Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 828 posts

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#221

Post by geggam »

1121redblackgo wrote: post #215
nouveaux wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a publicly traded company is not doing well, the CEO gets canned and no one bats an eye. If one department is not doing well, it's very common to just fire a bunch of people or get rid of the department completely. The idea of "dismantling of police" does not mean we do not offer protection. It just means that the current organization "police" is not providing the services it's customers want. Years of "tweaking"…

New way same as the old way presumably. This is a baby with the bathwater situation. It can be fixed no need to scrap it.

Not sure I agree. The concept of meeting mental illness or crimes of poverty / lack of education with escalating violence is really uneducated at best.

Violence being the language folks use after all else fails.

Starting with violence means you don't really care about solving the problem and just want the incident to go away

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#222

Post by psweber »

ravenstine wrote: post #167
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical about Robin Diangelo, I read her book a few months ago, and it only seems to be an advertisement for her services as an anti-racist instructor. Her entire argument frames race relations within the context of the workplace which is problematic because her approach is coercive, not educational. It's more a guide on "how not to get fired for being racist" than anything. There are much better books for foun…

> Her entire argument frames race relations within the context of the workplace which is problematic because her approach is coercive, not educational. It's also problematic because the workplace inherently has an underlying adversarial quality that can provide a never-ending supply of "microaggressions" and various forms of otherings that effectively sow more division than actually get non-whites anywhere. The autho…

> the workplace inherently has an underlying adversarial quality that can provide a never-ending supply of "microaggressions"

Did you pick this idea up somewhere else or think of it yourself? I've not heard that concept, and it makes way too much sense.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#223

Post by neonate »

Thorentis wrote: post #189
Pfhreak wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stereotyping and racism are not mutually exclusive. In this case, people are making inferences that the BIPOC is not the CEO. Racism doesn't imply intent either. It absolutely can be the case that someone unknowingly makes a racist inference even with the best of intentions.

Racism absolutely does imply intent. The attempt by progressives to recharacterise racism as something that it is not, is the reason why they are making less progress in their objectives than they would like. It is not racist to assume that the person in the room most like the other CEOs you have met, is also the CEO. If I was in a foreign country, I would assume the CEO is the person most like the other people in th…

I don't see anything here that contradicts the idea that people are systematically discriminated against because of their race. That's the problem people are worried about.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#224

Post by mc32 »

bsder wrote: post #182
ibudiallo wrote: post #140

I usually choose to believe in "the honest mistake". It happens, two people walk in, one of them is the CEO, you assume it is the one on the right. And then when you realize it is a mistake, you apologize. We are only human. But when it happens over and over and over, you can't help but feel frustrated. You realize that people natural instinct is to think you are the subordinate. One second your are on stage at Techc…

Dear lord, do people not just simply say: "Hi, I'm . And you are?" What is wrong with people? That's just basic courtesy.

When I’m not sure who is who, I’ll ask “Which one of you is so and so” as I scan the multiple of people.

People should use blank slates in more situations than they do.

It’s not all upside as some people take you to be slow for “not making connections,” but on the other hand you don’t make bad assumptions.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#225

Post by nouveaux »

1121redblackgo wrote: post #215
nouveaux wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a publicly traded company is not doing well, the CEO gets canned and no one bats an eye. If one department is not doing well, it's very common to just fire a bunch of people or get rid of the department completely. The idea of "dismantling of police" does not mean we do not offer protection. It just means that the current organization "police" is not providing the services it's customers want. Years of "tweaking"…

New way same as the old way presumably. This is a baby with the bathwater situation. It can be fixed no need to scrap it.

I would agree with you that there would be the same if it's the same people running. This is the systematic part that needs to change. When companies fail, there is a new CEO, new board, new executives. Let's do the same with failed police departments.

There is 0% chance that all police departments will all change in 2020. I'm happy to voice my support that some cities are willing to try new things. If it works great. If not, back to the drawing board.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#226

Post by triceratops »

nsporillo wrote: post #174
claudeganon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robin Diangelo’s work doesn’t seem to me very good or well informed on what anti-racism actually constitutes. It seems mostly like a schtick to sell to HR managers. The way that she essentializes race seems like a bizarre, inverted reification of whiteness (and by extension white supremacy), than any deconstruction or attack on it. Anti-racism is about taking on the powers and material structures that reproduce racis…

What exactly are the powers and material structures that contribute to the perceived racism in our society? From my limited understanding of this position, it sounds like the goal is a dismantling of police and courts which form the backbone of a civil rule of law society.

> it sounds like the goal is a dismantling of police and courts which form the backbone of a civil rule of law society.

