt out of the workplace.
I'm sorry, but this kind of whining is what I've heard from professional victims my entire life. Talking about gentrifiers as invaders discredits the rest of the story in my eyes. As a former trailer park country boy who grew up in a mostly black county, I can attest to how blatantly (and without even realizing it) racist and insensitive whites who grew up in affluent suburbs can be. My best friend (since age 11) is a black male who dominates at his company. He has told me dozens of stories of dealing with these kinds of white boys. All the stories end the same way: He tells them, directly, in the same manner as if he were talking to a drunken buddy making an ass of himself at a bar, "what you just said was offensive/racist/etc. I'm gonna assume that you didn't realize it, but now you do. Cool?" He told me this has resulted in all of them apologizing with minimal awkwardness afterwards. Racism/racial insensitivity isn't an incurable disease. It's the result of attitudes and ignorance. If people would, instead of isolating people displaying these behaviors, instead approach them and talk to them and continue to treat them as friends, it would go a long way towards fixing things.
I'm going to assume you don't realize that by calling him a "whiner," "professional victim," and by blaming him for not responding in a way you would have liked him to, that you're dangerously close to victim-blaming. If you didn't know, hopefully now you do. Cool?
This seems like a vent piece. It's not his job to "cure" racism and he most certainly has the right to be upset. People don't like the way he's conveying that? Well that's fine -- I have the feeling that he doesn't hold their expectations in very high regard anyway
Maybe you didn't notice, but I just need to point out that you responded to an article about deplorable racism with the terms whining and professional victims.
Really? You're telling someone who is being treated in a sub-human way to deal with this on the specific terms that are most comfortable to the in-power assholes who are being offensive? Not everyone can (or should) be exactly like your black friend.
Don't fault people who have to put up with this shit, day in and day out, for not having limitless reserves of patience. His job isn't Racism Educator, so why should he have to act like it?
I mean, yeah, ideally everyone is infinitely calm and can call these things out in a measured way every time they happen. But you're asking a lot from the victims here in order to spare the feelings of the aggressors. (Perhaps unintentional aggressors, but aggressors just the same.) What you're suggesting isn't easy.
And what's to say that the person he calls out will take it well? Look at what happened at his workplace: they told him that the things he was complaining about were only jokes and that he was too sensitive. Look at what is happening inthisthread: people are complaining about his tone, complaining about his word choice, and insinuating that he's making things up. That's not even going into the people who start out ostensibly agreeing before segueing into what sounds like their main point: how racist they think the author was being.
So give the tone argument a rest. It's one of the most reliable distractions that people fall back on to avoid discussing racism, sexism, and all other kinds of oppression, and it's already taken over way too much of this thread.
> Talking about gentrifiers as invaders discredits the rest of the story in my eyes.
Gentrifiers are economic invaders that dismantle the ability of the poor (particularly people of color) to live in their established communities. This is a known form of systemic oppression that disproportionately effects people of color, esp. black folk.
> If people would, instead of isolating people displaying these behaviors, instead approach them and talk to them and continue to treat them as friends, it would go a long way towards fixing things.
This whole blog post is about someone who ultimately does point this kind of behavior out to a manager only to have that manager totally ignore them. In non-professional contexts, calling people out has gotten folks attacked, beaten, harassed, maimed, and killed. The solution to ending this kind of oppression is not niceness and having those being fucked over bend over backwards.
It should be noted that your friend as a higher up at a company is an exception to the rule, as black people are not well represented in management in the business world and often do not have the luxury of using authority to back up their call out.
> "He tells them, directly, in the same manner as if he were talking to a drunken buddy making an ass of himself at a bar, "what you just said was offensive/racist/etc. I'm gonna assume that you didn't realize it, but now you do. Cool?" He told me this has resulted in all of them apologizing with minimal awkwardness afterwards."
Your world of rainbows and unicorns sounds amazing, where all racism comes from under-informed people who can then be rightly fixed by prompt education!
Clearly, oppressively racist institutions where people are powerless to correct the situation don't exist. Where they appear to exist, the victims just didn't assert themselves strongly enough. If they just calmly told their oppressors that they were being racist and offensive, they would stop!
This totally explains away the entirety of slavery and apartheid. I'm just shocked that no one over hundreds of years just nicely stopped someone, explained how what they were doing is wrong, and had them stop!
</snark>
Seriously though, I'm glad that your experiences have been exclusively in places where people actually respond to criticism and education. And I mean that - facing the sort of horrific, powerless racism that many people do every day is terrible, and no one deserves to experience it from either end of the stick. Your experience is not generalizable to all instances of racism - it's not even generalizable to a minority of it.
And really, the only reason you aren't a Baptist is because you haven't given the Bible a real chance! All you have to do is read God's Word and let him into your heart and of course you'll believe exactly the same things I do to the letter even if they aren't actually found literally stated anywhere in the Bible.
It doesn't sound like the people at this company gave a damn about being racist or offensive. Also, it's a lot easier to correct someone when you out-rank them or have some stature within the company. You say your friend "dominates at his company"; the guy in this story was a peon. He's not a "professional victim", he just got shit on by a bunch of racists assholes.
While I am completely on the side of the original author here, I do agree that a lot of this requires direct and aggressive feedback. None of this passive-aggressive shit. That's why it keeps happening.
Clearly this institution has huge problems and what they are doing is totally wrong. BUT... the author just sat there and took it. He internalized the issues and let them consume him, going home, smoking weed and collapsing inward on himself. The guy is gay, so it makes sense that he reacted passive aggressively. Females tend to behave this way, which is why a lot of workplace related sexist shit still goes on. Girls don't speak up, they're submissive. They don't make it known that what is happening is wrong, and so nothing is done about it.
Obviously, in a perfect world, no one should have to speak up about shit like this! It's wrong! These guys that are acting like this are out of control. But... at the same time you cannot sit and take it and internalize it and think that magically things will get better. Stand up tall, and tell the person directly.
Be clear. Be loud.
I am so happy that your (black) friend does what he does. That is EXACTLY what you need to do. And yeah, it's unfortunate that the burdon is on the person being offended when what they are doing (simply existing with a different skin color or sexual orientation) is not wrong. But... that is the only way that things will change.
"I take a very deep breath through my nose. I tell him, rather I clarify for him that many things said by him and other people in the office has been racist, sexist, homophobic, transpho-
The guy is gay, so it makes sense that he reacted passive aggressively.
That doesn't make any sense. Being interested in same-sex sex has nothing to do with passive aggression.
Females tend to behave this way, which is why a lot of workplace related sexist shit still goes on.
Women speaking up about workplace sexism is often a job-ender, if not a career-ender. That's not submissiveness, it's business acumen.
Be clear. Be loud.
That's not a complete solution. It's step 2. Step 1 is to educate enough men and white people that we can actually have a culture where clear, loud pronouncements of wrongdoing are actually heard and taken seriously, without career repercussions.
And I'm assuming when you say "Be clear. Be loud." you're speaking to white men, right? Because women and people of color already have to do way too much education in their spare time, and it's the privileged who have the extra time and energy to pick up the slack and speak out about these issues, right?
>I cannot afford to take white people’s shit anymore. That’s been my mantra this year, and I’m still on it, even if that means getting the law involved.
From the comment above (and several other parts of his article) he certainly appears to be just as racist as the people he's trying to demonize. Not to mention there's a crazy amount of self entitlement going on.
>I had a whole month of potential creative and community building energy stripped from me for the sake of this company’s profits. That shit ain’t cool.
A "whole" month of your "potential creative and community building energy"? Really? I have LOTS of months where I don't get to focus ANY time on any sort of creative or community building endeavors because I have other things that need to be taken care of.
I do not condone what he experienced at his workplace and that's terrible that it happened. However, his tone in the article and apparent prejudice towards white people makes it difficult for me to summon a lot of nice things to say.
Are you serious? You read the description of events in the author's post and your response is to complain about how you have it worse because you're busy?
he certainly appears to be just as racist as the people he's trying to demonize
There are several definitions of racist talk, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)". Lots of people like this definition because it's nice and simple and it means black people in the USA can be racist to white people if they say things like "Dumbwhite".
There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist talk is talk that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/white/black/g and make it just as racist.
So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
Please keep repeating this as many times as it needs to be said. I hate how the word racist has been watered down to the point of meaning anything that acknowledges someone's race. It's a game of false-equivalency that lets, ahem, white people ignore actual racism because "black people are racist too". The fact is, there is a world of difference between systemic racism and this kind of "racism" that the author is guilty of. Trying to equate the two and thus water down the severity of real racism is despicable.
Imagine you hear a story about a guy whose house gets burned to the ground. All of his possessions are destroyed. My thought is that you'd naturally feel sympathy for the victim.
Now say you found out the victim was himself a serial arsonist who had burned down other houses. Do you still feel as bad for him?
In my opinion there is no difference between that story and this one. A racist man is angry that another racist man made racist comments toward him.
The analogy doesn't hold up unless he actually expressed racist views in the workplace. He's not a serial arsonist, he's just a guy who builds bonfires in the privacy of his home.
There is overt racism. It's disappointing that no-one else stood up against the blatant examples given in this article. I agree with CStross, that company is ignoring serious problems and leaving themselves wide open to big lawsuits.
There is covert racism. That's harder to stop, but a good way to start ending it is to accept that in the workplace you might want to restrict the "jokes" that you tell.
And then there's all the sub-conscious prejudice that's so hard to eliminate.
"then proceeds to do what black men always can’t help but do"
"black men always telling which way is up because they feel they are the “authority” when it comes to any and everything, most often when they don’t know shit about shit"
" I know when black people start to speak down to me from their pedatsol which is white privilege, they aren’t listening, nor will they"
"I cannot afford to take black people’s shit anymore."
Those are all quotes from the article, except I put 'black' where the author put 'white', both sets are clearly an unacceptable way to speak. While I am sure this guy has faced real disadvantage from some bigoted people, this post is laced with racism against white people and ridiculously over-the-top statements about colonialism and "neoliberal white supremacy".
WHO CARES? Yes, let's suspend his Guardian Of Society Medal Of Honor until we sort his personal politics out. Meanwhile, this guy says that management at a large SF gaming company is routinely harassing black and latino staff members. The story here isn't about him.
And here I was thinking brogramming was just a total self-aware meme that went from pun to Twilio's joke presentation to media hysteria. Are you telling me this is a real subculture which exists in Silicon Valley now?
Because I didn't see a better place to comment and I value your response:
When should it be considered acceptable for a victim to mimic their aggressor's behavior (especially when it is similar behavior that caused the victimization to begin with)?
Disclaimer: I'm trying to understand and not support to any of the GP comments.
And right there is the classic holding pattern. 40 minutes into posting too, not bad.
The pattern is:
Apply standard of neutrality to poster, and find poster wanting - hence remain skeptical to keep an open mind.
"there could be a misunderstanding."
The promulgator and supporters are always people who are at best well meaning, but generally oblivious to privilege or its manifestations.
This will be pointed out, and the promulgator will point out how they have done X or are friends with Y in defence.
So first off - you aren't being targeted. The promulgator is acting rationally based on his experiences.
The best examples to counter this were an AMA from a guy who had a sex change operation. He then could clarify what Male privilege is, and how you would be completely oblivious to it until its gone.
It turns down as a woman a simple thing like walking down a road changes in a manner drastically different from what men are used to.
Similarly there was an AMA from a girl who used to look good, and then lost that advantage. All of a sudden she saw privileges she assumed were just normal things - disappear.
It turns out that men don't normally open doors for you, or are helpful.
