Speaking Up on Racism | Hacker News Reader

Speaking Up on Racism

apple.com

25 pointsArmandGrillet41 comments

Am I the only one who's tired of these statements from corporations? I guess they're a relatively positive thing, but they feel so hollow. I got one from DoorDash yesterday, and it's tough not to roll my eyes at a company that has worked so hard to screw their drivers, many of whom are minorities, talk about how a food delivery service is fighting racism.

You can also see how hollow it is by how little they have at stake in their statements. Hong Kong has it much worse than the US protesters, where is Apple's statement on that? Once Apple puts their iPhone factories at risk then I'll start respecting their statements.

Well, both are injustices and Apple was 'wrong' before, given they reversed their decision [0] after being accused of double standards when Tim Cook defended their decision to side with China and censor HKMaps [1], suppressing the HK protestors. And now they backing this injustice and these protests?

Sounds like hypocrisy here.

[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/03/apple-bans-app-used-by-...

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/11/tim-cook-defends-remova...

The companies that are actually taking action and doing something are great. Like Humble Bundle has pledge $1M to publish games by black creators. The meaningless press releases where the company/CEO puts out a PR crafted statement are pretty terrible.

No, but that's because I've worked on a team that has crafted these statements before (and then we emailed them out as the CEO). Our statements would get passed around in a Google doc to about 5 different people who would distill it down to platitudes that ended up sounding right, but soulless.

With a social media team, no one is going to stick their necks out and take a strong stance because it'll never get approved. Also you are speaking as a corporation which is a collection of people, so you wind up hitting the lowest common denominator of stances on social issues. But you have to do something because your competitors are doing something. Also, your employees may be asking for you to put out a statement on an issue. So these things get born.

At the end of the day you should just remember that corporations are not people, even when it looks like a single person is talking. I'll stop there before I start going on a tangent.

Also for what it's worth, I thought DoorDash's response was fairly decent because there was substance to it. But I do agree that you can't take their statements in a vacuum and it's easy to see that it's just platitudes based on their crummy employment and business model.

Okay, but then I guess my question is what's the point? If everybody knows it's a soulless statement, why make it at all? It just doesn't seem like this contributes anything to the discourse at all.

I would actually respect a company like Apple putting out a statement that just says, "We're almost entire white guys, so we're not really qualified to say anything meaningful here. We support this movement and are making a donation of $X to Y charity, and beyond that we're going to be quiet and listen."

It's all empty gestures to me. Just like how VCs are now starting to invest in minorities. Spare me your fake sympathy.

‘Now starting to invest’ is the opposite of an Emory gesture.

Why people continue to use the term "minority"? In California Whites are the minority also. You wanted to say "invest in Blacks and Latinos"?

Yes, but it depends a lot on the company.

I think the genre is "woke capitalism"

I understand that Apple is a brand first and foremost, so it's no surprise that they're going to release token PR efforts and publicize their tax shelter non-profits.

I also understand that activists, if they actually knew of the severity of working conditions in the Foxconn factories in Shenzen or the child slaves working in illegal cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to power their smartphones and laptops, they'd stop buying Apple products immediately, full stop.

It's a tragedy to me that a video taken by a smartphone, the privileged end product of the slavery, dehumanization, and political repression of hundreds of thousands outside the West takes precedence over those same anonymous sacrificial lives--anonymous only because they don't live in the West where recording and spreading evidence of violence is trivial.

Here's a tangential fact that should chill every human alive to the bone: George Bush, his administration, and the instruments of his war machine still walk free, without charges, after launching a foreign war of aggression that killed directly and indirectly hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, legitimated torture, indefinite detentions, and drone strikes.

The Patriot Act and the lead-up to the War in Iraq led directly to ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the militarization of the police, the rejection of the sacrosanctness of civil rights, and the total unaccountability of public officials to the media. Alternate Facts and Fake News began in 2002 with the lies of WMDs in Iraq.

Where is the rioting, the UN pressure, the international protests for charges to be brought against George Bush, the single most responsible individual outside of Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers for the death of George Floyd and hundreds of thousands of others?

ICE was preceded by the INS. I'm under the vague impression they did the same sort of stuff, but I admit I'm not really familiar with the practical differences between the former INS and ICE.

> Alternate Facts and Fake News began in 2002 with the lies of WMDs in Iraq.

This stuff definitely isn't new though. Those terms are nothing more than euphemisms for lies and propaganda, and the Second Iraq War definitely isn't the first time America dabbled in those things. For instance consider this incident in the runup to the First Iraq War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony And the Vietnam War started after the so called "Gulf of Tonkin incident", a pair of attacks on the US Navy in the span of two days... except Robert McNamara admitted decades later that the second attack never actually happened. Going back much further than that, the Spanish American War was the result of a strong propaganda campaign waged by America's yellow press; and the USS Maine explosion was almost certainly not enemy action (there were people in the Navy pointing that out from the start.) With respects to the First World War, there is probably something to be said about exactly what the RMS Lusitania was actually carrying...

Oh, certainly. The United States (and every other country with a hawkish foreign policy) uses atrocity propaganda to justify their wars to their citizens. The difference between Nayirah, the Gulf of Tonkin, the RMS Lusitania, et. al and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq is that American citizens and international observers knew the pretense was fabricated at the time. These same citizens and international observers protested the fabrication, the ensuring invasion, the total capture of the media by the administration, etc. The only people to whom it was an actual surprise that Iraq did not have WMDs were Bush's low-information voting constituents.

