It's not a random employee though. It's someone who is part of the Senior Leadership Team.
If you deny that it exists then how can you be trusted to do something if an issue does comes up ?
I get that it's super easy to just claim white supremacy is everywhere, but implicitly the claim is that someone put it there and is perpetuating it. At a company of 58 people, you're pointing at a very small group of people as the ones responsible for all of this supposed white supremacy.
Unless everyone swallows the Kool-Aid and apologizes for being so racist, someone in leadership will eventually have to say, "Actually, this isn't a white supremacist company." Otherwise you've essentially surrendered your company to the "woke" mob.
Due to rising costs, the company decided to outsource some production. The end product was just as good in quality and much cheaper, even after shipping and import taxes.
A few employees were concerned about outsourcing to that specific country and started to discuss and petition the senior executives.
The CEO clamped down hard and said it was a business decision and if anyone didn't like it, they could leave. No politics.
In the end, those employees are still here, but the quality of their work has definitely suffered.
Alternatively, if you can't feasibly mediate, because it's basically all your employees airing grievances at you, then you screwed your job up long ago, and it's time to cop to that. The longer you put off eating crow, the more crow you're eventually going to have to eat.
What you’re describing is “appeasement.” Presume they’re operating in good faith and that maybe they’re kind of right. So you cut a compromise, and sure enough, the white supremacy is still there! And what do they recommend? More appeasement.
I agree it was a management problem, but the problem is it wasn’t identified and nipped in the bud sooner.
Why? It is a tool to utilize confusion to remove the targets moral authority. Both yes and no are bad answers that make you loose moral authority, which is the point of the power tool.
Never trust anyone that uses such a tool, as it shows that the activist attacker is willing to smear individuals they disagree with using deceptive language in order to reduce the unlucky targets moral standing. Is this someone that is worthy of trust?
If it’s about my comment on trust: You are welcome to trust someone that use these power tactics based upon lies to undermine the moral authority of viewpoint opponents, I just believe there are so many people of better character out there to build a relationship with.
Social justice tactics when it boils down to it are effective, but not very creative. Domain specific language is coopted and it’s definitions changed to mean what’s useful for activism. Goal is to redirect as much as possible of an organizations resources and attention towards the ideology instead of whatever it used to do.
With your assertion in mind that there is no issues with the activist technique. Do you denounce pedofilia? Do you denounce defrauding elderly relatives? See how this activist technique works, no answer is good and the question is directed at you as a potential complicit person, and using it is in my opinion a sure sign of a worse character than what I’d like to engage with.
I then called your hair a bird.
Refer to the comment I replied to where you argue "No one was calling anyone a white supremecist", and then justified this conclusion by stating the social justice redefinition of the colloquial term:
> No one was calling anyone a white supremecist in the conversation. They were likely talking about white supremacy as a cultural and political force in the context of how the policy could perpetrate it.
To your other statement:
> all I've done is point out that you constructed an arbitrary binary specifically to decry the creation of arbitrary binaries.
There are many different types of individual viewpoints and behaviors, so a critique of or an unwillingness to accept a type of behavior normally means that you have tons of others you accept. Disagreeing being a binary choice is a social justice dogma that model the world very badly.
* Accept the claim that the company is and has been supporting white supremacy, de facto surrendering decisions on anything an employee suggests might support white supremacy
* Disagree with the claim
The redefinition of white supremacy (as you’ve defined it) is a bad faith rhetorical tool designed to create these kind of situations. Leaders are under no obligation to appease employees acting in bad faith.
First, you're creating such a stark false dichotomy that it's hard not to wonder if it's somehow deliberate.
Second, saying that white supremacy is present in the company is not the same thing as saying that the company is run by white supremacists. The term functions very differently in the noun sense than it does in the adjective sense.
Perhaps you might enlighten us as to why this is a false dichotomy, and what other options there are.
> Second
You cannot run a company that perpetuates white supremacy without implicitly supporting that white supremacy, whether you know it or not. I've already been clearly told that malice and intent are not required.
Or are you genuinely going to make the case that "someone who supports white supremacy" is not interchangeable with "white supremacist?" I'm not interested in debating your personal redefinitions of terms.
Since we've already touched on the subject of "bad faith rhetorical tools," getting on other people's cases for acknowledging that the English language is soaked in polysemy isn't exactly an encouraging sign. It's difficult to have an enjoyable conversation with someone who's brandishing a cape.