Unfortunately when you react with outrage, most people have no idea what you are talking about and respond with:
"It unnecessarily adds doubt to the claims being made"
My personal theory on why this particular POV always attracts folk is as follows:
• We see a stranger (call them the victim) on the internet making strong, negative claims against a set of people who are also strangers.
• We often only have the victim's word to judge these claims by.
• Therefore, there will often be debate about these words (which we can talk about with certainty) instead of the claims made (which we only know about second-hand.)
Starting from this perspective seems to lead to really, really degenerate conversation. It tends to be worst when talking about rape or sexual harassment charges.
(There's sometimes an additional weird layer where commenters think the original victim shouldn't make claims they can't prove to third parties, regardless of the truth of those claims.)
I see the same - its a terrible pattern and the only time it gets broken is on the extremely rare occasions when someone with experience AND ability to express the issue precisely shows up.
Other wise its always a death spiral at worst or a holding pattern on average.
I think yours is a larger general case - and I am trying to invoke perhaps a child case with the addition of privilege blindness.
What is tragic that this is a perfect example of good intentions that lead to terrible results.
In brief, saying "X is wrong, because X subscribes to ideology I" is not a logically valid argument. Willing to hear X's argument and consider it on its own merits does not grant legitimacy to I.
The narrator's argument isn't "white people are colonizers, so...", he merely enumerates what he has experienced. That phrasing is unfortunate (but pales in comparison to being told far more offensive things _at work_) it doesn't detract from (or add to) his argument, i.e., it's an irrelevant detail.
To be clear, I'm not dismissing his argument, I was simply answering the question "WHO CARES".
There's a time to vent and a time to make a case. I personally feel that the author would have been better served making a case (EEOC) instead of venting in a public method. Especially since the identities of the author and the company in question are very easy to track down. This could have long term negative consequences for the author, and may make his claim harder if he does decided to take his former employer to court.
If somebody is prone to see the world in a black and white us v. them way, they might have a different perception of what is really happening, leading them to conclude that everybody is discriminating against them.
I'm not saying that this is what happened. You asked why it might be relevant and I just wanted to point this out.
I agree, but some of his content will be a barrier for some people. I'm sure if the tone of the post was milder, most of the comments here would be supportive.
IANAL, but I wonder if this post will hurt his chances of successfully pursuing his employers?
I'm sure if the tone of the post was milder, most of the comments here would be supportive.
Why do you believe that? Have you been in a bunch of pitch perfect productive conversations about racism? In my experience, when one tactic for derailing conversations about racism fails people just pick up another one. In this conversation you see many such strategies at play:
I see all of these as efforts to not talk about the actual structures being criticized in the post:
* Saying the tone makes the message unlistenable
* Talking about the extent to which the post is effective activism ("he would be more effective if...")
* Stopping conversation do to perceived insurmountable "bias"
* Refocusing on other forms of racism (like the dumbwhite* comments)
* Talking about whether people are "racists" and refocusing on their overall character.
It goes on and on. Pitch perfect tone doesn't get you through that wilderness.
And honestly, when someone has been through something so traumatic, demanding perfect pitch is heartless.
I'm not suggesting that the tone of the post determines its veracity. I am suggesting that the reaction the post has received here is due to its tone, not to its content. I'm fairly sure most commenters would agree that his ex-co-workers were racists (or, at the very least, extremely thoughtless). I'm not demanding a pitch perfect post on Tumblr at all, merely making an observation about the reactions.
I'm sure if the tone of the post was milder, most of the comments here would be supportive.
Why do you believe that? Have you been in a bunch of pitch perfect productive conversations about racism? In my experience, when one tactic for derailing conversations about racism fails people just pick up another one. In this conversation you see many such strategies at play:
I see all of these as efforts to not talk about the actual structures being criticized in the post:
* Saying the tone makes the message unlistenable
* Talking about the extent to which the post is effective activism ("he would be more effective if...")
* Stopping conversation do to perceived insurmountable "bias"
* Refocusing on other forms of racism (like the dumbwhite* comments)
* Talking about whether people are "racists" and refocusing on their overall character.
It goes on and on. Pitch perfect tone doesn't get you through that wilderness.
And honestly, when someone has been through something so traumatic, demanding perfect pitch is heartless.
I'm sure if the tone of the post was milder, most of the comments here would be supportive.
Why do you believe that? Have you been in a bunch of pitch perfect productive conversations about racism? In my experience, when one tactic for derailing conversations about racism fails people just pick up another one. In this conversation you see many such strategies at play:
I see all of these as efforts to not talk about the actual structures being criticized in the post:
* Saying the tone makes the message unlistenable
* Talking about the extent to which the post is effective activism ("he would be more effective if...")
* Stopping conversation do to perceived insurmountable "bias"
* Refocusing on other forms of racism (like the dumbwhite* comments)
* Talking about whether people are "racists" and refocusing on their overall character.
It goes on and on. Pitch perfect tone doesn't get you through that wilderness.
And honestly, when someone has been through something so traumatic, demanding perfect pitch is heartless.
No, he doesn't. He just tells you how horrific it is that they are being racist, whilst ignoring the fact that he's letting off racist jibes any time someone says something ignorant (and in at least one of the occasions, honestly, not wilfully so).
Let's pretend for a minute that I think it's reasonable to swap black & white in these sentences and call them equivalent (I don't)... There's still a mammoth difference between opinions someone writes on a blog and things people say to their employees or coworkers at work.
I can't think of a time that I faced the level of ugliness laid out in this story even once in my 32 years, so the last thing that occurs to me when I read something like this is "Wow, the author is saying some completely unacceptably racist things"
[EDIT: Shit. I'm 34, not 32 or even 33. I have no idea why I can't keep that straight.]
Maybe you had a job or something that required you to write your name a lot when you were 32? I keep getting my address mixed up because it's almost, but not quite, identical to my old one. It can be pretty embarrassing.
I've been around these kind of complaints in person, and while I know that the injustices taking place are horrible and uncalled for, I also know that the complainer is also (not-so-subtly any more) racist as well. Perhaps he wasn't before he entered the school system or the workforce (not necessarily this job), but saying things like dumbwhite*, bringing up colonization like slavery as property is taking place in his neighbourhood (he's going through legal to get this solved, something slaves could never do), and repeatedly bringing up that his tormentors are white, male, rich, etc. just shows that he's brought his own racist viewpoints to the table.
This reminds me of the atmosphere in South Africa years after apartheid was rescinded. The atmosphere, not the gruesome crimes. Perhaps it can be justified, but it sure wasn't how MLK Jr. or Mandela (at least after he became president) attacked the problem and it's only good for outrage, not getting anything done.
White guilt isn't going to help solve racism, but I agree that the author deserves some justice.
There's a huge difference between stuff that those in power (the hegemony) say and do to minorities or others who are less powerful and what flows in the other direction.
On HN, you can usually be sure it's cluelessness. On the other hand, it's not really a cluelessness that can be addressed by lecturing about it: there are fundamentals that I've noticed are missing in a lot of people.
It doesn't help that a lot of the language of power dynamics was co-opted by the self-help community, which can often be legitimately criticized in these ways.
I am not sure he is using the tone argument, since he concludes with "but I agree that the author deserves some justice.". He may just be suggesting that many here at HN attack the author due to the racist tone of the post.
Pointing out an ugly tone does not mean you think it invalidates the argument.
I'm just saying as far as history has dictated, guys like MLK Jr. and Gandhi got a lot more support than those who tries to cut completely against the grain like Malcolm X in his earlier days.
As a minority, it is really, really hard to change or rectify the corruption of the majority by trying to fight them head-on. These sort of revolutions worked when the majority of the people overthrew a corrupt minority that had excessive power. However, thinking things over, I'm not sure if the author is even really out to solve the large racial issue in general with this post. I don't think that was his point, so maybe I'm offering suggestions to a goal that he never had in the first place. If this, like most tumblr posts, is just to get it out in writing so he can think clearly and draw attention by the public to the situation, then yes, it works.
I don't think my reaction has anything to with "white guilt". I'm only convinced that I would have an incredibly hard time dealing with the situation the author presented gracefully, and as such I'm not that interested in debating whether this is an completely appropriate or graceful reaction to something really horrible.
This is the equivalent of saying the author of this post is a reverse racist. When was the last time a white person was killed for being white? When was the last time someone came up to a white person and said they should be grateful that their ancestors were slaves? When was the last time the government systematically dismantled the white community in order to enforce racist class oppression?
Repeat after me: WHITE PEOPLE DO NOT SUFFER FROM RACISM. Even if an individual was prejudiced against someone because they are white, they would not be affected outside of that one interaction. White folks' social standing and ability to survive are not attacked daily on the basis of their skin.
EDIT: This is in context for the United States based on the blog author being in SF.
White people might not suffer from racism where you are but thats not to say they never suffer from racism. Racism exists against all races and all over the world. We shouldn't be focusing on the race of the victims or even the perpetrators we should be focusing on stopping it period.
Good point, I've added a note to point out the context as referring to the United States.
EDIT: I would point out that some groups suffer much more from racism than others, so we should be aware of that reality in dealing with racism. To that end, whites in the United States are largely unaffected by racist attitudes.
Just look at the interracial rape and murder statistics. Blacks target whites for rape and murder in great quantities. During the Trayvon Martin debacle, a white kid in Kansas city was DOUSED IN GASOLINE and SET ON FIRE while two black kids say "you get what you deserve, white boy." Of course, you don't hear this in the media because the media wants to perpetuate a myth that whites aren't victims of racist violence. In reality, they are the primary ones.
I am slavic. Wendish, specifically, if you are familiar. I am glad that my ancestors were enslaved for a while. It brought my culture out of petty infighting and settled us in Northern Europe. My life is better today because my ancestors were enslaved. For me to run around with a chip on my shoulder demanding reparations would be ridiculous.
The government does systematically dismantle white communities. Try running around saying you're proud of being white. You're instantly labeled a bigot. A man recently tried trademarking the phrase "white pride, country wide". Despite trademarks for everything from "jewish pride" to "latino pride", he was denied. The FBI specifically targets white nationalist organizations-- Randy Weaver had his wife and son murdered at Ruby Ridge because he refused to falsely testify against his Aryan Nations associates.
Respectfully, I think you are mistaken. Whites are the people that built this country, and we are under attack for the same reason that Marathis are under attack in India, and Gazprom is stealing land from Nigerians. Bankers and commodity magnates would separate those attached to the soil from the lands which rightfully belong to them, so they can endlessly charge them for being there, as well as steal all the resources.
"Whites are the people that built this country." You are surely very wrong. This country was very literally built on the backs of minorities and slaves. You really think America would have near the economic power today without those years of free labor to farm their free (stolen) farm land?
The vast majority of slaves that we got of African origin were traded to us by other Africans. I'd say of the two possibilities of enslavement in Africa, being to a ship bound for the new world held the most promise. If you disagree, I will buy you a one way ticket to Liberia on the condition that you renounce your citizenship.
As a Slav, my people were in bondage much longer than blacks in the United States. Try an order of a millenia or two. I do not care. It is far more advantageous for me to be industrious and build personal wealth than blame distant oppressors for a few centuries of enslavement. I benefitted from the bad conditions of my ancestors, and guess what? So did blacks in the United States. They should stop being professional victims and make things if they want to have equal cultural influence.
Beyond that, this whole discussion is a distraction from the people that have real undue power, those in control of the banks and the media.... If we fight amongst ourselves about race we miss the man behind the Zion curtain.
