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‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

nytimes.com

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Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#601

Post by textgel »

tptacek wrote: post #264
cbthrow91 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ms. Milosevich said the white employee lived in Philadelphia and was allowed to commute to and work from the company’s New York office" Unless I am missing something seems pretty clear the employee switched from WFH in Philadelphia to commuting to NYC to work at that office.

Even if that's the case, the treatment is still obviously disparate: * The PHL employee has been given their choice of office to work from. * The Black employees were required to relocate, not just show up at a particular office on a schedule. Were the Black employees offered the opportunity to work out of the NYC office?

So you admit you just spent several comments lying in the hope your opponent wouldn't go to the bother of pointing out the evidence?

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#602

Post by i-write-comment »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #532
i-write-comment wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything to avoid admitting that a cop killed a black man in cold blood by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes, even after he said "I can't breathe" repeatedly. > because filming onlookers challenged the authority of the cop, and the cop was afraid to have to fight Big Floyd. Are you suggesting that cops are such snowflakes that they can't do their jobs if a civilian criticizes them? I'm struggling to think of any…

>>Anything to avoid admitting that a cop killed a black man Way to stoke a flame war.. At the risk of exacerbating it: anything to bring up Floyd being black, while identical deaths involving people of other racial backgrounds, like in the case of Floyd, Tony Timpa, are never attributed to racism. Also, way to implicitly accuse him of being a racist for not agreeing with you on the motives and culpability of the poli…

Would you agree or disagree with the statement that "systemic racism against Black Americans exists and is a major problem in American society"?

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#603

Post by throw27145 »

tptacek wrote: post #386
throwaway201103 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why are they afraid? Where did they get the notion that black people are aggressive?

Several centuries worth of deeply ingrained racism?

Maybe, but I think there is more to that.

As a personal example, I have immigrated into US from the country with almost no black population, so I'd say that "several centuries of deeply ingrained racism" do not apply to me.

Within the first year of arriving into US, I've had been verbally attacked while I was riding the bus and reading the book. A bunch of teenagers started to say things like "he looks too smart" and "let's take his book away". For a high-schooler who had no exposure to violence before this was pretty scary. Since then, I tried hard to avoid riding the busses through that area. Can you guess which race were those teenagers?

(Note that I have arrived with some pretty weird believes, like the one that everyone with shaved head is a gang member and had to be avoided. That one did not last very long, because there was one person with shaved head in my math class and he was pretty great. Unfortunately, there were no similar experience to persuade me that I should not avoid groups of black people.)

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#604

Post by textgel »

eli wrote: post #568
CryptoPunk wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is incredibly diverse.. The racial representation in tech is roughly proportional to the racial representation in Computer Science. i.e. it's not racism that is keeping black Americans out of tech, and suggesting otherwise with zero evidence beyond the observed racial disparity is extremely irresponsible.

It’s not. It isn’t. And why do you think the racial diversity in Comp Sci doesn’t match that of America? Or even that of the general college population?

The same reasons that are always ignored or considered sinful by progressives. Some people are more interested than others, just the same way that nursing and numerous other non-diverse fields that you mysteriously aren't concerned about have people driven to them in numbers that don't match the population.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#605

Post by textgel »

bArray wrote: post #448

I've spoken to multiple people employed at tech companies that believe they were 'token' hires, I can summarize their thoughts as thinking the situation was "awful". Biased hiring practices are in quite a few cases hurting the people they aim to help.

There were plenty of very loud, often repeated warnings about exactly this problem happening but is seems only so much can be done.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#606

Post by adjkant »

leppr wrote: post #560
adjkant wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is extremely international Racism against Africans can be found internationally, but in this case we are talking specifically African-Americans. Being international does not mean diverse in this specific way, it just means diverse in terms of nationality. For a good example, as the article and many have highlighted, asian representation is not an issue at Coinbase. Racism isn't generalized but specific to rac…

You may be right on the first point, I won't speculate. I just wanted to point out that it's unlikely to be something endemic to the space. > What's the real material racism that crypto stops that other forms of payment or speculative trading fall victim to? Access to financial services like loans for instance. No human or even AI model to judge you based on external factors.

> I just wanted to point out that it's unlikely to be something endemic to the space.

I'm still not sure why that would be the case. FWIW I don't suspect it is either, but I don't see any reason it would be more or less than the tech community at large. In this case, Coinbase is reflective not of the subcateogry but of leadership.

> Access to financial services like loans for instance

https://blockfi.com/apply-for-crypto-loan

> Along with our proven KYC/AML process, we review an applicant’s credit history and other information to assess for risk.

This still has all the normal hurdles for a loan. Just because the asset is on a ledger doesn't remove the human factor. Not to mention that a direct collateral backed loan is already very unlikely to get rejected at a traditional financial institution. I didn't find any actual crypto loan options that weren't collateral backed from a quick search. Am I missing other options?

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#608

Post by adjkant »

RestlessMind wrote: post #591
adjkant wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We have played this argument out and I'd love to get over beating this dead horse, here and all over the tech industry. Go look elsewhere in the comments. Fantastical conspiracy webs ("trying to ruin their livelihoods") require according evidence, not refutation. We have a slew of people on the record, and direct response from Coinbase. Not to mention that no one is getting "cancelled" here. The bigger conversati…

> We have played this argument out I didn't get the memo. > I'd love to get over beating this dead horse, here and all over the tech industry Among the people I know closely enough, I see almost no one who has changed their minds ever since these discussions started circa 2015. And I have been in the tech industry for a long time. So keep beating that dead horse, or beat it in a different way. > Not to mention that n…

If you go look at my other comments over the thread, how I respond very much varies based on context. I spent energy where I think others will actually benefit.

> Among the people I know closely enough, I see almost no one who has changed their minds ever since these discussions started circa 2015.

You've pointed this out yourself, why in the world would I keep beating the dead horse here? Do you think people haven't tried different ways? Why should I expend that effort to people who are clearly dug in to the other side permanently? I look for good-will first to engage with people who appear to be open in some way, like in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25234798

The thing you're missing here is that the purpose of this type of response is not for you or OP. It's to show that this type of response is not blindly agreed upon or grounded. When its espoused with no response or criticism, it has a meaningful negative effect on marginalized people in this industry. To quote someone else on this top level thread:

> When not enough people speak up, that can send an implicit message that some life-sucking background noise from others is OK with everyone else, when it's not.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#609

Post by throwawayriver »

sumedh wrote: post #554
throwawayriver wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apparently you still don't get it. I do. Stop projecting about "not getting it". I fully explained the position, and why your original example falls through. QED.

No you dont get it, its not a projection. Some people dont want to deal with police complaint. If you dont understand that you will never get it.

>No you dont get it, its not a projection.

It's IMAX-level projection.

>Some people dont want to deal with police complaint.

And if they don't want to, it's not the companies place to babysit and play judge and jury.

>If you dont understand that you will never get it.

If you don't understand that it's not the company's place to play the judicial branch (and may be illegal for them to), then you'll never get it.

It is by definition the wrong thing to do.

QED.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#610

Post by ankushnarula »

tptacek wrote: post #307
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspeak makes a distinction between "poc" and "non black poc"

It's not "newspeak" to suggest that Black people are treated differently than Asian people; in fact, it would be more surprising to hear that they aren't, since the two groups of people have wildly different histories in the United States.

> Black people treated differently

different cultural groups also behave differently and make different choices based on familial affinities & social incentives

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