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Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

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541–550 of 728 posts

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not with that attitude you can't. Racists aren't (usually) racists for the fun of it. Racists are racists because they feel threatened by or lack sufficient exposure to / understanding of other races. If your goal is to cure racism, then making racists feel even more threatened is probably the least productive way of going about it. Instead, the trick is to befriend them. Show them that there's nothing to fear. These…

When has this ever worked at scale? All major social change to end oppression has been associated with large scale disruption and unrest. How nice it must be to be in a group with power, where even if you are an unrepentant asshole and deny the humanity of others, those other people are obligated to be nice to you.

It's not about obligation. It's about strategy and PR.

Re: whether or not it works at scale, it seems to have worked for Irish-Americans. It took awhile between the height of Irish immigration and the present day, but unlike in the 19th Century you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone unironically demanding Irish people to be deported or claiming Irish immigrants are stealing jobs. Similar deal for other previously-persecuted European immigrants and their descendants (Italians and Germans both come to mind). Asians are getting to that point, too; not really free of discrimination/prejudice, but even my most hatefully-racist acquaintances seem to at least tolerate their existence.

None of the above groups (to my knowledge) were all that socially disruptive (at least not intentionally); instead, they gradually integrated and blended with the existing demographics. Instead of Irish or German or Italian or English or French or Polish or Russian or what have you, we ended up with kind of a blended European demographic. I have a feeling Asians are on track to be part of that, too, and end up in a sort of blended "Eurasian" demographic. We ain't quite there yet, but I'd give it a couple decades before we are.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#542
Let us say person C1 says: "If person A1 preaches/supports discrimination/intolerance based on his/her belief, person A1 cannot complain about discrimination or intolerance he/she faces. One cannot say I should not be discriminated on any criteria, but I can discriminate others with some criteria which the other doesn't agree.

A person B1 can have a moral compass that people should be treated as they treat others. In which case person B1 may be totally fine being discriminatory/intolerant toward A1 because of A1's intolerant/discriminatory behaviour. Person B1 will be total toleralant towards others and will be considered a tolerant person".

Now is person C1 preaching intolerance/discrimination? Perhaps not, as Person C1 is preaching "treat others as you want to be treated" and may lead to "intolerance toward intolerance only".

Maybe there are logical flaws in the above argument as most spiritual people will not preach intolerance towards even A1. However I assume the spiritual person will not hesitate to point out to A1 about "treat others as you want to be treated".

However if A2 is preaching equality and having a different view on say some other topic and faces discrimination, then people who discriminate should be ready to face "discrimination".

One thing that people are making mistake is if A2 and A1 are similar on many views and even if A2 disagrees with A1 on "equality", A2 gets clubbed with A1 and start being discriminated like A1.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first three are deeply problematic and rooted in deep-seated white supremacist beliefs and absent mitigating circumstances I’d consider firing people who held them. Sorry, that’s just how I have to feel given everything that’s been going on these days.

This is exactly the kind of intolerance this memo is advocating against. If you genuinely would fire all the 45% of people that voted for Trump, anyone who disapproves of the rhetoric of BLM, or considers Islam to have a poor human rights record then I would suggest you take a look in mirror before trying to find intolerance in your employees. Easily the majority of the US population would hold at least one of those…

Just want to nitpick and say 45% of American's didn't vote for Trump - 45% of voters in 2016 voted for Trump.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#544
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think. I very firmly believe that if it we're for the chorus of media outlets and public voices pushing the idea that anybody who didn't like Hillary, or who did like Trump, were all racist, sexist, deplorable... That Trump probably wouldn't have been elected.

I think that was part of it -- the "deplorables" line really hurt her. Hillary didn't have anywhere near the political talent that Bill had, where by "political talent" I mean being able to connect with people and bring you over to their side. I was stunned when she was nominated, because I couldn't imagine her winning a national election. I think Al Gore had similar issues vis-a-vis Bush. He was just robotic, condes…

Well said.

>I was stunned when she was nominated, because I couldn't imagine her winning a national election.

I think the way she got herself nominated didn’t do her any favors either. It was quite transparently corrupt and must’ve flipped a good amount of Bernie supporters.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called corporate social responsibility. Companies advocate for their bottom line and their employees at the same time. As a gay dude that grew up in Ohio -- and had people yell "fag" when I got my diploma at graduation -- I'm beyond happy that the next generation of LGBTQ engineers won't grow up with the same level of hate I experienced. The arc of moral justice is only bent when force is applied.