Case in point, one of the strongest arguments against emancipation was that it would actually cripple the national economy. I expect that's not only in America either.
> Just look at the interracial rape and murder statistics. Blacks target whites for rape and murder in great quantities. During the Trayvon Martin debacle, a white kid in Kansas city was DOUSED IN GASOLINE and SET ON FIRE while two black kids say "you get what you deserve, white boy." Of course, you don't hear this in the media because the media wants to perpetuate a myth that whites aren't victims of racist violence. In reality, they are the primary ones.
Incidents of violence crime based on race occur, there is no disputing that. What we are talking about primarily is racism as it affects whites, both on a micro- and macro-level (which is annoying that you taking a derailment in this direction since the original story is a black man talking about individual racist experiences working in the valley, notice how you and others have made this about whites rather than racist treatment of people of color).
> I am slavic. Wendish, specifically, if you are familiar. I am glad that my ancestors were enslaved for a while. It brought my culture out of petty infighting and settled us in Northern Europe. My life is better today because my ancestors were enslaved. For me to run around with a chip on my shoulder demanding reparations would be ridiculous.
This is post hoc reasoning. You have no idea how the Wends would be as a culture today in the absence of enslavement. Also, your current standing today in no way makes amends for the rape and murder of a people in the past. It should be noted that the history of the Wends is much further removed than the history of blacks in the United States, and that white-ness has become the social norm in the western world, so you benefit from a social condition that directly depends on the exploitation of people of color if you live in one of those western countries. Also, the experience of you as Wendish is extremely different some a black person living in the United States, so I don't believe there is even a comparison to make here.
> The government does systematically dismantle white communities.
Show me where the United States is actively dismantling or has actively dismantled white community based on race in modern history, because AFAIK there is no such scenario.
> Try running around saying you're proud of being white. You're instantly labeled a bigot. A man recently tried trademarking the phrase "white pride, country wide". Despite trademarks for everything from "jewish pride" to "latino pride", he was denied.
In the United States, white-ness is considered the cultural default. Most of society in the United States already promotes white-ness above the cultures of people of color. Also, white supremacy groups continue to operate and hate speech is not a crime in the US, so these groups may continue to operate if they so choose to. Note that if you are trying to promote white superiority, then yes you are a bigot.
> The FBI specifically targets white nationalist organizations-- Randy Weaver had his wife and son murdered at Ruby Ridge because he refused to falsely testify against his Aryan Nations associates.
The Aryan Nations are not just an advocacy group, they are a separatist group that advocates and performs acts of violence. These groups are investigated by the FBI for operating in that way.
> Respectfully, I think you are mistaken. Whites are the people that built this country
This is grossly mistaken. While whites have contributed to what this country is today, so have non-white immigrants and slaves and their descendants. If you truly believe that white people made the US, you need to crack open a history book.
> we are under attack for the same reason that Marathis are under attack in India, and Gazprom is stealing land from Nigerians.
I won't be making comments about society and cultures that are not western, as rarely do such comparisons actually contain truth, and I do not have enough knowledge of those situations to accurately describe them.
Out of curiosity, which country's government are you talking about? I looked up "Wendish" but can't tell which country you grew up in from that, and it sounds like you're talking about the USA otherwise.
Statistically, you would expect more crime against white people since there are so many more of them. What matters is the probability that a person of a given ethnicity is likely to be a victim of8 violence at the hands of someone else, not the absolute number of such instances.
Suppose in a population of 100, there are 20 blue and 80 green people. Suppose that 10 blue people are the victim of green crime in a given year, while blue people commit 20 crimes against green people in the same period. So you could say that blue people commit twice as much crime as green people, which is true, but that leaves out the fact of the population disparity. If a blue person has a 50% chance of criminal insult from a green person, while a green person only has a 25% chance of experiencing that, then it's obviously better to be green than it is to be blue because you are only half as likely to become a victim of crime.
Unfortunately, people such as yourself often look at the absolute numbers, compare the 20 blue-on-green crimes with the blue population size of 20, and leap to the conclusion that all blue people are criminals. While the percentage of criminals in the blue population is almost certainly higher on the basis of simple probability (as blue criminals would otherwise need to be >8 more active than green ones), what you have there is a correlative rather than a causal relationship : we don't know to what extent the incidence of criminality in a population causes crime against that population, a classic chicken-and-egg problem that most likely does not have a simple binary solution.
The concept that "Only white people can be racist" is widespread, similar to "Only women can be raped" - implying that it's impossible for white people to be discriminated against, or for males to feel sexually threatened. These lies are part of the problem.
Take a walk through half of Baltimore, friend, and you will discover that you will get the shit kicked out of you for being white. Murdered? Hopefully not, but I can assure you that, while the old, racist, static power structures of the USA are oppressive towards non-whites, power is not a static thing. It shifts depending on where you are. When you are taking said walk in Baltimore, and become surrounded by people who don't like you because of your skin color, you don't have power anymore. They do. I know this first hand. When I was 16, I took a short cut through a neighborhood that I shouldn't have. I was chased, cornered, and beaten by 5 young men. They were black, and they were yelling white slurs as they beat me and then branded the back of my neck with a lighter. I still have that little smiley on the back of my neck to this day. They didn't rob me by the way. NONE of my money was taken. They didn't even touch my wallet. They didn't want a white person in their neighborhood. Your theory holds up because you, clearly, have never lived in a majority black neighborhood in your entire life. It's obvious by your stupid statement. And no, I'm not a racist. Most of the black folks I grew up with would never have tolerated such a thing. They would have stopped it if they had seen it, but they weren't there.
He was wrong a couple of sentences but I think what OP is getting at is that the government has not and will not engage in a systematic apparatus of prejudice like Jim Crow laws, the radio-active half life of which stay with us for a long time.
So what about the rest of what he said?
> It's obvious by your stupid statement
There's no need for name calling. It's the lowest form of debate.
I've taken walks through Baltimore. Unfortunately an oppressed people will lash out at those who they think are oppressing them. You could have never performed any ill acts to those black men who beat you, but to them, you represent the reason why they think they can't get ahead. It's not right, but it is a reality.
Also, please don't support your views with the, "I have black friends" excuse. It doesn't help your cause.
>Take a walk through half of Baltimore, friend, and you will discover that you will get the shit kicked out of you for being white.
Hey there! I'm a white guy who has taken walks through Baltimore before— in fact, all of Baltimore. What you're talking about isn't at all systemic like the shit the OP has to deal with. Yes, white people are victims of racially-motivated crimes. In fact, some of them are event prosecuted as hate crimes! But it's not systemic, so comparing it to white-on-black racism isn't fair.
>Take a walk through half of Baltimore, friend, and you will discover that you will get the shit kicked out of you for being white.
Hey there! I'm a white guy who has taken walks through Baltimore before— in fact, all of Baltimore. What you're talking about isn't at all systemic like the shit the OP has to deal with. Yes, white people are victims of racially-motivated crimes. In fact, some of them are event prosecuted as hate crimes! But it's not systemic, so comparing it to white-on-black racism isn't fair.
>Take a walk through half of Baltimore, friend, and you will discover that you will get the shit kicked out of you for being white.
Hey there! I'm a white guy who has taken walks through Baltimore before— in fact, all of Baltimore. What you're talking about isn't at all systemic like the shit the OP has to deal with. Yes, white people are victims of racially-motivated crimes. In fact, some of them are event prosecuted as hate crimes! But it's not systemic, so comparing it to white-on-black racism isn't fair.
This attitude, and the casual "reverse" racism of this author, sets back social progress against institutional racism against blacks/hispanics so much.
I totally accept that blacks face more racism in many aspects of society today, especially professionally. But in Baltimore a bunch of black kids jumped me, and they told me it was because I was white and I "thought I could walk around their neighborhood" (a block from Penn Station which is actually pretty gentrified). It wasn't even a robbery, although they did rob me, but if that was their only goal they wouldn't have continued to beat me for the ten minutes after I had given up. Oh, and of course that's not considered a hate crime.
So when that happens, and then you tell me, in all caps, that white people are never the victims of racism, do you think I'm more or less inclined to agree with your other points?
Welcome to my world buddy. Any white (or middle eastern, as my good friend from Detroit can attest) person who has lived in a poor, mostly black neighborhood has had to deal with this shit. The fact that it is actively ignored by the media and government and dismissed as being criminally, rather than racially motivated is terrible. But having to listen to whites who have no idea it even exists proclaim that racism, a condition that all humans are prone to, can only infect whites is simply insulting.
"When was the last time a white person was killed for being white?"
I wasn't killed but I was beat to a pulp one day for being white by a group of people. My crime? Trying to shake a guy's hand that walked up to me. Apparently that was some sort of insult. Not institutional enough for you? A non-white police officer was literally 20 feet away from me and did absolutely nothing. Probably because he was scared.
I've never had it happen to me before or since but to say someone cannot be violently targeted for being white is absurd. Was it racism? Well, that depends on your definition of racism. Some only consider it racism when perpetrated by someone who belongs to a group that traditionally has less power. But, I'll tell you, I felt pretty powerless that day in the face of a group with more power than I possessed at that moment.
But you have to understand the rules of the game. Unless a black person is literally shouting "die whitey" while stomping someone to death, then it's not a hate crime when a black person attacks a white person, regardless of actual motivation or lack thereof. It's just another random senseless crime and not part of a pattern. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_an...
> Repeat after me: WHITE PEOPLE DO NOT SUFFER FROM RACISM
That's a load of crap. I am considered "white" (you need papers and blood quote to prove you're Native American despite what some senatorial candidate thinks), and I have gotten a ton of crap because I grew up on a reservation not of my father's tribe. And no, I did not get to flee to the mystically accepting fellow white folk in the the town next door (I lived on the rez after all and am related).
The brain is an amazing pattern matching machine. You missed matching the whole pattern.
You're leaving out a pretty important bit of context. He isn't talking about white people in general, here. He is talking about a very specific subset of people who have had power over him, and said pretty racist things to him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to my white mother when he said dumbwhite.
While I agree that the saintly thing to is respond without bringing up your persecutors' race, I am pretty sympathetic to people who have been the victims of overt racism seeing some things in terms of race. They've had their faces rubbed in it.
And I'm sorry to come down hard on you, but it's pretty arrogant to tell someone who is still suffering the consequences of being harassed because of his race not to take notice of the race of the people harassing him.
That bit of context is irrelevant. He frequently used the extremely general term, "Dumbwhite motherfucker.", which is blatantly racist and makes his complete argument null and void, because the comments he makes in this post are no better than the crap he heard at his job.
Sincerity and respect for a person's race does not take a backseat just because someone made racist remarks to someone else. I've been the victim of racist remarks and I'm white, that doesn't make it okay for me to refer to the other person by their race. In fact, it makes it WORSE.
Being tolerant of ANYONE using racism for ANY reason is not okay.
EDIT: The more I read your comment, the more it looks like you support racism as a means of retaliation to racism. This is why racism still (and always) exists.
> He frequently used the extremely general term, "Dumbwhite motherfucker.", which is blatantly racist
Agreed.
> makes his complete argument null and void
No, actually it doesn't. That's really not how logic works.
This is an audience problem. This post was pretty clearly not meant to be an intellectual tour de force; it was a rant, and a step away from frothing at the mouth. The author doesn't claim to be perfect, nor is he. For an audience like HN, it's completely inappropriate, because it doesn't take into account our biases and worldviews; but I seriously doubt he expected to be on the HN front page.