> The term functions very differently in the noun sense than it does in the adjective sense.
The terms don’t in the dictionary, so there’s no way to continue the discussion without debating what this commenter thinks these terms mean.
This isn’t my first rodeo, and we can all see what’s happening here.
Again this is all you projecting thoughts onto other people.
If I called you a pedophile, I imagine you wouldn't be super expectant of a productive conversation about my unique definition of the word or how I think it applies to you. You wouldn't care what I thought, because if I cared what you thought, I wouldn't have smeared you as a pedophile.
You're still mentally skipping the idea of systemic white supremacy and jumping straight from white supremacy to you are a nazi. But that jump comparison only works for white supremacist. There isn't a comparable systemic thing for pedophilia. We don't discuss systemic pedophilia and how society broadly favors pedophiles in the same way that we do talk about systemic favoritism of white people and culture (and even if you personally disagree that society does favor white people and culture, the conversation does happen). When the other person says white supremacy, this is what they mean: cultural systems and norms that favor white people and things associated with white people, often to the detriment of other cultures and peoples.
So again, you're presupposing someone is smearing you, when they've once again never claimed to have done that and further more actively claimed the opposite. And please note that now four different people have pointed out that no, this wasn't calling anyone a white supremacist. So perhaps it is simply you who is the one using a custom definition here.
Part of this seems to be that you keep insisting on making things about individuals, and not the company and systems itself. Consistently you've changed "the company's actions maintain white supremacy" to "the leaders of the company are white supremacists". That's two jumps: company and its actions to the leaders and then an ascription of intent. People can do things by mistake. Groups can do things unintentionally. You're assuming that everyone is presupposing fault and intent, and using that to ascribe nefarious motives to people who at no point appeared to ascribe fault or intent.
It's also totally unclear how
> * Accept the claim that the company is and has been supporting white supremacy, de facto surrendering decisions on anything an employee suggests might support white supremacy
makes sense. This is akin to saying "yes, we've made mistakes before". I don't see how that "surrenders decisions", I mean unless you mean that they're going to say this about certain decision but still assume they made the right decision (or maybe they did, but then they need to justify this).
The US is the least racist nation in the world according to Pew surveys.
What we have an abundance in the US is people who, if racism disappeared tomorrow, would be out of work and have to find a new career. These same people are the ones who act as if the election, to 2 terms, of a black president translates to the US making no progress on race since the 60's.
I grew up in a mostly black county in Virginia. I know what demagoguery looks like, and witnessed it with the GOP for decades. The Democratic party has embraced it, in a big way, since Hillary's loss. It works to win elections, but at the cost of elevating racial reductionism in POC. And the more POC embrace racial reductionism, the more moderate whites will do the same, creating more white supremacists. I've already witnessed colleagues who are moderate getting frustrated in meeting where they are demonized, and next thing you know they are googling and listening/reading conservative authors who mirror their frustration and amplify it.
Singer didn't deny that white supremacy "exists". He simply stated, in my opinion correctly, that it's not embedded in American institutions. Because it's not, as evidenced by the fact that we actively import (to an extent unsurpassed by the vast majority of nations in the world) non-white immigrants to the tune of over a million a year.
My next door neighbor is an Indian immigrant family. My neighbor across the street is from Vietnam. Both are naturalized citizens, and this ethos is going to try to say that the institution that naturalized them is white supremacist. It's patently absurd and irrational, and appeals to gullible college students and losers who desperately want to externalize blame for their failures.
If I’m trying to count to 100 and someone says “Prepend, please say that white supremacy exists.” And I respond “I’m busy counting to 100 and will not comply with your wishes.” That doesn’t mean I’m denying that white supremacy exists.
It’s odd you would interpret it that way as it’s illogical.
If you do not acknowledge white supremacy exists and needs to be eliminated then you can't expect people to trust you on this issue.
And trust is a critical part of being a leader.
I’m not arguing semantics as my point is that there are many things more important than acknowledging white supremacy exists. This may not be true for others as it seems it’s super important for some.
But if I’m in the business of counting to 100 (or anything) I can be quite successful without including taking about eliminating white supremacy.
Note, I think that systematic racial inequity is bad and must be eliminated. But I don’t think the most effective way to do that is by talking about it all the time. And I think that I can not have any portion of my workday talking about it. This doesn’t mean I am for white supremacy.
