Calif. sues Tesla over alleged rampant discrimination against Black employees | Hacker News Reader

Calif. sues Tesla over alleged rampant discrimination against Black employees

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21 pointstrs808018 comments

Wow. The allegations are horrifying, almost fantastically so. I have a hard time believing them, honestly. My midwestern state is supposed to be far less progressive and more racist than CA, but I've never encountered such blatant racism in any workplace here (and I have worked exclusively in low-wage manufacturing and retail, not anywhere "professional").

I think it can happen anywhere where these sentiments are allowed to rear their heads. It only takes a few people to create this atmosphere, but if the culture of the organization turns a blind eye then this can be disproportionately detrimental to the people targeted by harassment.

Calling the lawsuit "counterproductive" is troubling as well as it almost sounds like they felt the situation was previously productive, i.e. moving in a positive direction.

Likewise, except I've never witnessed blatant racism in either "manual labor -land" or professional-land.

The claims do bring back memories of being a middle schooler in the bay area, though. Kids can be quite unenlightened, predictably so if they aren't taught better. Parental and close familial norms also seem to play a significant role in shaping you children's attitudes.

Additionally, confederate flag tattoos flashed by colleagues at work? Really?

Inappropriate. This isn't the yard at San Quentin Federal Prison pressing and assembling y'alls' Teslas; this is claimed to be at the dear NUMI plant in Fremont, right alongside a very diverse and distinctive community. There's just no place for these things in real-life business.

What is the goal with the outrageous claims? Why would management tolerate any significant amount of episodes before clamping down. It doesn't make sense..

What does Tesla have to gain by tolerating any amount of the claws behavior?

I grew up in California (LA) and lived in SF for almost 20 years. Racism isn’t exclusive to the Midwest or South. There’s plenty of racism and other bigotry in California, even in the supposedly progressive areas.

Management sets the tone and allows bad behavior. I don’t know if the Tesla allegations are true or not, but I’m not surprised given what I’ve read about the company.

>far less progressive and more racist than CA

As an Indian guy who has lived in both California and Utah, California is far more racist than Utah (and neighboring states), almost comically so.

It’s not really a surprise if you’re familiar with the area. Workers commuting from the Central Valley, which would be a good chunk of those at the Fremont plant, can be incredibly racist.

Given that such blatant racism is so uncommon out in the real world it would make sense if the idiot racists causing problems here come from the same source - a prison release or probationary placement program, a racist union head or hiring manager, or whatever. Something is accumulating racist people, or allowing them to build up.

The scope of the problem depends on whether it's a systemic issue like described above, or a really prolific small number of people causing problems. The lack of appropriate management hints that there's a problem in the upper levels, so some guy might be giving jobs to ex convicts or some other group of racists.

Some nasty bubble of deficient humans seems to have infected that plant.

>Given that such blatant racism is so uncommon out in the real world...

I've got some bad news for you regarding racism and the "real world." I have personally been called the n word to my face (recently!) in the rich, liberal and post-racist utopia that is California. Heck, I was a block away from Ty Warner's palatial mansion on the beach, not some podunk biker bar in Mississippi or whatever other imagined place people like to think "real" racism comes from.

I think you'd be utterly blown away what sort of stuff the Malibu/Calabasas/Montecito/Mountain View/etc. types call their Hispanic house workers!

Totally. Same places, experiences here. Because people don't see it in their daily lives (i.e. I dont get discriminated against on a regular basis) they believe it doesnt exist.

Out of interactions with 100,000 people, how many are racist dipshits? 2 or 3? You'll have another couple dozen "ignorant, but want to hurt or provoke you" that use racist slurs. There's a difference between ignorant behavior and racist beliefs. Hurtful language in a brief confrontation is an insufficient criteria to identify "real" racism unless you're radically changing the meaning of the word.

Getting called a name is a reason to look for racism, but it's more likely to be the result of testosterone fueled heat of the moment stupidity than a belief about people based on the color of their skin.

An astonishingly large proportion of people in the US are decent, fair dealing, hero of their own story, regular old homo sapiens. Get rid of the political noise and we have an overly civil and decent society literally unmatched in history in its liberal and tolerant values. There are boomer holdouts that aren't on board with sex stuff, some racist clusters with objectively racist beliefs, but the rainbow coalition and civil rights activists have won those battles in the culture war.

There are fewer than 9000 kkk members left in the US, down from millions at their peak. There's a couple or 5 times more neonazis. (There's some probably unconstitutional ongoing surveillance of extremists by the fbi and nsa resulting in good yearly reporting that congress and the public and activist groups tolerate, I guess because fuck those people.)

It's not that there isn't room for improvement, that there aren't objectively bad things that we need to resolve. I don't want to trivialize the remaining challenges we face in making society better.

I just think it's a good idea to recognize that what's apparently happening at this Tesla plant is extremely unusual. If it's a bad as alleged, it needs to be overhauled aggressively, and the person or people that brought about the cluster of racists needs to be kicked to the curb.

> Given that such blatant racism is so uncommon out in the real world…

Was this ironic? I live in the Bay Area, and while I know there are worse places for racism in the US (and have lived in some of them) the conduct in the complaint did not surprise me at all.

If this type of racism is common in California, the marketing has been very good at making it seem otherwise! I wouldn't expect such blatant racial animosity even in the deep south. It's 2022, seriously.

I don’t receive it myself, but when I, with my mother I am exposed to it all the time. New England is particularly bad, MN, and yes, non urban south.

Sadly, all countries I’ve visited appear to have these problems to one degree or the other, though manifested in different ways. I just mentioned the US because this was in the Bay Area.

Open segregation in a workplace is rare due to the "corporate Darwinism" involved with large legal liabilities. So I think that qualifies even with many other real and significant problems of racism.

Or it's not true.

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