Except it really does. I fully support a good rant to get something off the chest. The OP is so intensely focused on the race of his attackers, that it is debilitating to the rest of his problem. It makes him look just as bad as his attackers for stooping to the race level.
His racism is not the subject of dispute here. The racism that the story focuses on is the one that created a hostile workplace and is the subject of legal action.
Why isn't it? The use of racism regardless of any factor is wrong. You are still condoning one person's use of racism over another. Setting does not dictate when racism is okay.
Edit: Also legal action? Im sure his use of "dumbwhite motherfucker" in court will go over very well. Come on...
>which is blatantly racist and makes his complete argument null and void, because the comments he makes in this post are no better than the crap he heard at his job.
Oh hey, it's the rare explicitly stated ad hominem attack.
I don't think this is an example of an ad hominem fallacy. Rather it seem to be tu quoue fallacy (attempting to discredit by asserting hypocrisy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque) Technically I suppose that is a form of an ad hominem fallacy, but describing it as that seems off to me.
> You're leaving out a pretty important bit of context. He isn't talking about white people in general, here. He is talking about a very specific subset of people who have had power over him, and said pretty racist things to him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to my white mother when he said dumbwhite.
So racial epithets are OK as long as you're targeting a group of people who have wronged you? Got it.
Not that it in any way legitimizes the vile things that were said to the man.
> So racial epithets are OK as long as you're targeting a group of people who have wronged you? Got it.
So long as you're talking about a group of people who have systemic, institutionalized power over you based on the colour of their own skin? Damn right they're OK. I hate to break it to you, but it's pretty much only white people that think race is no big deal. People of colour tend to get disabused of that foolish idea pretty damn quickly by reality. See for instance http://www.womanist-musings.com/2012/02/anti-racist-billboar...
Hacker News has taken another step towards Gawker. If this kind of garbage was modded up here every day, I would find somewhere else to find real news.
There are several definitions of racist talk, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)". Lots of people like this definition because it's nice and simple and it means black people in the USA can be racist to white people if they say things like "Dumbwhite".
There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist talk is talk that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/white/black/g and make it just as racist.
So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
> So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
That's like saying that steak is food, but ramen isn't. Clearly, steak is considered a higher-quality food, but that doesn't negate the fact that ramen is food as well.
Due to the historical mistreatment of black people in America, it is more socially unacceptable to say something like "dumbblack"; however, "dumbwhite" is no less accurately described by 'a hatred or intolerance of another race'.
It's not clear that it is more socially unacceptable to say something like "dumbblack"... the workplace he was at essentially said that to him repeatedly for months, while he had a single rant on a webpage. But if you look at the breakdown of Hacker News comments, it's pretty clear where most people's sympathies lie.
> it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
There are degrees of racism? Wasn't that a binary thing? I understand that racists aren't created equal since some are filled with more prejudices than others but I think the same doesn't apply to racism itself. I'm not arguing that life is harder for people who are (or so we are told, I've got no data) the majority of victims but a victim being racist isn't being "less racist" after all. He's contributing to a vicious circle. Whilst I understand such behaviour from an emotional point of view, it's definitely not wise.
"Racism" does not have exact definition. It's just a label that means slightly different things in different contexts. It's an abstraction over a specific type of offensive / hateful behavior. In more in-depth discussions, I think it's better to operate beneath this abstraction, on a lower level: i.e. how much harm saying or doing something does.
In most situations, saying "dumbblack" would be more offensive for black person than "dumbwhite" for white person. Especially in this case. It's like if you had a couple of bad experiences with the police, you could start saying offensive things about police officers in general. You could be accused of "policism" but in fact, it would be quite understandable reaction. When he said "dumbwhite", he was kind of "revenging" their racism, which is very different from saying "dumbwhite" just because he disrespects white people.
>There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races.
I generally think it's safer to frame in terms of the effect (which you mostly do) than motivation. Even if someone has no ill intent, and simply talks a certain way because they haven't really thought about the issues, their speech still does harm.
Agreed. Some things can be a joke (ie they are funny, they make people laugh, they are told with intent to entertain, not hurt) and can be racist. This is why "but it's just a joke" does not mean the thing isn't racist. Sometimes when someone says a racist joke, the discussion then turns into whether it's funny or not, and if it passes the funny test, it's not racist.
But it doesnt matter if its funny! It matters if its racist!
It's possible this guy is a jerk and that this company is a bunch of assholes. You don't minimize one party's guilt by pointing out the other party's guilt.
EDIT: plus, it's easy for me to avoid dealing with this guy. I won't be his friend. But I really worry about the culture of the software industry, and if Kixeye spreads to mean more asshole workplaces, that's something that's a lot harder to avoid.
That's true, but - and it's a big, big but - he doesn't have any power over you. He's venting his feelings about his experience, but the people he's talking about are his employers and that puts him in the position of having to accept their mockery and control over his wardrobe in order to keep receiving a paycheck.
See, while I think the author has something of a chip on his shoulder, he's got some historical and demographic basis for it, and chips weigh more heavily on younger shoulders; it's easier for me to be philosophical about life's obstacles insofar as I've survived to middle age in reasonable comfort and so on. And no, I don't think this is an unacceptable way to speak. It's unacceptable in the workplace, and I'd be lukewarm towards it in a social context, but people have to the freedom to think and express things that I find odious to the extent that I have the freedom to disagree or walk away without any negative consequences. That's not the case in an employment situation, because while you can walk away there's a measurable economic cost to doing so.
This is one of those things where you are both correct but miss the point. Yes, this sort of language is not tolerable. Yes, it's also the sort of generalizations the author is railing about. Absolutely.
However, let's take the story at face value for a second. What occured between this person and the people around him wasn't just inappropriate workplace conduct, it was systemic and demeaning in a way that is hard for someone to get if they're not the subject of it. Most people are not wired to take this kind of abuse in a sustained way. This person is hurt, they're confused, they feel powerless, and they're lashing out.
So I think we can probably get to the victim's fucked up statements after we let the outrage over the institutionalized racism that the story consists of simmer down, don't you think? I've said some pretty dumb, mean things when I'm suffering from emotional trauma, haven't you? At least we have an excuse and we can apologize and say, "That was my anger and frustration, I know it's wrong."
But perhaps what makes me most angry is that other members of this team were complicit in this treatment. They're not stopping it, they're not complaining, they're not resigning, they're not objecting. It's terrifying.
as horrible as it is for him, and as vile as his colleagues were, i really don't care his writing style. it reads like a bad fan fiction half the time.
plus the run dmc segue into the 'what i wore today' image was a bit gratuitous
I had to remind myself that this was a blog post. That it wasn't a literary article or technical diagram. I look for unbiased, factual reporting that is meant to educate and improve awareness. This is not one of those things. It's an inflammatory post where an individual is airing his grievances. I feel sorry that someone can be treated so poorly in a workplace, but at the same time, the author damages his point by using equally vitriolic and occasionally stereotypical phrases.
I hope the author is able to find a work environment that is more progressive and that is more respectful of all genders, creeds and sexual orientations.
Was that inherently a racist thing to say? Because looking at it... it does look like something electronic.
There's no question that the workplace was hostile, but there are too many side quests in this article. I'm not sure what Jose's marriage or the Dumbwhite-comment has to do with it. Maybe I'm missing something.
In the context of the preceding few minutes of conversation the author had with this manager, the only way the necklace question can be taken is as a racist comment.
>Also, at some point after this conversation took place, one of the women looked at my prized necklace and said “Hey, that looks like a calculator, is that a calculator?”
I didn't really read that as immediately after, more along the lines of "sometime later that day someone walked up and asked if my necklace was a calculator"... the sentence doesn't give a good grasp on timing.
Ah sorry, I didn't really explain myself clearly. I mean to say that after being the subject of some really stressful and severe racial harassment, I don't think it would have been possible to take that comment as anything other than racist. In hostile work environments, it is really hard to take comments and questions in a straight-forward manner. This is how toxic cultures poison the ability of people to work together, by undermining the mental and emotional health of the staff.
Kixeye should be ashamed. Hopefully enough bad press and folks commenting will get them to take a look how they operate and what they tolerate and change it.
Maybe they should actually try and focus as a company.
1. insist the programmers work. There games are not that great.
2. insist their website get up to 2012 standards. I would assume they were not a serious company based upon their all Flash website.
3. Look at Chick-Fil-A and the onslaught of people pissed off at their stance on gay's in the workplace. We should be equally pissed at Kixeye and boycott them too.
4. There are standard stereotypical jokes and then there are blatant racist comments.
Example Joke: Asians have a lot of trouble parking and stopping at stop signs.
Blatant racism: "Hey Joe, I mean Ying, to use your real name, nice 30 point parallel park this morning, you really are Asian."
There is a difference. I am white and I live in a very predominantly Asian area of Cupertino and the joke would be funny to a lot of Asians. The racism, no.
Kudos to the OP for writing this.
We can all tell he is upset at what he experienced. Some of this shows through but boil this down to the essence and we have a company that is openly encouraging a racist environment and in 2012 nobody should have to worry about being black, white, purple, gay, straight, trans-gender, dress like a thug, cross-dress, etc...
Edit: Thinking about this more, the OP gets irritated when the company served a lunch of "Fried Chicken and Waffles". He implies indirectly to Black folk this is an insult. However, look at the menu of "Waffle House" and it is an item on the menu. There wasn't anything really wrong with the lunch they served. It is one of those lunch combinations that people just know about and associate with Blacks.
Example: Fried Chicken and Watermelon - Black
Corn Beef and Cabbage - Irish
Tea and Cucumbers - WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)
Mac and Cheese with Hot Dogs - White
Racist company and an OP that is coming down to their level more often than he should. Let the water roll off a ducks back...
Look, I'm not a fan of Kixeye's games either but I think we should be able to agree that the quality of their website is not really a consideration when it comes to the topic of discussion here. What does Flash have to do with this?
Note who has given them funding. Send this blog post to the VC companies that have given them funding. Should hit them where it hurts.
And yes, take legal action. (Although seek legal council to ensure first bit isn't considered slander or what have you. Be in best possible position for a legal battle.) Companies like this give the profession a bad name.
A couple other commenters have mentioned this but in case the author is reading I want to emphasize the importance of winning the rhetorical war before you proceed to fight the fight you actually care about.
As with any story a reader wants to like the characters they are reading about. It's hard to like someone who is constantly angry, depressed, sarcastic, and bitter. You, as a person may feel these things, and be completely correct to feel them, however you make it hard to read your story without a contrast. For example, "I love games" or "I love the way I feel in Oakland" or "I am so proud of my necklace I don't care what others think." People can empathize with pain, but they also need joy, hope, and a reason to like you.
Another way to win the rhetorical battle is to use humor. Your reactions to the abuse are shock, horror, rage, and sarcasm. Feel free to interject a joke or two. In ten years you will be telling jokes about these ignorant people. Make them into caricatures, lampoon them, exaggerate their folly so that people will not just be angry at them on your behalf but seem them as an absurd throwback to a time you wish had passed.
Tell a story that demonstrates the moral high ground. What I remember from your post is that you tried to say something, gave up, then went home, got high and watched Netflix. People want to be inspired to take action, and if you have a story, even if it means talking to HR, that is incredibly powerful. How does your behavior model an appropriate response for others who might be in your shoes? A lawsuit may be appropriate, but from reading your story it seems like a dramatic escalation, you need to lead people into it.
I can't say I understand what you're going through, but I do support your effort and I'm disgusted on behalf of white-straight-geeks everywhere. If an apology means anything I'm sorry you are going through this.
