Black Tesla employees describe a culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’ | Hacker News Reader

Black Tesla employees describe a culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’

latimes.com

65 pointsmhoad60 comments

How do we know if this is unique to tesla or that Tesla is just a magnet for media coverage. Likely, this is a problem for all companies, but Tesla is just a favorite target of the media.

Does that matter? If this turned out to be endemic, would Tesla be exculpated in your mind?

If it turned out to be an endemic, it should be known and treated as such. All companies that are proven to fall into this should be pressured to fix it.

Why would you even assume it would change the burden of responsibility and guilt?

There's bad behavior everywhere, but this seemed to be a few leagues over the average.

I don't know how Fremont is, maybe there's high tension and rotten nationalism growing but still.

We don’t know. Well, we can pretty well assume it’s not unique, but less common than when I was a kid.

Regardless: what you’re asking is a good topic for a different article. The allegations are that Tesla management ignored the complaints and in fact took action to continue the problem (e.g. when VIPs showed up). Some of those issues are criminal, and either way, if true, require reform on the part of the company.

Racism in auto manufacturing seems to be as rampant as sexual harassment and discrimination in tech. Without even trying that hard:

Ford: https://www.hometownstations.com/news/ford-employees-say-rac...

GM: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/us/gm-toledo-racism-lawsuit/i...

Toyota: https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto/news/toyota-says-it-no-...

Honda: https://www.courthousenews.com/honda-plant-accused-of-tolera...

That being said, this isn't the first time in the last few years there's been a suit against Tesla. Either this isn't been a focus for management, or their remediation has been deficient in preventing this sort of toxicity from flaring up out in the open.

Thanks for this context. I was disinclined to believe the story because it sounded so unusual (especially with the context being "silicon valley company"), which seems like a reasonably good filter for predicting that a news story will turn out to be fake. But from this it seems plausible that there's just a very different culture going on on production floors. This is pretty awful.

The fact that they've got enough evidence to take Tesla to court on a systemic level is a big red flag.

A lot of middle-management level racism exists across the country. But the court-case is suing Tesla, the entire organization, for high-level systemic racism.

This is the difference between "murderer kills at High School" and "the entire upper management, from principals and superintendents and teachers are involved in a murder".

Both involve murder, but one is worse since it includes leaders. Similarly, this Tesla case isn't just some "low level" typical racism we see all the time in this country. This is a systemic issue, where black people work at "The Plantation" (literally called out in the court case documents).

The relevant court case document can be found here: https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2022/02/...

If "Black workers were frequently called the N-word on the assembly line", I guess there should be some audio/video recordings of those posted online.

Even then, in the era of Jussie Smollet, one still cannot preclude the possibility that this article is just a shot across Elon Musk's bow.

No matter how grey this comment is, it’s still true. This is statistically far far more likely to be bullshit than face value racism.

Didnt it turn out to be "Black workers were frequently called the N-word on the assembly line" _by other black workers_?

> she would hear Latino and white workers, and their supervisors, casually refer to Black workers with the N-word. “You would hear n— this and n— that,” she said. ”It was the norm. It was Tesla’s tradition.”

> Chatman didn’t hear Asian workers use the N-word, she said, but they “would make chicken jokes,” a stereotype mocking of Black Americans’ diet.

So, no.

I seem to remember this from one of the previous cases, all I could find now is:

"An ex-Tesla employee who worked at the Fremont factory for about two years said in a sworn declaration in the Vaughn case that he had heard the “N-word” used at least 100 times by co-workers and that Black and White employees alike referred to the factory as “the plantation” or “slaveship.”"

So, is there a recording?

> "An ex-Tesla employee who worked at the Fremont factory for about two years said in a sworn declaration in the Vaughn case that he had heard the “N-word” used at least 100 times by co-workers and that Black and White employees alike referred to the factory as “the plantation” or “slaveship.”"

There are two parts to the sentence.

first-part: "the “N-word” used at least 100 times by co-workers"

second-part: "and that Black and White employees alike referred to the factory as “the plantation” or “slaveship.”"

People referred to in the first part need not have an overlap with those referred to in the second part. Yes, it doesn't preclude an overlap but it doesn't also exclude the possibility of the two groups being mutually exclusive.

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