How Basecamp Blew Up • Hacker News Board

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#751

Post by etchalon » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #541

etchalon wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a replacement for the term "African American", which is the best way to think of it and why it's capitalized. A good number of major publications have posted explanations for the editorial change: https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-cultures-race-and-e... https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black...

Respectfully, I view these explanations as a retcon. Race is a social construct and the reason these newspapers chose not to capitalize white was because it's historically been capitalized by white nationalists. It's also historically been capitalized by black nationalists. That's what ethno-fascists do. They reduce reality down to singular dimensions and obsess about them as they tell everyone to blame their problem…

You can view them as a retcon, but your argument isn't engaging with their explanations seriously. It just dismisses them, invents a motivation and then ascribes malice to them.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#752

Post by etchalon » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #739

etchalon wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… you’re literally doing the same thing you’re accusing them of. Creating an arbitrary binary and than applying moral judgment to it.

Do you have a counter argument? Do you think such a person should be trusted or do you think this is not how the activism works? If it’s about my comment on trust: You are welcome to trust someone that use these power tactics based upon lies to undermine the moral authority of viewpoint opponents, I just believe there are so many people of better character out there to build a relationship with. Social justice tactic…

I don't have a counter-argument because having one would require accepting your premise. Your hair is a bird.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#753

Post by dnissley » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #742

dnissley wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a pretty left leaning person and I mostly agree with the things he's quoted as saying in this article. I hugely disagree with the way that white supremacism has had it's definition widened within certain circles and how those circles are now attempting to push that definition into wider usage through the type of bullying that's on display in this very article. For most people white supremacism conjures up images…

It's a fair point, and I too have a tendency to get annoyed at politically motivated language drift. But it's a thing that happens, and it's been happening since the dawn of time, and I'm personally pessimistic that there's much that can be done about it. Might as well curse a puddle for being muddy. There's a lesson to be learned here. I wasn't there, of course, but, based on reading this article, it seems that argu…

The problem is the definitional issue is the foundation of many of their arguments. If you give in here, then it's much easier for them to convince you that something must be done.

"There's not much we can do as a company to confront the white supremacist society we live in" sounds downright dismissive compared to "there's not much we can do as a company to support police accountability or any of the other myriad ways in which racism shows up in our society, since that stuff mostly happens outside our company".

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#754

Post by didgeoridoo » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #551

didgeoridoo wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument is simply that the behavior everyone claims to decry (e.g. racial violence) starts somewhere, far below violence This is just a rehash of broken-windows theory, whether its proponents know it or not. The Hutus and Tutsis didn’t start with some off-color ribbing and escalate from there. There is zero evidence behind the “pyramid of hate” — it makes a shallow kind of sense, but has no basis in the real w…

I agree with you 100%. Utilization of the pyramid of hate in this way makes me feel like it's just a retroactive justification of hypersensitive behavior amongst overly fragile employees. Honestly a lot of times it's not even hypersensitivity so much is just overt paranoia. You're on the money about encouraging people to form their identities around these characteristics. Instead of having a conversation about excess…

> Instead of having a unifying and inclusive movement for police reform we got a politically weaponized racially polarizing movement.

Yep. Watching (unarmed, white) Daniel Shaver weeping and begging for his life as he crawled on his hands and knees down the hallway before officer Philip Brailsford executed him with a spray of bullets — that was as clear-cut a case as you could get that the police in many districts are NOT policing their own as much as they should. In many ways, there is a straight line from Brailsford to Chauvin: a cop with lots of citizen complaints and a bad attitude ends up killing someone who didn’t need to die. Race, even when it is a factor, is an unnecessary distraction from the bigger picture.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#755

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #680

ceejayoz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't find a single instance of systemic racism. https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2020/05/05/veil-dar... "The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when “a veil of darkness” masks their race." > Creating that database enabled the team to find the sta…

We're overrepresented in poverty and crime, so it's reasonable that police officers would be biased against black people. I definitely get stopped more often than my white friends (albeit it changes based on the country). I've been asked several times by police officers in Europe whether I was an immigrant from North Africa with the implication I was dealing drugs. A lot of north africans immigrants in the country wh…

> This is not systemic racism, this is recognising patterns, this is an explicit bias.

An explicit bias, held by agents of the state, affecting their behavior towards the citizenry with no regard to individual innocence. Congrats, you've demonstrated systemic racism.

> I can't find a single law discriminating on people's skin color: that's why I think there is no systemic racism.