That's good advise for rhetorical speeches, but maybe he's just tired. Maybe he's been putting up with a stressful and hard-to-deal-with workplace and he's just had enough and he wants to vent.
If you sympathize with the author: do not post things like this. Listen to him. What makes you think you were the intended audience? What makes you think you know why he was writing? Do you see the irony in you trying to "educate" a black person on talking about racism?
Speak for yourself. I want to hear his pain and frustration. I want to identify with his despair in the face of a type of idiocy I will never personally experience as a straight white cis male. I want to hear the shrill, flawed voice of melancholy.
He's not MLK, Jr. He's a guy telling a personal story. The world needs a plurality of voices to advance; the despondent and downtrodden remind us where we are, and the transcendent and hopeful show us a way out.
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[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 346 ms ] threadNot that this says whether Kixeye is the company described by OP.
The image at the top is from one of their many, many, obnoxious ads.
Really? In 2012?
That's no excuse for making their company website look like a black market gun store.
The emphasis here is on racism, but there's a ton of casual sexism -- and I'd be surprised if ageism wasn't present, too.
This is, at best, a company where HR have taken their eye off the ball. More likely, there are serious institutional failings (and probable harrassment lawsuits coming down the pipe in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... if they don't do something about the corporate culture fast).
Note: this is me trying to stay dispassionate and non-angry. If I was the author of this piece I'd be incandescent. Props to him for staying calm and documenting this stuff rather than simply walking out. Or exploding.
Reading this made me so angry... If I were a juror, I wouldn't convict the author for murdering the people in this post.
Edited to add: No actual murder has happened, nor should any actual murder happen. This was an overstatement meant to reflect outrage at injustice.
I think this company is not such a great place to work... if you are black. Having mentioned that... uh... MURDER???
We should try to keep in mind that this company really may be no worse than the average SF company full of people accustomed to getting their own way. Oftentimes, people just don't know they are being offensive. It is not malice, so much as the obliviousness that accompanies any privilege. These people DO NOT deserve to die. I personally don't think anyone does.
People have a right to be disappointed here, but really, let's try to elevate the tone.
As I stated earlier, I was being hyperbolic. I had a strong emotional response to the article and I made a joke about it. I did not mean to debase the quality of the conversation here and I regret the callous way I expressed what I said.
I ask if that’s the word he used verbatim, and Mike says yes. I say if he wants to say that to me I’ll take that comment and all the rest to HR because I’ve been documenting everything racist he’s said, and Mike nods and says “yeah” and “ok” like he understands or like he cares.
And the "HR Dept" could be just 1-2 people.
Also, at some point after this conversation took place, one of the women looked at my prized necklace and said “Hey, that looks like a calculator, is that a calculator?”
I said “um no, it’s a necklace, it’s African, from Nairobi.”
And she replies “Oh, huh…..well, it looks like a calculator.”
Dumbwhite------
If this is an accurate recollection, the author is a seriously disturbed person who should not be in this or any other workplace. If this is not an accurate recollection... I'm not sure the conclusion is any different.
Certainly there are workplace shootings where the perpetrator appears to have a very similar attitude - the Omar Thornton case, for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Distributors_shooting
Kixeye is obviously a company with a corporate culture in which people vigorously insult each other in a typical young male style. A similar institution is the US military - at least at the enlisted level. Race relations in the military are and always have been excellent, so perhaps the hypothesis that coarse humor is the cause of racial hostility could use a little more exploring.
I wouldn't want to work at a company like Kixeye, though. It's obviously an even worse fit for the OP. And that's not even to mention that this kind of office culture is actually illegal in our great nation, land of the free and home of the brave. This is irresponsible toward the investors, at least...
So you're saying that an overly defensive reaction to someone misunderstanding a fashion object means he's likely to shoot the place up? That a guy gets systematically discriminated against at the workplace, and you're worried he's too angry about it? And that he might get violent about it because one single other person one time did? And that the U.S. military, which features numerous official directives against racial discrimination, is an aptly analogous institution?
Furthermore, right below us on the thread, and also above us in a more allusive context, are comments encouraging him to react in an "incandescent," murderous rage.
"Whiteness" is defined in contrast to a person's blackness. You can't talk about racism against whites without first acknowledging a previous racism by whites.
Are you sarcastically implying that this kind of office culture should be legal in a civilized society?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association
As for "civilized," you can make up your own mind...
I couldn't even make it to the end, I think I just managed to read 80% of the whole piece, I'm pretty, pretty f.ing mad, and I've never even been to the States.
A little OT: And while we're on this, I guess this is a moment as good as any to get it off my chest, that is to say that nasty s.it like this happens not only in the States, but here in (Eastern) Europe, too.
I work in a small company, I'm IT, and around last week or so one of my (female, white) colleagues just out of the blue proffered somth. like "I'd kill all the gipsies, they're not human". I (white male, early 30s) at first tried to take it easy, made a little fun of her, to see if she was serious (she was), and then 10-15 minutes later I confronted her directly. The part that did it for me, at which even now, when I'm remembering the whole thing, makes me angry, it's the "they're not human" part. She is a really nice person otherwise, happily married, no children yet, but yet she said that nasty phrase as the most natural thing ever.
The one time I applied this, it netted me a rather sincere apology half an hour later, so I guess it has some merit in at least some of the situations.
(note that I was not in the group being discriminated against, I don't think it'd be a good approach if I were)
While the author certainly doesn't deserve to be treated with disrespect, I think there is some looking inward that needs to happen here too.
Experience doesn't get to dictate racism.
On the other hand, he's black and he's dressing different from other people at the office, so it's "thuggish"
I wish that neither Kixeye employees nor the blogger made racist comments, but we can decry one as worse than the other.
The power differential between them. This guy's racism exists on tumblr and is targeted at noone, the racism he suffered at work was going from a manager to a lower employee. It's the same reason teacher-pupil relationships are never acceptable, no matter the age or maturity of the student.
Also, that judgement really doesn't affect the manager, as he was just able to walk out of that meeting and continue to be a shithead.
It is racist. Anti-white racism is a common feature of modern black culture, but it's not considered controversial because of the traditional oppression of black people and the lingering effects that has today.
There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist talk is talk that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/white/black/g and make it just as racist.
So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
Why does his sexual orientation factor into his credibility for you?
edit: this too
Much like some of the worst extremes of feminism, where it was forgotten that the goal was "equality", not "favorable treatment for women at the expense of men as recompense".
Now it may be true that work was just the part that took them over the top, but I am not going to dismiss his clearly painful experience because of that.
I can't relate to his experience (middle class, white, male) but what I can do is read what he wrote and what jumps out most at me is his own racism. I think that for a post like this to truly achieve anything (as in, explain the issue to those that have no way to understand or relate) it needs to be without any sort of... I guess distraction.
It reflects poorly on me and everyone else that is unable to separate what is ultimately meaningless (his own racism) from the general point (kixeye has bad employees / management) and I think your point about his level of anger could be the reason why this actually has value (shows he is so angry / upset he lets himself become racist) to the post.
I want to care about his problem but I can't relate so I'm stuck trying to take value from what he has said and I can't do that without being overwhelmed by his own racism. I think what tptacek said above is right though, he doesn't matter, the post isn't about him, it's about the people at kixeye.
I'll leave my comment just for the sake of not destroying the conversation, but I no longer think it has value here.
Racism and all *ism has an interesting (as in sociological) property that like electric charge is simulates the opposite charge on the other side of the dielectric. I happen to fall into the last unprotected class on the planet (old fat white guys :-) but having worked with and at times managed a very diverse set of folks my entire life it became clear there are people who are racists by 'choice' and people who are reflexively racist.
Lets postulate for the sake of example that racism had a measurable quantity, from 1.0 which is some sort of 'my race is the only one worth anything' to the 0.0 which is complete blindness to race in thought, speech, or action.
The perception of racism or sexism for people whom have discussed the experience with me was that one person could exhibit say 0.5 units of bias, and they they fall into a thought process that everyone is 0.5 racist. It very much shares a sort of 'herd immunity' reflex. If 90% percent of the folks in the group are blind to race issues then the 10% who aren't will stick out. What percentage of people have to be tolerably racist before its toxic? Does it matter? Why would anyone tolerate any sort racism in the work place?
So if person A is racist by choice, which is to say they have done some sort of evaluation and decided that race has an effect which transcends environment or skills, their actions and comments will create in people of that 'other' race a reflexive alter-racism (and always people are not perfect reflectors, for some it bounces off, for others it gets amplified). Now you get something like racism amplification by stimulated emission of insults [1} or something. That sort of situation is, painful, toxic to morale, and legally actionable.
The critical point though is we have to see this sort of missive not as 'professional victims' (although there are such people, painting any individual into that group without first hand knowledge is probably wrong) but as a signal that you have a problem. And getting everyone to buy into the notion that we're all individuals and not everyone finds ethnic jokes or sex jokes funny, is one of the more important jobs for management. As an individual you're best off trying not to be part of the problem.
[1] RASEI? The effect is remarkably similar
Not that that in any way justifies his treatment, which is beyond bad and well into legally actionable.
But the 'educate' bit is on-point. It's similar to womens complaints about "mansplaining". It's not tit-for-tat racism; it's identifying a common behavior that objectively (and for nigh-on-tautological reasons) is something only really done by white men.
And as to the "white people's shit": that does strike me as tit-for-tat racism.
But just as I wouldn't judge any of the dude-bros at that company for their failure to be perfectly enlightened beings when they hurl a given thoughtless remark, I certainly can't find the moral high-ground to judge anyone who's, daily, on the receiving end of such nonsense for lashing out in kind while venting.
And that makes it not racist?
e.g. "Mansplaining" describes a behavior perpetrated overhwelmingly by men. By not by all men. And it's not right to automatically assume a given man is going to mansplain something.
But when a man starts mansplaining, it's not misandry to note that mansplaining is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men.
If crime were perpetrated, objectively and statistically overwhelmingly, by black people, or black people were objectively and statistically overwhelmingly criminals, it would be fair to talk about crime being a thing black people do.
The crucial difference is the statistics do not remotely support such assertions. In fact, they flatly reject such relationships.
Nor is being a criminal remotely causally linked to being black, the way being ignorant of straight white male privilege is almost (again: almost tautologically) causally linked to being a straight white man, or the way being a 'mansplainer' is almost causally linked to mansplaining. [1]
[1] To state it more explicitly: you can't likely grow up mansplaining and reach maturity without having the tendency pointed out to you if you're not a man. Because our cultural baggage is that women defer to men and thus face more scrutiny/skepticism/criticism than men when they do disagree.
So even if we assume that everyone starts off equally likely to be a 'mansplainer' by mere chance, the female mansplainers are overwhelmingly going to have that tendency pointed out, challenged and be made aware of it.
Mansplaining adults will, thus, be almost entirely men because of said cultural baggage.
Similarly, it's pretty much impossible to grow up and reach maturity ignorant of remaining straight white male privilege in the US unless you happen to be a straight white male. If we again assume that the tendency to be 'blind' to remaining racism/sexism/homophobia is randomly distributed, only those with that 'blindness' who are straight/white/males are likely to reach maturity without having encountered situations that made it impossible to remain ignorant of such remaining tensions.
Applying the same considerations: if we assume the tendency to commit crimes is evenly/randomly distributed at birth, there's no evidence that non-black would-be criminals overwhelmingly receive some life experience that steers them away from crime. To the contrary we find that white would-be criminals are much more likely to have life experiences that result in the crimes they do commit being excused or ignored.