I'm not saying you and others shouldn't be politically involved. I'm not even saying companies shouldn't contribute to political causes. I'm just saying they shouldn't encourage their workers to do so in the workplace. You shouldn't be called a slur at work not because of the type of slur, but the fact that it is a slur at all.

The idea that one shouldn't be called a slur at work, and the definition of a slur, is itself intensely political.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I completely disagree with the whole "bring your whole self to work". No! Bring your professional self to work. The counter-argument is that the causes relate to discrimination in the workforce. I.e., BLM needs to be supported because blacks are underrepresented in the American tech workforce. I disagree these need to be equivalent. It's possible for a company to promote hiring underrepresented minorities…

"It's possible for a company to promote hiring underrepresented minorities without allowing employees to advertise their political beliefs." That's only true with extreme censorship. If a company I was working for was hiring people based on race, I would call that out for the blatant racism that it is (under the disguise of "hiring underrepresented minorities"). Would that be an inappropriate airing of my "political"…

I don't agree with the sentiment, but you're absolutely right that "non political" can only be achieved by strict definition and enforcement of what is and isn't political, which of course is itself a political act.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#547
post #84

Worked across very liberal and very conservative places in tech. Neither is pleasant. In my opinion, the American self-image and self-worth largely characterized by subscription to a political ideology is the problem. What bothers me is not dress codes,free meals,open offices,etc... But the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place. Why are companies promoting "pride",donating to tr…

In general I agree with you, but neither pride nor tolerance training is political. Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year: it's neither left or right. Tolerance training isn't political either. If an employer wants their employees to be comfortable at work, it's within their right to train employees to be tolerant of each other. It has nothing to do with politics. It's strange how gay people just being ga…

> Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year

Having worked in Northern Ireland I can tell you that St Patrick's Day is loaded with politics there.

The company got around it by giving both St Pats and 12th July as public holidays but allowing staff to voluntarily work them in lieu.

Hence staunch loyalists could work on St Pats and take the holiday another time, whilst nationalists could work on Orangefest. Neither felt compelled to celebrate the other's festival.

Being a naive Englisher 'Hun' I just took both days off and offended both groups equally.

All discussion of politics and sports was banned at all times. That seemed quite easy to enforce.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#548
post #84

Worked across very liberal and very conservative places in tech. Neither is pleasant. In my opinion, the American self-image and self-worth largely characterized by subscription to a political ideology is the problem. What bothers me is not dress codes,free meals,open offices,etc... But the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place. Why are companies promoting "pride",donating to tr…

> This isn't about left vs right or kkk vs blm.

I've noticed this for a while now. I moved beyond the old left/right political football team-style arguments long ago because the political landscape has changed and become much more muddied.

I don't think the traditional spectrum applies anymore and I'm noticing more and more that others are seeing the same thing.

It still seems like most of the populace is stuck slinging shit at the 'other' though.

Honestly if a person still thinks in terms of left/right I don't think they are contributing anything whatsoever to any current political debate.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would not like it one bit at the conservative places I worked at. So the commenter says that he looks forward to the next generation of developers not experiencing the hate that he has experienced. You say, he’d be unhappy at conservative places, presumably because he’d still experience that hate. So then why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce? His goal—hell, it should be all of our goal—…

> why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce? Because he doesn’t understand that these places openly hostile towards gays are likely formed by white heterosexual Christian conservatives defending their identity and pushing for politics at workplace. > it should be all of our goal—is to stamp out places where such hate is encouraged You can’t stamp out people. You forcibly convert that one place to…

What are these white heterosexual Christians defending their identity against?

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#550
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruit in elementary school? Seriously? How about pay more taxes to provide a better k-12 education so the kids have a baseline on which they can learn the skills they need to succeed in tech.

Pay more taxes so kids can "learn" more common core bullshit? Why on earth should the institution of force in our society have a monopoly on funding our schools and legislating what's taught in them? The tacit statism on this forum is just absurd...

because otherwise you end up with kids being taught that the Earth is 12000 years old and that evolution is a communist plot.
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