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like saying white supremacy doesnt exist in the united states

• tomschlick 5y ago
  Singer clarifies in the later follow up to say he was referring to the people at Basecamp, not in reference to the whole country. > To which Singer responded: “I said we have different ways of framing … If you want to debate whether it exists anywhere, then yeah. But not here at this company, not with the people I associate with.” Edit: to add quote
  • DiNovi 5y ago
    Yes it is a common tactic to back away from an initial claim and pivot after people call you out, but he already let the genie out the bottle.
    • tomschlick 5y ago
      Its also common to not to explain things you think are obvious when initially talking but when someone asks you about it you clarify your position.
      • ashtonkem 5y ago
        He also has every single motive to lie here.
        • tomschlick 5y ago
          Or he just thinks that the whole situation is ridiculous because there is zero evidence that we have seen relating any of this to white supremacy. Instead, those allegations are just brought out by people on the left anytime they want as a cudgel to stop all debate on a topic.
          • ashtonkem 5y ago
            Given that he has a history of quoting Breitbart, the primary newspaper of “actually racism against whites is the issue” and “black crime” I do not buy that. I also don’t buy it when they rush to scrub a ton of his chat history after this. That’s fishy as hell. > those allegations are just brought out by people on the left anytime they want as a cudgel to stop all debate on a topic. The irony of course is that this entire situation was accelerated by DHH and Fried creating a new policy saying “no politics or get out”. The people stopping all debate here are management, not the amorphous “left”.
            • tomschlick 5y ago
              > Given that he has a history of quoting Breitbart, the primary newspaper of “actually racism against whites is the issue”, I do not buy that. You have no idea if that's true or not or the extent of his comments. You're going off of an unsubstantiated claim and treating it as fact. > I also don’t buy it when they rush to scrub a ton of his chat history after this. That’s fishy as hell. They didn't scrub history after this. They deleted those forums a week or two before all of this (according to the article), in an apparent attempt to stop the political chatter. It seems when that didn't work they came out with the no politics policy. > The irony of course is that this entire situation was accelerated by DHH and Fried creating a new policy saying “no politics or get out”. The people stopping all debate here are management, not the amorphous “left”. There is still zero evidence that any of this has to do with white supremacy, so someone making that claim is ridiculous and is meant to stop all meaningful conversation. Once someone makes that claim the entire debate becomes about that claim and there is no turning back from it. That is very much the reason it is used so much. It seems they have/had quite a few political activists that were causing contention in the company. I don't blame them one bit for wanting to quell political stuff while on company time.
              • ashtonkem 5y ago
                > You have no idea if that's true or not or the extent of his comments. You're going off of an unsubstantiated claim and treating it as fact. I find the selective application of epistemic uncertainty fascinating. Why not treat his rebuttal to the article as completely unsubstantiated? Or for that matter, why didn't he refute quoting Breitbart in the office, if it's not true? He was clearly given a chance to comment, the article includes his version of that meeting. Why are we forced to go into "nobody can possibly know" mode when there are three people saying he did that, and precisely nobody publicly denying it? It's also not "unsubstantiated". You just don't seem to believe the people who are claiming it. That's very different. > They didn't scrub history after this. They deleted those forums a week or two before all of this (according to the article), in an apparent attempt to stop the political chatter. It seems when that didn't work they came out with the no politics policy. You're correct about the timing, my mistake. I do not buy their motivations one bit. Given how publicly political DHH has been, this strikes me much less of "no politics here anymore" and more of "no politics the moment it's critical of us". > There is still zero evidence that any of this has to do with white supremacy I don't see any evidence that anyone originally claimed that the list of names was white supremacist, only that it was a bit racist to mock Asian or African names. This is why they appeared to have been talking about implicit bias so much, which became such a hot button issue later. And I think it's perfectly fair to pull in a bit of implicit bias training in this context, as well as some customer data protection training as well. Discussion of white supremacy cropped up when Ryan Singer allegedly said "I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist", which appears to have made things spiral wildly out of control. I don't think it's a great idea to throw out the term white supremacist without a ton of evidence, but I can 100% see why someone would after having one of their executives effectively accusing everyone on the DEI committee of being racist against whites. > so someone making that claim is ridiculous and is meant to stop all meaningful conversation. Ryan tried to shut down discussion with this "Very often, if you express a dissenting view, you get called a Nazi". You don't get to complain about inflammatory, conversation ending rhetoric after coming out of the gate with that. Doubly so when you hold power in the company. Oh, and all this happened after the company had deleted all the threads and publicly announced the policy change to the world first. Its not internally consistent to accuse the “left” of shutting down the conversation with heated rhetoric, given the timeline of DHH and Fried’s decision to ban previously allowed office speech.