So not only is there no evidence that being black makes you more likely to commit crime, there is evidence that being white makes you far less likely to be charged, prosecuted and found guilty.
That is: a black person is no more likely to commit crime, refuting the assertion, and they have the deck stacked against them, meaning that asserting such a link is not only wholly unfounded by the data, but it takes a further act of white privilege to ignore the existence of the stacked deck.
His thoughts on this? "Is this guy for real, or an uber-creep [hitting on me]"...
Which I gotta say, even from his telling of what happened, wasn't a possibility that entered my mind.
In other words, you just stopped reading and don't care about the alleged racism.
IDC about that, and for what's worth try watching Frost / Nixon with no sound. Would you still find it awesome? Doubt it.
The same goes for reading through an article and trying to ignore his rage induced ramblings. As more than one commenter before me pointed out, he is biased and it shows. Badly.
Poor gay people exist. Read this: http://joeclark.org/gaymoney/facts/
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/08/...
I can only imagine this kind of attitude can be go unchecked in an insular frat-boy-ish culture where strong ties and long hours are valued more than respect and work output.
Definitely something to watch out for - even if you're in the in-group and not being harassed, it's not fun witnessing this kind of petty abuse.
On that same note, don't bring yourself to his level and start throwing out racist slurs too. Your words are public domain now, and if they get a lawyer with any sense, they might find a defense in your offense.
kick his teeth in in court though! (figuratively of course)
Don't let racists bring you down to their level.
You can't (and shouldn't) regulate online gaming culture, which isn't tragic because you can opt out of it (I don't play Xbox games online for that very reason) but you can't expect a person to opt out of the workplace.
Not only is this terribly racist and sexist culture not just a figment of the author's politics - it's something the company is proud of: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/08/...
I really hope these jokers get sued out of existence. These kind of companies are the reason anti-discrimination laws should exist in the first place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5l-nnR4Bx0
I hope someone takes him up on that dare.
This seems like a vent piece. It's not his job to "cure" racism and he most certainly has the right to be upset. People don't like the way he's conveying that? Well that's fine -- I have the feeling that he doesn't hold their expectations in very high regard anyway
The same way that Dallas is "dangerously close" to Texas.
Really? You're telling someone who is being treated in a sub-human way to deal with this on the specific terms that are most comfortable to the in-power assholes who are being offensive? Not everyone can (or should) be exactly like your black friend.
I mean, yeah, ideally everyone is infinitely calm and can call these things out in a measured way every time they happen. But you're asking a lot from the victims here in order to spare the feelings of the aggressors. (Perhaps unintentional aggressors, but aggressors just the same.) What you're suggesting isn't easy.
And what's to say that the person he calls out will take it well? Look at what happened at his workplace: they told him that the things he was complaining about were only jokes and that he was too sensitive. Look at what is happening in this thread: people are complaining about his tone, complaining about his word choice, and insinuating that he's making things up. That's not even going into the people who start out ostensibly agreeing before segueing into what sounds like their main point: how racist they think the author was being.
So give the tone argument a rest. It's one of the most reliable distractions that people fall back on to avoid discussing racism, sexism, and all other kinds of oppression, and it's already taken over way too much of this thread.
Gentrifiers are economic invaders that dismantle the ability of the poor (particularly people of color) to live in their established communities. This is a known form of systemic oppression that disproportionately effects people of color, esp. black folk.
> If people would, instead of isolating people displaying these behaviors, instead approach them and talk to them and continue to treat them as friends, it would go a long way towards fixing things.
This whole blog post is about someone who ultimately does point this kind of behavior out to a manager only to have that manager totally ignore them. In non-professional contexts, calling people out has gotten folks attacked, beaten, harassed, maimed, and killed. The solution to ending this kind of oppression is not niceness and having those being fucked over bend over backwards.
It should be noted that your friend as a higher up at a company is an exception to the rule, as black people are not well represented in management in the business world and often do not have the luxury of using authority to back up their call out.
Your world of rainbows and unicorns sounds amazing, where all racism comes from under-informed people who can then be rightly fixed by prompt education!
Clearly, oppressively racist institutions where people are powerless to correct the situation don't exist. Where they appear to exist, the victims just didn't assert themselves strongly enough. If they just calmly told their oppressors that they were being racist and offensive, they would stop!
This totally explains away the entirety of slavery and apartheid. I'm just shocked that no one over hundreds of years just nicely stopped someone, explained how what they were doing is wrong, and had them stop!
</snark>
Seriously though, I'm glad that your experiences have been exclusively in places where people actually respond to criticism and education. And I mean that - facing the sort of horrific, powerless racism that many people do every day is terrible, and no one deserves to experience it from either end of the stick. Your experience is not generalizable to all instances of racism - it's not even generalizable to a minority of it.
Clearly this institution has huge problems and what they are doing is totally wrong. BUT... the author just sat there and took it. He internalized the issues and let them consume him, going home, smoking weed and collapsing inward on himself. The guy is gay, so it makes sense that he reacted passive aggressively. Females tend to behave this way, which is why a lot of workplace related sexist shit still goes on. Girls don't speak up, they're submissive. They don't make it known that what is happening is wrong, and so nothing is done about it.
Obviously, in a perfect world, no one should have to speak up about shit like this! It's wrong! These guys that are acting like this are out of control. But... at the same time you cannot sit and take it and internalize it and think that magically things will get better. Stand up tall, and tell the person directly. Be clear. Be loud.
I am so happy that your (black) friend does what he does. That is EXACTLY what you need to do. And yeah, it's unfortunate that the burdon is on the person being offended when what they are doing (simply existing with a different skin color or sexual orientation) is not wrong. But... that is the only way that things will change.
Quote:
"I take a very deep breath through my nose. I tell him, rather I clarify for him that many things said by him and other people in the office has been racist, sexist, homophobic, transpho-
“Whoa whoa whoa, those comments you’re hearing aren’t racist; they’re jokes!”"
The guy is gay, so it makes sense that he reacted passive aggressively.
That doesn't make any sense. Being interested in same-sex sex has nothing to do with passive aggression.
Females tend to behave this way, which is why a lot of workplace related sexist shit still goes on.
Women speaking up about workplace sexism is often a job-ender, if not a career-ender. That's not submissiveness, it's business acumen.
Be clear. Be loud.
That's not a complete solution. It's step 2. Step 1 is to educate enough men and white people that we can actually have a culture where clear, loud pronouncements of wrongdoing are actually heard and taken seriously, without career repercussions.
And I'm assuming when you say "Be clear. Be loud." you're speaking to white men, right? Because women and people of color already have to do way too much education in their spare time, and it's the privileged who have the extra time and energy to pick up the slack and speak out about these issues, right?
From the comment above (and several other parts of his article) he certainly appears to be just as racist as the people he's trying to demonize. Not to mention there's a crazy amount of self entitlement going on.
>I had a whole month of potential creative and community building energy stripped from me for the sake of this company’s profits. That shit ain’t cool.
A "whole" month of your "potential creative and community building energy"? Really? I have LOTS of months where I don't get to focus ANY time on any sort of creative or community building endeavors because I have other things that need to be taken care of.
I do not condone what he experienced at his workplace and that's terrible that it happened. However, his tone in the article and apparent prejudice towards white people makes it difficult for me to summon a lot of nice things to say.
There are several definitions of racist talk, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)". Lots of people like this definition because it's nice and simple and it means black people in the USA can be racist to white people if they say things like "Dumbwhite".
There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist talk is talk that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/white/black/g and make it just as racist.
So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
It's rather illegal for an employer to be racist in their workplace.
Yes, I'd rather there were a better whistleblower than this guy. You seldom get things to align perfectly.
Now say you found out the victim was himself a serial arsonist who had burned down other houses. Do you still feel as bad for him?
In my opinion there is no difference between that story and this one. A racist man is angry that another racist man made racist comments toward him.
By the way, the law works through deterrence.
Say this is a douchebag workplace mistreating a douchebag employee, and they get punished.
Now they serve as example to the next douchebag workplace, who hesitate before mistreating their employee, who may not be a douchebag.
There is covert racism. That's harder to stop, but a good way to start ending it is to accept that in the workplace you might want to restrict the "jokes" that you tell.
And then there's all the sub-conscious prejudice that's so hard to eliminate.
"then proceeds to do what black men always can’t help but do"
"black men always telling which way is up because they feel they are the “authority” when it comes to any and everything, most often when they don’t know shit about shit"
" I know when black people start to speak down to me from their pedatsol which is white privilege, they aren’t listening, nor will they"
"I cannot afford to take black people’s shit anymore."
Those are all quotes from the article, except I put 'black' where the author put 'white', both sets are clearly an unacceptable way to speak. While I am sure this guy has faced real disadvantage from some bigoted people, this post is laced with racism against white people and ridiculously over-the-top statements about colonialism and "neoliberal white supremacy".
It unnecessarily adds doubt to the claims being made. If your narrator has an agenda it becomes difficult to trust that narrator.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/08/...
When should it be considered acceptable for a victim to mimic their aggressor's behavior (especially when it is similar behavior that caused the victimization to begin with)?
Disclaimer: I'm trying to understand and not support to any of the GP comments.
However, it detracts from the story compared to a straight telling, which would have focused 100% on the racist jerk.
IMO.
The pattern is:
Apply standard of neutrality to poster, and find poster wanting - hence remain skeptical to keep an open mind.
"there could be a misunderstanding."
The promulgator and supporters are always people who are at best well meaning, but generally oblivious to privilege or its manifestations.
This will be pointed out, and the promulgator will point out how they have done X or are friends with Y in defence.
So first off - you aren't being targeted. The promulgator is acting rationally based on his experiences.
The best examples to counter this were an AMA from a guy who had a sex change operation. He then could clarify what Male privilege is, and how you would be completely oblivious to it until its gone.
It turns down as a woman a simple thing like walking down a road changes in a manner drastically different from what men are used to.
Similarly there was an AMA from a girl who used to look good, and then lost that advantage. All of a sudden she saw privileges she assumed were just normal things - disappear.
It turns out that men don't normally open doors for you, or are helpful.
Unfortunately when you react with outrage, most people have no idea what you are talking about and respond with:
"It unnecessarily adds doubt to the claims being made"
• We see a stranger (call them the victim) on the internet making strong, negative claims against a set of people who are also strangers.
• We often only have the victim's word to judge these claims by.
• Therefore, there will often be debate about these words (which we can talk about with certainty) instead of the claims made (which we only know about second-hand.)
Starting from this perspective seems to lead to really, really degenerate conversation. It tends to be worst when talking about rape or sexual harassment charges.
(There's sometimes an additional weird layer where commenters think the original victim shouldn't make claims they can't prove to third parties, regardless of the truth of those claims.)
Other wise its always a death spiral at worst or a holding pattern on average.
I think yours is a larger general case - and I am trying to invoke perhaps a child case with the addition of privilege blindness.
What is tragic that this is a perfect example of good intentions that lead to terrible results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_(logic)
In brief, saying "X is wrong, because X subscribes to ideology I" is not a logically valid argument. Willing to hear X's argument and consider it on its own merits does not grant legitimacy to I.
The narrator's argument isn't "white people are colonizers, so...", he merely enumerates what he has experienced. That phrasing is unfortunate (but pales in comparison to being told far more offensive things _at work_) it doesn't detract from (or add to) his argument, i.e., it's an irrelevant detail.
There's a time to vent and a time to make a case. I personally feel that the author would have been better served making a case (EEOC) instead of venting in a public method. Especially since the identities of the author and the company in question are very easy to track down. This could have long term negative consequences for the author, and may make his claim harder if he does decided to take his former employer to court.
