[throwaway789256]

> With that framing, the perception of whether the list was racist does matter as it explains their motivation.

I don't think we know their true motivation. Anyone can claim to perceive something as racist. We cannot control their sense of offense. The act they claim to be racist may or may not be racist.

But what advocates of critical race theory have found is that, by claiming that something is racist, they can bring pressure on their employers.

That is precisely what happened here. Basecamp is now under tremendous pressure. Plenty of ire has been focused on the co-founders as well as Singer. Singer has quit, though we don't know the facts of the case. Accusations of racism are fatal to one's career, whether or not they have a basis in fact.

Another word for "revealed pattern" is "narrative." Many narratives can be told about the same set of facts. And many of those narratives are deeply subjective, or driven by ideology.

I could take many minor actions by Jane Yang and others at Basecamp and interpret them as a power grab.

To be clear, I know that some people and companies do act in racist ways. Such behavior is illegal and should be punished. But the evidentiary bar to establish that is high. That bar has not yet been met here.

In this case, we have very serious accusations and very little evidence, evidence that can be interpreted in several ways. But Basecamp and Singer have already suffered serious consequences, and the claims have been aired publicly.

So they were able to create a scandal without going through the effort of proving anything.

[comte7092]

You claim not to know their true motivation, yet your entire argument relies on the assumption that they had malicious intent. You also note that “the act they claim to be racist may or may not be racist” and yet it is clear that you have assumed that it is not throughout your post.

And this is the crux of the issue. Ones entire interpretation of these issues relies on whether or not one believes racism exists as a structural problem or not. Opponents reduce this down to a simple difference of opinion, but if you see that the world treats certain groups differently than others, it is not mere difference of opinion, there are real, tangible consequences that go along with that disagreement.

The thing that you get wrong, that so many people get wrong on all sides of this, is that the issue at hand here isn’t about whether Singer is himself a racist person. When people speak of “white supremacy” refers to a structural system within society that treats people differently on the basis of their race, in a hierarchy that places white people at the top. It’s not a matter of individual intent, but the culmination of ways that people act differently towards each other that nets out to place people in different positions within society.

I think it’s reasonable to disagree on how you go about remedying that situation, but the assertion that “people are treated differently by society as a whole, based on their race” shouldn’t be that controversial of a statement.

[asabjorn]

> You claim not to know their true motivation, yet your entire argument relies on the assumption that they had malicious intent. You also note that “the act they claim to be racist may or may not be racist” and yet it is clear that you have assumed that it is not throughout your post.

The person(s) that attacked Singer used social justice activist techniques, claim of and demand for denouncing "white supremacy" in order to reduce a viewpoint opponents moral authority, where "white supremacy" uses the social justice unstated redefinition of the colloquial term to mean "policy or habitual behavior that could perpetrate outcomes not in alignment with social justice dogma".

This activist technique is a kafka trap with no good answer. Keeping that in mind its pretty clear where the accuser comes from.

As a side-note: a discussion/debate between viewpoint opponent break down if serious accusation are made without evidence, and a healthy discussion and work environment need to exclude such bad actors. Kudos to basecamp and coinbase for adopting policies that discourage such behavior.

[comte7092]

Just to clear things up, do you agree or disagree with my previous statement that “ people are treated differently by society as a whole, based on their race”? Further that white people have historically been placed at the top of a hierarchy by society at large, above other groups?

If you agree with both of those statements, do you believe white peoples are still given a higher place in society? Do you believe that to no longer be the case?

I’ll limit this to the United States.

[asabjorn]

> Just to clear things up, do you agree or disagree with my previous statement that “ people are treated differently by society as a whole, based on their race”? Further that white people have historically been placed at the top of a hierarchy by society at large, above other groups?

You are asking a question positioned using very low-fidelity and poorly scoped social justice dogma.

With Nigerians topping educaction and income stats clearly low-fidelity race characteristics is not a sufficient predictor of outcome. Likewise, asian americans have the highest median income so being majority does not predict the best outcome.

In addition to this, official identity based government and company policies create asymmetry in official hiring as well as promotion policies that favor BIPOC and women.

What does seem like a great predictor is being born into a family-focused culture where kids education is extremely important. This is a commonality between sub-cultures that do well, and skin color is no great predictor for culture. Some of the sub-cultures that does the worst have high rates of single parenting, including sub-cultures of white culture, and single parenting is also a great predictor of lower household income.

[comte7092]

I took it as a given that we could agree that there was an explicit system of racial hierarchy in the United States.

Call that social justice dogma if you want, but I’d consider it an objective fact.

Edit: because it seems to be unclear. The word “was” was in reference to the past. It’s an objective fact that there _was_ an explicit system of racial hierarchy in the United States.

[asabjorn]

> I took it as a given that we could agree that there was an explicit system of racial hierarchy in the United States.