    • eloff 5y ago
      Or he clarified a position that he didn't think needed it originally. Because who's so dumb as to caricature his argument as saying there's no white supremacy anywhere? People are just looking for someone to lynch, irony intended.
      • dang 5y ago
        Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. That includes omitting gratuitous flamebait. I realize this thread has all sorts of such things going on in it, but this was a noticeable step hellward. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • ashtonkem 5y ago
    Sorry, I think he’s lying here to cover his own ass. Especially if he’s been in the habit of quoting Breitbart, him pulling the “actually racism against whites is the real issue” is entirely believable.
    • eloff 5y ago
      That's not what he said though.
      • ashtonkem 5y ago
        > I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist. So yes, the article does claim that he said this. Obviously he contests this, but it appears to be just his word alone against other people who were on the call. The balance of evidence does not appear to be on his side, here.
        • Igelau 5y ago
          Except none of them are stepping forward from what we can tell. It's all an anonymous patchwork of he-said-she-said except for Singer. His evidence is the only evidence because the rest is completely unverifiable.
          • ashtonkem 5y ago
            Feels a bit too close to “fake news” for my comfort. Anonymous sources are the norm in all kinds of reporting; there is no real reason to be surprised that no ex employee is volunteering for the kind of harassment that signing their name to this story would draw in, especially now that Breitbart and a variety of alt-right grifters have decided to take big, public pro-Basecamp and anti-“woke” worker stance. It’s easy to say “if it’s real they would say so publicly”, but honestly the vast majority of us here, myself included, would not do so if it meant getting harassed by the Breitbart crowd. This of course does not mean that this is real. Just because I could imagine myself being an anonymous source in such circumstances does not mean that such sources exist. But in this case we can be savvy media consumers and look at the official pushback from Basecamp and those named, and the pushback is incredibly small in the number of contested details. Singer corrected literally one quote on the record. This implies to me that Newton is largely on the money in terms of factual events. Also, the flip side is also true; we don’t seem to have a lot of current of former Basecamp employees coming out to defend the company and decry these articles as being wrong. Instead we have ... silence. Now everything I said above about wanting to be anonymous is still true for these hypothetical people as well, but if you’re going to complain about the lack of people on the record attacking the company, then surely the lack of people defending the company (executives excluded, natch) on the record should also be a data point, should it not?
• amw-zero 5y ago
  Looking for more accurate truth than the reductive “everything is explained by white supremacy” is different than being a racist. And either way, I believe that kind of conversation doesn’t belong in public channels at work. They make project management software. The company doesn’t need to be political activists. That’s my belief and I am entitled to it. It’s also ok to disagree with that. If social activism is important to you, you can find ways to align that with your career. Good on you for doing that, and good luck. However, saying that all companies, as well as all of their members have to align with your view of the world is crazy talk. I expect more companies to do this, and you can choose to not work there.
• eloff 5y ago
  That's not what he said. He said it doesn't exist in the company.
• jariel 5y ago
  The exec. did not say that. 'White Supremacy' classically means men in Pointy White Hats. The CRT people now use it to mean 'regular white people' because they, in their regular, day to day actions, uphold oppressive systems i.e. 'White Supremacy'. The denial is usually of the later, not the former. Many progressives are now using the denial of the later, to imply denial of the former, as a kind of bad faith rhetorical weapon, which I think is unfair.
  • DiNovi 5y ago
    What is the definition of critical race theory