YMMV.
I'm not saying that this is what happened. You asked why it might be relevant and I just wanted to point this out.
IANAL, but I wonder if this post will hurt his chances of successfully pursuing his employers?
Why do you believe that? Have you been in a bunch of pitch perfect productive conversations about racism? In my experience, when one tactic for derailing conversations about racism fails people just pick up another one. In this conversation you see many such strategies at play:
I see all of these as efforts to not talk about the actual structures being criticized in the post:
* Saying the tone makes the message unlistenable * Talking about the extent to which the post is effective activism ("he would be more effective if...") * Stopping conversation do to perceived insurmountable "bias" * Refocusing on other forms of racism (like the dumbwhite* comments) * Talking about whether people are "racists" and refocusing on their overall character.
It goes on and on. Pitch perfect tone doesn't get you through that wilderness.
And honestly, when someone has been through something so traumatic, demanding perfect pitch is heartless.
Why do you believe that? Have you been in a bunch of pitch perfect productive conversations about racism? In my experience, when one tactic for derailing conversations about racism fails people just pick up another one. In this conversation you see many such strategies at play:
I see all of these as efforts to not talk about the actual structures being criticized in the post:
* Saying the tone makes the message unlistenable * Talking about the extent to which the post is effective activism ("he would be more effective if...") * Stopping conversation do to perceived insurmountable "bias" * Refocusing on other forms of racism (like the dumbwhite* comments) * Talking about whether people are "racists" and refocusing on their overall character.
It goes on and on. Pitch perfect tone doesn't get you through that wilderness.
And honestly, when someone has been through something so traumatic, demanding perfect pitch is heartless.
Why do you believe that? Have you been in a bunch of pitch perfect productive conversations about racism? In my experience, when one tactic for derailing conversations about racism fails people just pick up another one. In this conversation you see many such strategies at play:
I see all of these as efforts to not talk about the actual structures being criticized in the post:
* Saying the tone makes the message unlistenable * Talking about the extent to which the post is effective activism ("he would be more effective if...") * Stopping conversation do to perceived insurmountable "bias" * Refocusing on other forms of racism (like the dumbwhite* comments) * Talking about whether people are "racists" and refocusing on their overall character.
It goes on and on. Pitch perfect tone doesn't get you through that wilderness.
And honestly, when someone has been through something so traumatic, demanding perfect pitch is heartless.
I can't think of a time that I faced the level of ugliness laid out in this story even once in my 32 years, so the last thing that occurs to me when I read something like this is "Wow, the author is saying some completely unacceptably racist things"
[EDIT: Shit. I'm 34, not 32 or even 33. I have no idea why I can't keep that straight.]
I've been around these kind of complaints in person, and while I know that the injustices taking place are horrible and uncalled for, I also know that the complainer is also (not-so-subtly any more) racist as well. Perhaps he wasn't before he entered the school system or the workforce (not necessarily this job), but saying things like dumbwhite*, bringing up colonization like slavery as property is taking place in his neighbourhood (he's going through legal to get this solved, something slaves could never do), and repeatedly bringing up that his tormentors are white, male, rich, etc. just shows that he's brought his own racist viewpoints to the table.
This reminds me of the atmosphere in South Africa years after apartheid was rescinded. The atmosphere, not the gruesome crimes. Perhaps it can be justified, but it sure wasn't how MLK Jr. or Mandela (at least after he became president) attacked the problem and it's only good for outrage, not getting anything done.
White guilt isn't going to help solve racism, but I agree that the author deserves some justice.
Are you looking to round out the racism discussion derail bingo card, or just completely clueless?
It doesn't help that a lot of the language of power dynamics was co-opted by the self-help community, which can often be legitimately criticized in these ways.
Pointing out an ugly tone does not mean you think it invalidates the argument.
"Yes, you're angry but instead of talking about why you're angry let's talk about how the way you expressed your anger is inappropriate".
Its an inappropriate topic change, directing blame at the author when it's really not warranted.
As a minority, it is really, really hard to change or rectify the corruption of the majority by trying to fight them head-on. These sort of revolutions worked when the majority of the people overthrew a corrupt minority that had excessive power. However, thinking things over, I'm not sure if the author is even really out to solve the large racial issue in general with this post. I don't think that was his point, so maybe I'm offering suggestions to a goal that he never had in the first place. If this, like most tumblr posts, is just to get it out in writing so he can think clearly and draw attention by the public to the situation, then yes, it works.
"Yes, you're angry but instead of talking about why you're angry let's talk about how the way you expressed your anger is inappropriate".
Its an inappropriate topic change, directing blame at the author when it's really not warranted.
"Yes, you're angry but instead of talking about why you're angry let's talk about how the way you expressed your anger is inappropriate".
Its an inappropriate topic change, directing blame at the author when it's really not warranted.
It's the really horrible bit that deserves focus.
Repeat after me: WHITE PEOPLE DO NOT SUFFER FROM RACISM. Even if an individual was prejudiced against someone because they are white, they would not be affected outside of that one interaction. White folks' social standing and ability to survive are not attacked daily on the basis of their skin.
EDIT: This is in context for the United States based on the blog author being in SF.
EDIT: I would point out that some groups suffer much more from racism than others, so we should be aware of that reality in dealing with racism. To that end, whites in the United States are largely unaffected by racist attitudes.
I am slavic. Wendish, specifically, if you are familiar. I am glad that my ancestors were enslaved for a while. It brought my culture out of petty infighting and settled us in Northern Europe. My life is better today because my ancestors were enslaved. For me to run around with a chip on my shoulder demanding reparations would be ridiculous.
The government does systematically dismantle white communities. Try running around saying you're proud of being white. You're instantly labeled a bigot. A man recently tried trademarking the phrase "white pride, country wide". Despite trademarks for everything from "jewish pride" to "latino pride", he was denied. The FBI specifically targets white nationalist organizations-- Randy Weaver had his wife and son murdered at Ruby Ridge because he refused to falsely testify against his Aryan Nations associates.
Respectfully, I think you are mistaken. Whites are the people that built this country, and we are under attack for the same reason that Marathis are under attack in India, and Gazprom is stealing land from Nigerians. Bankers and commodity magnates would separate those attached to the soil from the lands which rightfully belong to them, so they can endlessly charge them for being there, as well as steal all the resources.
As a Slav, my people were in bondage much longer than blacks in the United States. Try an order of a millenia or two. I do not care. It is far more advantageous for me to be industrious and build personal wealth than blame distant oppressors for a few centuries of enslavement. I benefitted from the bad conditions of my ancestors, and guess what? So did blacks in the United States. They should stop being professional victims and make things if they want to have equal cultural influence.
Beyond that, this whole discussion is a distraction from the people that have real undue power, those in control of the banks and the media.... If we fight amongst ourselves about race we miss the man behind the Zion curtain.
Go troll somewhere else, weev.
Incidents of violence crime based on race occur, there is no disputing that. What we are talking about primarily is racism as it affects whites, both on a micro- and macro-level (which is annoying that you taking a derailment in this direction since the original story is a black man talking about individual racist experiences working in the valley, notice how you and others have made this about whites rather than racist treatment of people of color).
> I am slavic. Wendish, specifically, if you are familiar. I am glad that my ancestors were enslaved for a while. It brought my culture out of petty infighting and settled us in Northern Europe. My life is better today because my ancestors were enslaved. For me to run around with a chip on my shoulder demanding reparations would be ridiculous.
This is post hoc reasoning. You have no idea how the Wends would be as a culture today in the absence of enslavement. Also, your current standing today in no way makes amends for the rape and murder of a people in the past. It should be noted that the history of the Wends is much further removed than the history of blacks in the United States, and that white-ness has become the social norm in the western world, so you benefit from a social condition that directly depends on the exploitation of people of color if you live in one of those western countries. Also, the experience of you as Wendish is extremely different some a black person living in the United States, so I don't believe there is even a comparison to make here.
> The government does systematically dismantle white communities.
Show me where the United States is actively dismantling or has actively dismantled white community based on race in modern history, because AFAIK there is no such scenario.
> Try running around saying you're proud of being white. You're instantly labeled a bigot. A man recently tried trademarking the phrase "white pride, country wide". Despite trademarks for everything from "jewish pride" to "latino pride", he was denied.
In the United States, white-ness is considered the cultural default. Most of society in the United States already promotes white-ness above the cultures of people of color. Also, white supremacy groups continue to operate and hate speech is not a crime in the US, so these groups may continue to operate if they so choose to. Note that if you are trying to promote white superiority, then yes you are a bigot.
> The FBI specifically targets white nationalist organizations-- Randy Weaver had his wife and son murdered at Ruby Ridge because he refused to falsely testify against his Aryan Nations associates.
The Aryan Nations are not just an advocacy group, they are a separatist group that advocates and performs acts of violence. These groups are investigated by the FBI for operating in that way.
> Respectfully, I think you are mistaken. Whites are the people that built this country
This is grossly mistaken. While whites have contributed to what this country is today, so have non-white immigrants and slaves and their descendants. If you truly believe that white people made the US, you need to crack open a history book.
> we are under attack for the same reason that Marathis are under attack in India, and Gazprom is stealing land from Nigerians.
I won't be making comments about society and cultures that are not western, as rarely do such comparisons actually contain truth, and I do not have enough knowledge of those situations to accurately describe them.
Suppose in a population of 100, there are 20 blue and 80 green people. Suppose that 10 blue people are the victim of green crime in a given year, while blue people commit 20 crimes against green people in the same period. So you could say that blue people commit twice as much crime as green people, which is true, but that leaves out the fact of the population disparity. If a blue person has a 50% chance of criminal insult from a green person, while a green person only has a 25% chance of experiencing that, then it's obviously better to be green than it is to be blue because you are only half as likely to become a victim of crime.
Unfortunately, people such as yourself often look at the absolute numbers, compare the 20 blue-on-green crimes with the blue population size of 20, and leap to the conclusion that all blue people are criminals. While the percentage of criminals in the blue population is almost certainly higher on the basis of simple probability (as blue criminals would otherwise need to be >8 more active than green ones), what you have there is a correlative rather than a causal relationship : we don't know to what extent the incidence of criminality in a population causes crime against that population, a classic chicken-and-egg problem that most likely does not have a simple binary solution.
Actually, the crime rate among blacks is much higher even after normalizing for population.
If "built" == "shot the Native Americans who settled"
So what about the rest of what he said?
> It's obvious by your stupid statement
There's no need for name calling. It's the lowest form of debate.
Also, please don't support your views with the, "I have black friends" excuse. It doesn't help your cause.
Most of the country doesn't give a shit what color you are so long as you don't start with a presumptive "you're a fucking racist!" attitude.
Hey there! I'm a white guy who has taken walks through Baltimore before— in fact, all of Baltimore. What you're talking about isn't at all systemic like the shit the OP has to deal with. Yes, white people are victims of racially-motivated crimes. In fact, some of them are event prosecuted as hate crimes! But it's not systemic, so comparing it to white-on-black racism isn't fair.
Hey there! I'm a white guy who has taken walks through Baltimore before— in fact, all of Baltimore. What you're talking about isn't at all systemic like the shit the OP has to deal with. Yes, white people are victims of racially-motivated crimes. In fact, some of them are event prosecuted as hate crimes! But it's not systemic, so comparing it to white-on-black racism isn't fair.
Hey there! I'm a white guy who has taken walks through Baltimore before— in fact, all of Baltimore. What you're talking about isn't at all systemic like the shit the OP has to deal with. Yes, white people are victims of racially-motivated crimes. In fact, some of them are event prosecuted as hate crimes! But it's not systemic, so comparing it to white-on-black racism isn't fair.