Kristallnacht wasn't legally authorized, either, but it'd be an odd claim that it didn't reflect systemic anti-Jewish bias in Nazi Germany.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#756

Post by igneo676 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

jarek83 wrote: post #675

I'm among those with mixed feelings. - list of funny names that is kept in some persistent form and circulates the company with full acknowledgment of the head people: Childish and extremely unprofessional, but still a typical mistake rather than a colossal disaster; - politics and racism issue: looks like typical misunderstanding but on a very fragile subjects. Very easy to get into drama scenarios with this mix. Ve…

Ultimately, no, they're not "bad guys" in the sense that they're irredeemably evil. Unfortunately, the current situation certainly paints them in the "extremely foolish or downright spiteful" territory

Once a harmful set of actions comes to light, it's your job as the leadership team to:

1. Apologize

2. Correct the wrong

3. Allow your employees the space to process and heal

  a. Note: People are messy. Especially hurt people express themselves in ways that seem foreign to us. Listen to them

4. Get employees back on board the company mission and work together as a team

Rather than allow space for employees to reach catharsis, they shut down the employees internally. Rather than get their employees back on the company mission, they told them "there's the door". All while externally extolling the virtues of "staying out of politics" and gaslighting everyone.

They're within their rights to do that. Supposedly all of this passed internal HR/Legal review. It's just not the ethical way to deal with this. It's not what we expected from a company that we've long associated with being brash-but-ethical in their dealings

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#757

Post by SantalBlush » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #744

SantalBlush wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They do not accept non-racist environments, only anti-racist ones. They do not accept that businesses be politically neutral. Perhaps they are the ones working toward a politically neutral, non-racist environment, and it is you who won't accept it. In truth, I don't believe either they or you could properly identify what a politically neutral environment really looks like, and you're probably all unreliable and serv…

The fact that you start here by assuming the OP has a nefarious plan simply bec you disagree with him politically is the entire issue. You’re willing to believe him when he says what he believes but you won’t believe for the part that you find distasteful. That’s some major mental gymnastics.

Please show me where I'm assuming a nefarious plan. Putting words in my mouth or thoughts into my my head is doing the very thing that you pretend to condemn here.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#758

Post by isleyaardvark » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

didgeoridoo wrote: post #330

mpyne wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Children understand that calling people names isn't the same as violence. This isn't the argument actually being made here, so if that's what DHH thought when he shut the thread down then that might explain part of the outcry. The argument is simply that the behavior everyone claims to decry (e.g. racial violence) starts somewhere , far below violence. "Funny names" turn into off-color jokes. Off-color jokes turn i…

> The argument is simply that the behavior everyone claims to decry (e.g. racial violence) starts somewhere, far below violence This is just a rehash of broken-windows theory, whether its proponents know it or not. The Hutus and Tutsis didn’t start with some off-color ribbing and escalate from there. There is zero evidence behind the “pyramid of hate” — it makes a shallow kind of sense, but has no basis in the real w…

> Things only really get bad when people are encouraged to form and defend identities around characteristics like race, religion, national origin, etc.

The concern was that some of these “funny names” were based on laughing at other people’s race, national origin, etc. That’s the opposite of promoting it.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#759

Post by calvinmorrison » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #665

calvinmorrison wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Muslims are adherents to a religion. Using "Arab" might be more relevant.

Most Muslims aren't Arabs. As for the issue with Muslims, people actually do hate the religion more than the race. People have no issue with non-Muslim Arabs or northern Africans, they mostly dislike Muslims even white ones.

> Most Muslims aren't Arabs.

Exactly. Our lack of education and portrayal by media has basically informed the West that Arabs are Muslims and are synonymous!

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#760

Post by JPKab » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #185

throthro111 wrote: post #160

I feel bad for everyone involved. This story made me realize that working at Basecamp is not something I would want to do in the future, primarily because DHH and Fried are so egotistic. However, it also makes me face the reality that I would not want to work with many of the people that resigned. Resigning over a random employee refusing to say that "white supremacy exists" is absurd. I imagine myself working at som…

> Resigning over a random employee refusing to say that "white supremacy exists" is absurd It's not a random employee though. It's someone who is part of the Senior Leadership Team. If you deny that it exists then how can you be trusted to do something if an issue does comes up ?

White supremacy is so baked into American culture that over 90% of immigrants to the US are non-white.

The US is the least racist nation in the world according to Pew surveys.

What we have an abundance in the US is people who, if racism disappeared tomorrow, would be out of work and have to find a new career. These same people are the ones who act as if the election, to 2 terms, of a black president translates to the US making no progress on race since the 60's.

I grew up in a mostly black county in Virginia. I know what demagoguery looks like, and witnessed it with the GOP for decades. The Democratic party has embraced it, in a big way, since Hillary's loss. It works to win elections, but at the cost of elevating racial reductionism in POC. And the more POC embrace racial reductionism, the more moderate whites will do the same, creating more white supremacists. I've already witnessed colleagues who are moderate getting frustrated in meeting where they are demonized, and next thing you know they are googling and listening/reading conservative authors who mirror their frustration and amplify it.

Singer didn't deny that white supremacy "exists". He simply stated, in my opinion correctly, that it's not embedded in American institutions. Because it's not, as evidenced by the fact that we actively import (to an extent unsurpassed by the vast majority of nations in the world) non-white immigrants to the tune of over a million a year.

My next door neighbor is an Indian immigrant family. My neighbor across the street is from Vietnam. Both are naturalized citizens, and this ethos is going to try to say that the institution that naturalized them is white supremacist. It's patently absurd and irrational, and appeals to gullible college students and losers who desperately want to externalize blame for their failures.