I think, at it’s most basic, I don’t think silence is the same as endorsement. The world isn’t black and white (no pun intended) and everyone isn’t forced to choose sides. And it’s certainly not important to state one’s position over and over and over.
It’s hard to know, but I have one data point in my own self in that I really don’t talk much about anything and certainly don’t endorse white supremacy and I actively live my life fighting inequity. Someone saying that I endorse something because I don’t speak about it is incorrect as I know myself better than others do.
Following this logic leads to absurdity. Should people spend their days speaking for or against everything? What about people’s right to privacy?
I mean there’s so many example of how silence=support is illogical, I’m not sure how people can hold this opinion. This assumes that there’s a single set of priorities and white supremacy is near the top for everyone.
It’s also fairly odd in that it assumes that the whole world is in America so that even people in remote countries must make statements against white supremacy lest they endorse it. That’s just silly.
On any topic, only a few thousand or perhaps millions express a position. Does that mean everyone else is against or for? Does silence always equal endorsement? Does it mean opposition?
You haven’t stopped this conversation to call out how you recognize murder is evil and are against it. Does that mean you endorse murder? Isn’t murder important enough to speak out against? I certainly think murder is terrible and am shocked that someone would endorse murder through their silence.
Etc etc etc, there’s a million of these. Not everything has to be a conflict and not everyone owes me an answer. Sometimes I just don’t know and don’t get to know. I should only assume when necessary and using some evidence to support my assumption
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Argumen...
My choice not to dignify that question with a response is not an indication that I endorse white supremacists any more than my choice not to dignify a question like "do you believe the earth is round" indicates my belief that the planet is flat.
White supremacy is still very real in America and throughout the rest of the world. The idea that you’d brush off someone asking about white supremacy in the same way as a flat earth denier is absurd, and says more about your own position of priviledge.
Do you really deny that you have privilege? You’re both white and male, aren’t you? The way you talk actually says a lot more about you than you’re aware of.
Have a pleasant evening.
- What have you done to fight it? - Have you donated to XYZ org? - How much? Why not more? Surely you could afford it? - How much time have spent volunteering for causes that fight it? - How much? Why not more? Surely you could afford it?
If you anticipated this line of questioning would follow, where the person asking the question's intent is to test you, and shame you if you were to fail it, would you still engage with that question?
I wouldn't have "denounced" white supremacy either. If these are the base conditions under which you're prepared to talk to me then quite frankly, fuck you. There is nothing to gain for me, and you're clearly not prepared to take anything I say in good faith. Okay, I might have in a leadership role to keep the peace as a matter of professionalism, but I'd also have started looking for a new job as this is not a healthy atmosphere. I don't want to work with people who think I'm secretly a white supremacist.
The problem is that I've seen many things being labelled as "white supremacy" that seem ... a bit of a stretch. For example people have argued that Alien (the film) is an example of white supremacy as the alien represents a stereotypical black women; "Black women have been portrayed in contemporary white social and political culture as super-fertile and indestructible breeders whose sexual reproduction must be controlled."[1]
When I first read that, it took me quite a while to realize this was even referring to the alien itself, rather than some character that got infected. It seems it purely based on the fact that the alien is black.
There are many, many examples of this, especially in the last year people have been going way to far in re-analysing everything through the lens of race, often with some very harsh words like "white supremacy". Sometimes this is a good thing, but often I find it's not. Either these are general problems that affect everyone (just black folks more, but that doesn't mean the core problem is racism), or it's outright nonsense like the above.
Now, I don't know what argument that person made exactly in support of "White supremacy existing at Basecamp", but if you make such a strong claim – which is essentially calling your leadership/coworkers white supremacists – then you better have some good arguments. I'm skeptical they existed; they're certainly not present in this article beyond wishy-washy "creating a space where people do not feel welcome".
And considering that this discussion left people "crying and screaming at the screen" it seems rather easy to make some people feel "not welcome".
The entire thing stinks; perhaps the leadership could have handled things a bit better here and there, but if you're not willing to take a somewhat nuanced disagreement in good faith then there's nothing you can do except nod and smile on every sort of nonsense they bring up, and anything else will upset people.
[1]: https://theconversation.com/how-hollywoods-alien-and-predato...