[Frondo]

I'm not sure it's possible to have certain views and maintain a respectful workplace environment, full stop.

To make an extreme hypothetical: You have a white supremacist coworker and a black coworker. The white supremacist always treats your black coworker with respect, kindness, and compassion. She also openly admits that, nothing personal, but she believes black folks are inferior and should be expelled/exterminated. Ask the black coworker, is he being treated poorly?

What's the resolution in this situation? If he knows how she feels, but she is nice to him, how do you propose resolving that?

[ng12]

Why is she openly admitting it? If she brings it to work that's the problem.

[Frondo]

What if she were out marching with a white power rally on the weekend, and the black coworker happened to see her there?

What's that going to be like on the following Monday? If asked, in this hypothetical, is she supposed to lie?

"So, Jean, I saw you at a white power rally...you were holding an effigy of a hanged black person...what's that about?"

Or, contrive any situation in which her views on her black colleague (i.e. that, although she treats him with kindness and respect, she considers him subhuman and would like to exile/exterminate him and everyone who looks like him) were brought into the workplace.

If the white supremacist coworker doesn't bring up her white supremacist views at work, ever, and treats her black colleague with kindness and respect, at work, but outside the office does not conceal her views, and when asked directly does not lie about them ("Yes, Jim, I'd kill every black person if I could"), how do you resolve the tension that's going to arise from that?

Tell the black colleague, "Jim, don't ask Jean about her white supremacy."? How's Jim supposed to feel about working with her, knowing what he knows about Jean?

[ng12]

I think the line is "undue hardship". There's a legal precedent that the accusation of accommodation of religious beliefs causing undue hardship "generally requires evidence that the accommodation would actually infringe on the rights of co-workers or cause disruption of work" [1] -- I'd argue the same goes for any personal belief system. In this scenario Jean is an asshole but I don't think it causes Jim undue hardship if she never discusses it at work. Jim has no legal right to like his coworkers, nor does Jean have to be liked. However, if she hung a Nazi flag by her desk it would be a different story.

1. https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/foia/letters/2009/religionhandshak...

[Frondo]

I would like to find out what people who have been traditionally been the target of white supremacy groups would say to your reply. I would like to know if they would consider it acceptable, given the history and context of white supremacy and the violence toward minorities that it's led to.

I wonder if they would be OK with, "well, Jean marches with a group calling for your extermination, and you know, throughout history, there's been a lot of violence from them to people who look like you, but since she doesn't bring it up at work, deal with it."

I think I'll ask around with my POC friends, in that ham-fisted way white folks always end up asking about these things ("So, I don't want you to speak for all people of color, but ... I'm hashing something out on the internet with some stranger who's probably also a hetero white guy, and ...").

My hunch is, knowing your coworker wishes for the extermination of your people would be considered hostile and unacceptable, especially by those people historically targeted by white supremacist violence, even if she's nice to your face. Like, I imagine you'd have the same tension with a card-carrying nazi and a Jewish colleague who lost family in the holocaust.

[ng12]

I like your assumption that I only have this opinion become I'm insulated from it. What if I were a homosexual who's had conservative Christian and conservative Muslim coworkers? It's not a hostile environment as long as each group treats the other with respect.

To be clear: I think card carrying Nazis are abhorrent and would rather not interact with them. I also thinking banning them from an apolitical volunteer group where they do not volunteer their views is wrong.

[Frondo]

Well, yeah, I did make that assumption, and I will do so again the next time I talk to someone on the internet who defers to rules and tells hypothetical minorities to just deal with hypothetical white supremacists. Based on the conversations I have had in the past, both with people who endure this stuff and people who are insulated from it, it really sounds a lot more like you're insulated from that situation than someone who's had to deal with it. That whole response sounds lacking in empathy for the people who, hypothetically speaking, endure having coworkers wish for their expulsion/death.

Also, in the hypothetical, we were talking about a workplace, not a volunteer group. As for whether card-carrying nazis should be allowed to join apolitical volunteer groups, I think that each group can surely decide for themselves, and this is exactly where a code of conduct would apply, e.g. "nazis welcome" makes it clear up front that nazis aren't going to be uninvited for their views. Then everyone else can make the call whether they want to be involved with the Drupal-with-nazis fork or the Drupal-without-nazis fork.