Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

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It doesn't change my stance on what I would prefer companies do but it seems like a multilayered issue on the tides to pay attention to here and at the very least makes me not want to espouse my own thoughts about "Yeah! mission focused companies!" publicly.

Here are quotes from my feed:

"The path to an IPO is to purge Black and Brown people from Coinbase ... this is very unbecoming of a federal contractor"

"Over a dozen diverse crypto industry leaders [are] calling it out as racist."

"Sweden took 60 years to admit its neutrality policy was racist. How long will it take Coinbase to do the same? Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo - it always has been."

"Coinbase's CEO's recent statement of neutrality is unacceptable and complicit."

An out of context comment unfortunately adding to the gradient of the same context: "IBM's first computer sold to Hitler. Ford converted cars to tanks sold to Hitler. Why???"

The people posting are all identifying as black, in San Francisco Bay Area, and using their platform in support of black communities.

What's going on is that there is more context than Brian Armstrong's post, there is the context of what actually occurred within Coinbase amongst Coinbase's employees, something I have an incomplete picture of. And I think all of us miss that.

I like Brian Armstrong's post - in isolation. People with more context don't like it, and are galvanizing support against this very quickly. That's too bad. I hope Coinbase gets their IPO.

>"The path to an IPO is to purge Black and Brown people from Coinbase ... this is very unbecoming of a federal contractor"

Do normal people actually believe stuff like this???

Normal as in average? No, that leans pretty far left. It's not particularly unusual to see though. My theory is that there is a very loud minority of people online that believe things like that (or are willing to exaggerate to that degree).

Extremists abound on the internet.

Depends on where you're from. US appears to be quite a bit more embracing of that viewpoint than people from other countries who aren't so well tuned to US societal sensitivities (which can be very difficult to navigate).

Based purely on the headline, it feels like the people who yell about it are the exact Twitter shitstorm party that tries to start a pitchfork mob everywhere, and if you just try to stay away from it, they'll form a mob against you for staying out of it.

In other words, exactly the toxic group of people that this is trying to remove from the company.

I think that is pretty clear, but I think taking that approach of excising them is going to shoot themselves in the foot.

It should be clear that this isn't "just" trying to be mission focused, that was very eloquently written and timely, but it is failing because it is a reaction to internal issues which wasn't clear to the rest of us. And as such it has stirred a hornets nest that also no longer wants to keep things inside the company.

Many of the people it has stirred are also people that have been fighting for more inclusivity and also identify as part of underrepresented groups. People that feel like their voice isn't loud enough because they are so few inside the companies. This doesn't represent everyone in underrepresented groups, only that there is a significant overlap in the goals of inclusivity and people that want the company to be more welcoming by speaking out against inherently political nationalism, which the company doesn't want to do.

I'm not offering any solution only observation.

I think there are two groups: One that generally tries to treat human beings well, and is open to reasonable arguments, and one that attacks everyone who doesn't agree with their specific position. It's the difference between someone who makes a proposal how to improve inclusivity and tries to convince people that this is the right thing to do, and someone who will start attacking people who don't want to implement that proposal.

The latter is the more visible one and being targeted by this, and in my opinion rightly so, because that behavior (attacking others) is toxic and helps nobody.

Do the people making the statements you quoted have more context/information, or are they just more vocal.

In my experience, there has never been a shortage of people with practically no information communicating very strong opinions online?

It is a mixture of more context, more vocal, as well as people joining the fray with less context, assimilating to the same perspectives.

> "Sweden took 60 years to admit its neutrality policy was racist. How long will it take Coinbase to do the same? Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo - it always has been."

As a Swede, I... don't even know what they might be misinterpreting here!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/murky-truth-...

As a Dane, the neutrality of Sweden (and your acceptance of it) enabled us to bring 90% of Danish Jews to safety.

I have no idea why you should apologize for that.

It's rare but still surprisingly common for Americans to mix up Sweden and Switzerland. Switzerland is famous for its policy of neutrality, perhaps that's what they're thinking of? Except I don't recall Switzerland ever abandoning it, let alone deciding it was racist. So I think that person is just terminally confused.

No, Sweden.

Sweden apologized recently about their neutrality was not that neutral. They maintained favorable trade conditions with Berlin as well as granted land access for military incursions.

Seeing as how Sweden was entirely surrounded by Nazi Germany or its possessions, it's not hard to see why they would have given Berlin slightly favorable trade conditions. Especially with any potential help against military invasion being on the other side of a lot of land and sea. In fact, a closer reading of Swedish history during WWII shows that this was exactly what influenced their biases towards the Nazis' favor here and there.

Despite this, Sweden still did an impressive job of allowing in many refugees from persecution. Its diplomatic representatives were instrumental in assisting the persecuted throughout Europe during the whole war. Anyone interested should look up, for example: Raul Wallenberg and Count Folke Bernadotte.

Sweden had nothing to apologize for during the war, and especially given the much more evident racism of other states like the U.S, which explicitly forbade many refugee jews from entering U.S soil during the Nazi persecutions and expulsions of the 1930's before the war. The writing was on the wall in dripping red letters, but Roosevelt simply disregarded it to please certain voters. At one point in 1942, when presented by Polish resistence agent Jan Karski with a whole eye witness narrative of the massive German extermination program against the jews in Poland, his first question to the Home Army solider was about the Nazi treatment of horses and cattlein the occupied territory!

Er, is this a reference to world war 2? Which was 80 years ago, not 60? And don't you think their "neutrality" might have been slightly biased by other factors than, um, racism?

You're reading what you want to read. The comment said it took them 60 years, which means it could have happened 20 years ago. They also never said Sweden's circumstance was racism, the only common denominator is neutrality being harmful.

I also have no opinion on that direct quote which is in quotes. Go find and ask that other person, on LinkedIn, why they wrote it in the context they did.

The guy said they apologised "recently", that's why it's confusing. 20 years ago isn't recently. Nor did they mention World War 2 anywhere, perhaps because it would have made it more obvious that such events had nothing to do with Swedish racism (lol, Sweden, a country famous for its strongly pro-middle-eastern-migration stance, is hardly anyone's top pick for racism).

> "Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo - it always has been."

This is undeniably true.

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