[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.