When you think it's explicit instead of implicit you are in a minority even amongst social justice adherents. Social justice started focusing on "implicit" bias and racism because the instances of explicit racism in the 2000s were not numerous enough to support its activist objective of tearing down the system and replacing it.

The whole concept of "systemic oppression" is based around this realization, where social justice argue that capitalism fool people into being happy and content so that they don't oppose an implicitly oppressive system that traps them in a false reality.

> Call that social justice dogma if you want, but I’d consider it an objective fact.

The examples in my previous message show that it's neither descriptive nor factual.

Social justice prescribe a totalizing worldview that use an every-increasing set of politically motivated identity groups to further an activist objective. The objective is to tear down the system and the promise is a utopia once everyone agrees with the utopic vision.

[throwaway789256]

> Ones entire interpretation of these issues relies on whether or not one believes racism exists as a structural problem or not.

I think you are right that that belief shapes how we interpret these issues. By racism as a structural problem, I assume you mean this:

> “people are treated differently by society as a whole, based on their race”

Society is not an actor. It is a collection of people, and the people are actors. Some of them are racist, and some are not.

I do not believe that every situation is permeated with structural racism that must be corrected, but I suspect that people who believe in structural racism tend to find it everywhere and use it to justify the changes they propose.

I don't assume that they had malicious intent. But I do think that they perceive situations through a distorted lens, which often leads to behavior that is harmful to the organizations where they work.

I think that Basecamp and Singer and most organizations and individuals deserve an assumption of innocence.

Racism has to be proven. Accusations must be backed up with evidence. And the burden of evidence is on the accusers. I think critical race theorists start with the assumption that racism is shaping the interaction.

It is not enough to say that structural racism exists and therefore we should believe that it shaped the behavior of people at Basecamp. You have to prove it case by case. Simply claiming structural racism does not justify enormous change.

Statistically, people of different races experience different outcomes in the US on average. But there is a huge standard deviation in those outcomes by race or gender; that is, any given individual may be doing relatively well or poorly relative to the average.

And I think that applying assertions about society and societal ills to individuals, their actions and specific situations is often misguided, because they may deviate wildly from the average.

But that is exactly what critical race theorists tend to do. They treat individuals as representatives of a larger social trend. A male represents the patriarchy. A Caucasian represents white supremacy.

But attacking an individual to remedy a larger statistical discrepancy is in itself a form of injustice. Especially when we diagnose the supposed cause of that discrepancy with vagueness, as a culmination of ways that society acts.

That is not enough to convince me of the claims being made against Singer and Basecamp, or of the rightness of the Basecamp employees in rebellion.

[comte7092]

You’ve made it clear that there is no evidence that can be brought forward that would get you to accept that there exists diffuse but consistent behavior that creates structural hierarchies within society.

It would appear then, that we are at an impasse.

[throwaway789256]

> there exists diffuse but consistent behavior

I think that is possible and that one could prove it statistically.

I do not think that, just because such behavior can be shown to exist on average, that is necessarily exists in specific situations. If you want to apply an anti-racist remedy in a specific situation, you should have to prove racism in that situation.

And I think that the remedies to specific situations will differ a great deal, depending on unique variables. That is, if a person proposes a remedy, they should show how it will fix the specific problem.

I do not agree with one-size-fits-all remedies that try to fix a social ill by turning a specific company on its head without factual evidence of racism in that company.

[comte7092]

The company turned itself on its head by shutting down all discussion on the topic.

I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone was calling for singers job before nor during the meeting. All that happened was that a bunch of employees formed a committee that brought a bunch of issues to the fore. They took issue with singers behavior, and the company responded with “cease all of this discussion or take a buyout” and so they took the buyout.

All this amounted to the company backing up a senior employees behavior reflexively at the expense of lower level employees objections.

[throwaway789256]

> The company turned itself on its head by shutting down all discussion on the topic.

Maybe. Or maybe the company was already turned on its head due to the internal conversation. Such a radical reaction from the founders suggests to me that this was the case.

> I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone was calling for singers job before nor during the meeting.

Accusing someone of racism or white supremacy is effectively calling for them to resign or be fired.

> All that happened was that a bunch of employees formed a committee that brought a bunch of issues to the fore.

Right, but again, we don't know if those issues were valid or not. The "funny names" list is not nearly as damning as they seem to think. Given how much information has leaked to the media, I would assume that the strongest evidence they have of racism would already be public. And I have not seen strong evidence.

> All this amounted to the company backing up a senior employees behavior reflexively at the expense of lower level employees objections.

If "backing up a senior employee's behavior" means allowing him to disagree with others about whether his behavior is racist, especially in the absence of evidence that it is racist, then I think they were right to back him up.

Singer's resignation resulted from the show trial of accusations and media leaks, which is a well known playbook for advocates of social change.