I totally accept that blacks face more racism in many aspects of society today, especially professionally. But in Baltimore a bunch of black kids jumped me, and they told me it was because I was white and I "thought I could walk around their neighborhood" (a block from Penn Station which is actually pretty gentrified). It wasn't even a robbery, although they did rob me, but if that was their only goal they wouldn't have continued to beat me for the ten minutes after I had given up. Oh, and of course that's not considered a hate crime.
So when that happens, and then you tell me, in all caps, that white people are never the victims of racism, do you think I'm more or less inclined to agree with your other points?
I wasn't killed but I was beat to a pulp one day for being white by a group of people. My crime? Trying to shake a guy's hand that walked up to me. Apparently that was some sort of insult. Not institutional enough for you? A non-white police officer was literally 20 feet away from me and did absolutely nothing. Probably because he was scared.
I've never had it happen to me before or since but to say someone cannot be violently targeted for being white is absurd. Was it racism? Well, that depends on your definition of racism. Some only consider it racism when perpetrated by someone who belongs to a group that traditionally has less power. But, I'll tell you, I felt pretty powerless that day in the face of a group with more power than I possessed at that moment.
You're not helping your cause by making ridiculous statements. The most recent one I could find was 2 weeks ago. http://kstp.com/news/stories/s2778011.shtml
You have to go here to see the police report: http://lakeminnetonka.patch.com/articles/arrest-made-in-conn...
But you have to understand the rules of the game. Unless a black person is literally shouting "die whitey" while stomping someone to death, then it's not a hate crime when a black person attacks a white person, regardless of actual motivation or lack thereof. It's just another random senseless crime and not part of a pattern. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_an...
That's a load of crap. I am considered "white" (you need papers and blood quote to prove you're Native American despite what some senatorial candidate thinks), and I have gotten a ton of crap because I grew up on a reservation not of my father's tribe. And no, I did not get to flee to the mystically accepting fellow white folk in the the town next door (I lived on the rez after all and am related).
The brain is an amazing pattern matching machine. You missed matching the whole pattern.
While I agree that the saintly thing to is respond without bringing up your persecutors' race, I am pretty sympathetic to people who have been the victims of overt racism seeing some things in terms of race. They've had their faces rubbed in it.
And I'm sorry to come down hard on you, but it's pretty arrogant to tell someone who is still suffering the consequences of being harassed because of his race not to take notice of the race of the people harassing him.
Sincerity and respect for a person's race does not take a backseat just because someone made racist remarks to someone else. I've been the victim of racist remarks and I'm white, that doesn't make it okay for me to refer to the other person by their race. In fact, it makes it WORSE.
Being tolerant of ANYONE using racism for ANY reason is not okay.
EDIT: The more I read your comment, the more it looks like you support racism as a means of retaliation to racism. This is why racism still (and always) exists.
Agreed.
> makes his complete argument null and void
No, actually it doesn't. That's really not how logic works.
This is an audience problem. This post was pretty clearly not meant to be an intellectual tour de force; it was a rant, and a step away from frothing at the mouth. The author doesn't claim to be perfect, nor is he. For an audience like HN, it's completely inappropriate, because it doesn't take into account our biases and worldviews; but I seriously doubt he expected to be on the HN front page.
Edit: Also legal action? Im sure his use of "dumbwhite motherfucker" in court will go over very well. Come on...
Oh hey, it's the rare explicitly stated ad hominem attack.
(Not that that's any better.)
So racial epithets are OK as long as you're targeting a group of people who have wronged you? Got it.
Not that it in any way legitimizes the vile things that were said to the man.
So long as you're talking about a group of people who have systemic, institutionalized power over you based on the colour of their own skin? Damn right they're OK. I hate to break it to you, but it's pretty much only white people that think race is no big deal. People of colour tend to get disabused of that foolish idea pretty damn quickly by reality. See for instance http://www.womanist-musings.com/2012/02/anti-racist-billboar...
There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist talk is talk that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/white/black/g and make it just as racist.
So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
That's like saying that steak is food, but ramen isn't. Clearly, steak is considered a higher-quality food, but that doesn't negate the fact that ramen is food as well.
Due to the historical mistreatment of black people in America, it is more socially unacceptable to say something like "dumbblack"; however, "dumbwhite" is no less accurately described by 'a hatred or intolerance of another race'.
There are degrees of racism? Wasn't that a binary thing? I understand that racists aren't created equal since some are filled with more prejudices than others but I think the same doesn't apply to racism itself. I'm not arguing that life is harder for people who are (or so we are told, I've got no data) the majority of victims but a victim being racist isn't being "less racist" after all. He's contributing to a vicious circle. Whilst I understand such behaviour from an emotional point of view, it's definitely not wise.
In most situations, saying "dumbblack" would be more offensive for black person than "dumbwhite" for white person. Especially in this case. It's like if you had a couple of bad experiences with the police, you could start saying offensive things about police officers in general. You could be accused of "policism" but in fact, it would be quite understandable reaction. When he said "dumbwhite", he was kind of "revenging" their racism, which is very different from saying "dumbwhite" just because he disrespects white people.
I generally think it's safer to frame in terms of the effect (which you mostly do) than motivation. Even if someone has no ill intent, and simply talks a certain way because they haven't really thought about the issues, their speech still does harm.
But it doesnt matter if its funny! It matters if its racist!
EDIT: plus, it's easy for me to avoid dealing with this guy. I won't be his friend. But I really worry about the culture of the software industry, and if Kixeye spreads to mean more asshole workplaces, that's something that's a lot harder to avoid.
See, while I think the author has something of a chip on his shoulder, he's got some historical and demographic basis for it, and chips weigh more heavily on younger shoulders; it's easier for me to be philosophical about life's obstacles insofar as I've survived to middle age in reasonable comfort and so on. And no, I don't think this is an unacceptable way to speak. It's unacceptable in the workplace, and I'd be lukewarm towards it in a social context, but people have to the freedom to think and express things that I find odious to the extent that I have the freedom to disagree or walk away without any negative consequences. That's not the case in an employment situation, because while you can walk away there's a measurable economic cost to doing so.
However, let's take the story at face value for a second. What occured between this person and the people around him wasn't just inappropriate workplace conduct, it was systemic and demeaning in a way that is hard for someone to get if they're not the subject of it. Most people are not wired to take this kind of abuse in a sustained way. This person is hurt, they're confused, they feel powerless, and they're lashing out.
So I think we can probably get to the victim's fucked up statements after we let the outrage over the institutionalized racism that the story consists of simmer down, don't you think? I've said some pretty dumb, mean things when I'm suffering from emotional trauma, haven't you? At least we have an excuse and we can apologize and say, "That was my anger and frustration, I know it's wrong."
But perhaps what makes me most angry is that other members of this team were complicit in this treatment. They're not stopping it, they're not complaining, they're not resigning, they're not objecting. It's terrifying.
plus the run dmc segue into the 'what i wore today' image was a bit gratuitous
"Oh..hell..no.."
I had to remind myself that this was a blog post. That it wasn't a literary article or technical diagram. I look for unbiased, factual reporting that is meant to educate and improve awareness. This is not one of those things. It's an inflammatory post where an individual is airing his grievances. I feel sorry that someone can be treated so poorly in a workplace, but at the same time, the author damages his point by using equally vitriolic and occasionally stereotypical phrases.
I hope the author is able to find a work environment that is more progressive and that is more respectful of all genders, creeds and sexual orientations.
Was that inherently a racist thing to say? Because looking at it... it does look like something electronic.
There's no question that the workplace was hostile, but there are too many side quests in this article. I'm not sure what Jose's marriage or the Dumbwhite-comment has to do with it. Maybe I'm missing something.
>Also, at some point after this conversation took place, one of the women looked at my prized necklace and said “Hey, that looks like a calculator, is that a calculator?”
I didn't really read that as immediately after, more along the lines of "sometime later that day someone walked up and asked if my necklace was a calculator"... the sentence doesn't give a good grasp on timing.
Maybe they should actually try and focus as a company.
1. insist the programmers work. There games are not that great.
2. insist their website get up to 2012 standards. I would assume they were not a serious company based upon their all Flash website.
3. Look at Chick-Fil-A and the onslaught of people pissed off at their stance on gay's in the workplace. We should be equally pissed at Kixeye and boycott them too.
4. There are standard stereotypical jokes and then there are blatant racist comments.
Example Joke: Asians have a lot of trouble parking and stopping at stop signs.
Blatant racism: "Hey Joe, I mean Ying, to use your real name, nice 30 point parallel park this morning, you really are Asian."
There is a difference. I am white and I live in a very predominantly Asian area of Cupertino and the joke would be funny to a lot of Asians. The racism, no.
Kudos to the OP for writing this.
We can all tell he is upset at what he experienced. Some of this shows through but boil this down to the essence and we have a company that is openly encouraging a racist environment and in 2012 nobody should have to worry about being black, white, purple, gay, straight, trans-gender, dress like a thug, cross-dress, etc...
Edit: Thinking about this more, the OP gets irritated when the company served a lunch of "Fried Chicken and Waffles". He implies indirectly to Black folk this is an insult. However, look at the menu of "Waffle House" and it is an item on the menu. There wasn't anything really wrong with the lunch they served. It is one of those lunch combinations that people just know about and associate with Blacks.
Example: Fried Chicken and Watermelon - Black
Corn Beef and Cabbage - Irish
Tea and Cucumbers - WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)
Mac and Cheese with Hot Dogs - White
Racist company and an OP that is coming down to their level more often than he should. Let the water roll off a ducks back...
Backwards racism at it's finest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5l-nnR4Bx0 (probably NSFW)
Note who has given them funding. Send this blog post to the VC companies that have given them funding. Should hit them where it hurts.
And yes, take legal action. (Although seek legal council to ensure first bit isn't considered slander or what have you. Be in best possible position for a legal battle.) Companies like this give the profession a bad name.
As with any story a reader wants to like the characters they are reading about. It's hard to like someone who is constantly angry, depressed, sarcastic, and bitter. You, as a person may feel these things, and be completely correct to feel them, however you make it hard to read your story without a contrast. For example, "I love games" or "I love the way I feel in Oakland" or "I am so proud of my necklace I don't care what others think." People can empathize with pain, but they also need joy, hope, and a reason to like you.
Another way to win the rhetorical battle is to use humor. Your reactions to the abuse are shock, horror, rage, and sarcasm. Feel free to interject a joke or two. In ten years you will be telling jokes about these ignorant people. Make them into caricatures, lampoon them, exaggerate their folly so that people will not just be angry at them on your behalf but seem them as an absurd throwback to a time you wish had passed.
Tell a story that demonstrates the moral high ground. What I remember from your post is that you tried to say something, gave up, then went home, got high and watched Netflix. People want to be inspired to take action, and if you have a story, even if it means talking to HR, that is incredibly powerful. How does your behavior model an appropriate response for others who might be in your shoes? A lawsuit may be appropriate, but from reading your story it seems like a dramatic escalation, you need to lead people into it.
I can't say I understand what you're going through, but I do support your effort and I'm disgusted on behalf of white-straight-geeks everywhere. If an apology means anything I'm sorry you are going through this.
If you actually want to help, first listen.
He's not MLK, Jr. He's a guy telling a personal story. The world needs a plurality of voices to advance; the despondent and downtrodden remind us where we are, and the transcendent and hopeful show us a way out.