To save people time, this is the percent of people in leadership positions at Apple (from https://www.apple.com/diversity/, 2018):

63% White

26% Asian

3% Black

7% Hispanic

1% Multiracial

0% Native American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander

Not good enough.

How should it look like according to you to be good?

Oscillating near the racial distribution of the population should be good enough.

In Hungary, in the 1920 a new legislation was introduced called "Numerus Clausus". This limited the admission to universities and public offices by the percentage of the ethnic ration within the country.

> Its aim was to restrict the number of Jews to 6 percent, which was their proportion in Hungary at that time; the rate of Jewish students was approximately 15% in the 1910s. In 1928 – also because of the pressure of liberal capital and League of Nations – the act was modified and the passage of the ethnicity quota had been eliminated. [1]

Until recently, this act was considered a racist by the liberal and left-leaning thinkers, now it is considered a progressive one by the very same.

- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Hungary

Many American Universities are trying to do the same thing though, but since they are spineless and don't want to admit the existence of a quota, they are resorting to shady tactics like qualifying applicants on "positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness".

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-universities-p...

But that assumes all of population is equally interested in all careers, including sports, music , tech, management and all.

Making this about racism is a self-serving distraction for many. This is about unaccountable abuse of power - something that Apple as a trillion-dollar gorilla is no stranger to.

"We commit to continuing to fight the forces of environmental injustice — like climate change — which disproportionately harm Black communities and other communities of color. "

I'm not sure what's more racist and insulting - for Apple to believe that many black people will appreciate them taking this as another opportunity to play PC bingo or for them to think that it doesn't matter if they do or not.

At first I wanted to dismiss this as empty corporate posturing. Which I am not going to entirely dismiss.

But then I paused because this wasn't an Apple PR announcement, but from the CEO himself, and one of the things I've found important in impacting change in large organizations is a loud, clear and consistent statement from Senior Leadership, if for no other reason than it gives the scurrying middle managers an idea of what they should try and focus on promoting and reporting, which then trickle down to the rest of the workers.

But again on the other hand what is Apple realistically going to do to change racism across America, after all Tim Cook and Apple aren't seen as societal but technology leaders, so maybe it is just empty virtue signaling to try and appeal to customers.

Can I also point out one other thing, among people that I know that lean more conservatively it appeared that they had a stronger reaction and seemed more united around the message of ending police brutality and police overreach and immunity than around the message of racism.

That's probably a complicated topic worthy of discussion in it's own right, but if we were to change the branding of this from ending racism to reforming and rethinking policing maybe we could get more traction. Although it might not address the underlying problem any improvement is good, after all a brick wall is built one brick at a time.

I've seen a lot of people comment about their employers in different forums that they are upset that the employer did not make any statement at all about the current situation

I'd like to ask you folks on what you guys think and feel about employers deciding to make statements or not make statements at all

better than nothing, but so corporate-speak that it's hard to take seriously (as much as i'm bought in to the apple ecosystem).

it's a vision statement, not an action plan. that's ok, but it doesn't really put any skin in the game. it especially doesn't lay out any concrete outcomes they're committed to achieving. granted, it's not solely apple's job to change the world, but either commit or hold your chips. hedging doesn't help.

so mostly branding, like most CSR† initiatives (again, better than nothing, but not much).

† corporate social responsibility

When are they going to speak up about Hong Kong, Uighur concentration camps, Tiannamen, etc?

Never, that is not good for business. Simple.

This is a very brave and controversial stance of Apple to take. I shall be purchasing more of their brand.

I too feel the same way. Before the only thing that stopped me from buying an overpriced laptop with diminishing features and utility was ambiguity over the racism of the CEO. But now that I know the CEO of Apple is not racist because he made a webpage that said he was not racist I intend to convert my whole ecosystem over to Apple, I will be buying their new top of the line MacBook Pro with its sleep 16 inch screen and up to 8 core i7 processor.

What about a phone?

This is cool and black lives do matter but has anybody seen Apple's diversity numbers?

Of course, because they are public and trivial to google: https://www.apple.com/diversity/

But no improvement in over 3 years.

Not good enough.

I look forward to their 2020 numbers. Do better Apple.

Compared to who?

No.

Don't start that, Apple's data from 2016 to 2019 overall, Blacks in Apple has been stuck at 9% overall for 3 years.

Leadership positions stuck at 3%.

Tech positions went down to 6%.

The only positions that have reached double digits are Retail and Non-tech, not even retail leadership.

I will say it again, not good enough Apple.

Don’t start what?

You seem to be manufacturing outrage against Apple based on nothing at all.

Did you actually read what Tim Cook said?

“We can do better.“

So it seems like you are in agreement with him that they can improve. Is there someone who you think is doing better, who Apple could learn from? Do you have any suggestions as to what has been shown to work?

Looks like the data means nothing to you then. I just told you they just aren't good enough.

Anyone can say “We can do better.“, it's just another empty response.

You know what they should do. Show me some improvements in the diversity numbers, then we can talk.

‘They aren’t good enough’ is just as empty as ‘we can do better’ is it not?

The difference is that Apple is at least showing their numbers, bad as they are.

Anyone can say ‘not good enough’.

You say that I know what they should do. I don’t, but the implication is that you do. There may be others here who also don’t.

Please tell us what they should do, if you know.

You can see the list of board members, as well as the prominent executives, and people giving talks at iPhone launches. I don't think that fits in well with the article.

What would you see as an acceptable ratio?

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