It's not. The goal is to demand equal protections under the law for all, eliminate racial bias in policing, judging and sentencing, and make police themselves follow the law.

Don't be misled by the "defund police" mantra. It's just a way to divert resources to community engagement programs and/or get out of contracts with police unions. It doesn't literally mean "shut down the police department and courts".

> From my limited understanding of this position

At least you're honest about it. I'd encourage you to educate yourself instead of just relying on soundbites and scare-mongering media headlines (not saying that's what you've been doing so far).

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#227

Post by neonate »

junke wrote: post #146
_8j50 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is stereotyping but not neccesarily racism. I've made the same mistake at a car shop, I thought the small lady on my side of the counter was a customer, i ignored her and talked to the guy behind the counter, but turns out she was the boss+worker and the guy was helping out. I did feel embarrassed, but I know it's not because I think less of women, you just don't see women in those roles a lot. Maybe associative g…

Racism needs not be voluntary to be racism. You just learn to expect some things to be more probable than others, but are those heuristics really based on actual facts or just biases? If you expect some kind of people to be in charge rather than others, it is a symptom of widespread racism/sexism in your environment. You doing the "mistake" does not mean you necessarily, actively, try to cause harm. But you still do,…

I think you meant to say "doesn't need to be voluntary". "Needs not to be" has exactly the opposite meaning, though it's an uncommon way to put it in English.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#228

Post by commoner »

OzzyB wrote: post #203
commoner wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you would prefer to withhold a deserved apology to avoid being perceived as "weak", that's your prerogative. However, making a sexual stereotype and then refusing to acknowledge it is a means of perpetuating sexism. It's true that systemic change is needed to eliminate sexism and racism, but society does not change all at once: every action (including every apology) contributes to the solution.

OP isn't weak he's simply pointing out that a simple "opps sorry" isn't enough for radicals like you.

badrabbit specifically used the word "weak":

> Rule #1 of negotiation is never negotiate from a position if weakness. As the original comment suggests, this is indeed fragility, you feep weak for being wrong and you would feel a lot weaker if you said it out loud.

In my comment, I said that an apology would have been the proper resolution:

> In this type of situation, the empathetic resolution would be to apologize for causing the victim's embarrassment, which most likely exceeds your own.

And frankly, since you have called me a "radical" and a "commie" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23544865) because I had made two comments stating that an apology would be the correct approach in the situation, your perception of the Overton window needs some serious adjustment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#229

Post by SI_Rob »

chongli wrote: post #73
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

I thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO. I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic raci…

I think the trouble here is the double meaning of the word racist. When some people hear the word, they think of cross-burning fanatics and mass murderers. On the other hand, the current big conversation is about how everyone is racist and that society is rife with systemic racism. That creates a catch-22 for anyone who commits a faux-pas (like mistaking the black CEO for a subordinate). Either admit to racism and ca…

the deep problem, to me, is that nuance and complexity are self-censoring.

any position that doesn't losslessly compress into a chant or a rally cry or 240 characters is effectively censored by its own unfitness for the infrastructure of mass propagation.

this ultimately favors certain corners of the anti-censorship crowd, for you can be vocally against censorship while knowing full well that it is the most overbroad, reductionist and populist strains of messaging that prevail under such conditions.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#230

Post by wottamap »

adjkant wrote: post #212
wottamap wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not blaming the victim, I'm blaming all the white people who are scared to death of being seen as racist and who eagerly point out minor behaviours and scream "racism." I'm not blaming blacks for these beliefs, I'm blaming the society that drills them into their heads.

With respect and goodwill (appreciate that you actually seem to be coming to the comments to learn), it's very hard to read your comment in that way when you say things like: > Society pretending that there is massive racism when there isn't is itself structural racism I'm not sure where is best to start here because there are so many things that have to go into actually believing that, and so many combinations, but…

I will indeed find and watch those movies. I'm aware of the drug laws and the powder/crack issue, and I agree that is structural racism and is very wrong. My entire life I've been on the side of legalization of drugs. I'm watching a lot of social media, and I read as much as I can on this issue. There are methodological issues with many of the other topics/claims you mention, but I won't drag us into the weeds.

I am a contrarian by nature; I'm always motivated to find fault with the prevailing narrative, not to confirm it, irrespective of the topic. Contrarians provide a useful service to society, but due to highly inflammed emotions, this particular topic has been nearly unapprochable by contrarians. Most are keeping their mouths shut. The result is IMHO people going too far in one direction because they are not hearing counterveiling data/opinions/reasoning.

Post reply on HN