Important to remember where these allegations originate from.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google after threatening to quit unless Google reveled the identities of the reviewers of her paper that was not received well while accusing them of sex/race based discrimination.
You can find some of the experiences of her from previous colleagues. You'll find the toxicity that she used in her time there and how she is picking the race/sex card on every situation. This is likely a continuation of that.
Not that the allegations can't be true, but people like this are really diluting the message and making it hard to tell the legitimate from exaggerated hit pieces.
That makes no sense. If she were as you described, there would have been more people coming forward and exposing her. Google is facing a roiling PR crisis: if there were a bunch of people who truly thought she “used race/sex card for every situation” we would have almost certainly heard about it.
Instead what we have are articles in rather respectable publications describing an incredibly toxic culture at Google, and shifting statements from Google itself as it seeks to try and contain the fallout of the Pandora’s box of racism that has been opened.
An excellent reminder that (particularly as a big company) you shouldn't do anything unless you'd be happy with it appearing on a newspaper's front page.
Something sounds wrong with that logic. I'm not entirely sure what, maybe its the suggestion that you should always be afraid of doing anything that the media might not agree with.
Whenever politicians, especially "controversial" ones say or do something, news articles happily provide "context" in the form of other things they've said or done that might anchor your perception of this latest thing.
Here, the anchoring wrt Timnit Gebru goes so far as:
Dr Gebru, whose firing led to an international wave of criticism of Google and widespread support from her colleagues
This reminds me of a truism that most people seem to forgot...
HR is never your friend.
HR is there to protect the company and nothing more. What's worse, even if you try running an ethical one, if you grow big enough at some point you start hiring directly into HR people with experience with HR elsewhere, and that means importing the same bad practices - this is not a defense of Google, it's more a reminder to all of us that it can happen even in your own company.
What grates me is that HR is full of people who go out of their way to appear as your friend. It's plain deception.
If they were merely unapproachable and grumpy that wouldn't be so bad. But they put on their smiley faces, ask about your well-being etc all while screwing you behind closed doors.
Simultaneously both sad and funny is that sometimes they are genuinely trying. Which led to awkward case, when I - already leaving the company - joined so-called "haters meeting" which was supposed to bring feedback to the company, unfiltered... and I made head of HR cry by demolishing the whole "support for employee training and certification" program :(
The top management (i.e. owner representatives) didn't see anything wrong with their turbo-libertarian policy (or were unsuccessfully trying to hide that they didn't actually want to provide any support) and left HR holding the bucket. Learning that pretty much anyone who wasn't wide eyed junior that has yet to finish studies considered the whole training&certification program to be a fig leaf that was more hassle than its worth (the quote was "anyone self-motivated enough the way management claims they want, is also wise enough to not lose time on something with zero expected payoff and will get training/certs on their own - then leave for better place").
That company has later went with worse and worse HR, in fact - a friend of mine who stayed on for few more years talked about how successive changes in HR went worse and worse. The one I faced could be considered last somewhat good team :(
Which applies to all areas. As your organization grows it more and more attracts people who typically just switch jobs between organizations of the same size, and bring their culture, "best practices" that are typically the worst, approaches to work and other values with them.
At the same time you can see founders caring less and less about what's going on.
Is there a way to stop this? I don't think so for as long as there's a lot of investment money in circulation. Raising money for any more or less successful tech business is so cheap these days that founders rarely think of the alternatives, such as not raising and staying lean.
What you're describing is regression to the mean (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean). I would think avoiding this involves maintaining a high bar for recruiting, at the cost of having to hire more slowly and probably pay more than your competitors.
This, in a topic focusing on HR... It hits far too close to home. Java is now our recommended language, and HR is implementing all kinds of policies like “pay leveling” and “engineering promotions require job reqs complete with interviews” and “pay raises can only occur in N month”.
When bureaucrats are in charge of the business, it will be run as a bureaucracy: focusing on standardisation, quantified measurements and derisking. It's a process of stagnation.
Well how else to make sure all your dollars go to the right place? I'm not suggesting that a rigid, top-down structure is necessary, but there must some way of pursuing effectiveness, knowledge, and efficiency with relying on serendipity or cargo cult superstition. With this in mind, I'd argue the opposite of your claim: stagnation by bureaucracy is a conditional failure to achieve your stated ends. It isn't the inevitable evolution towards decline that you suggest it is. A working bureaucracy should behave like a working scientific instrument.
Innovation can't come from measuring what you already have. You can use heuristics or metrics to confirm you've done the right thing once you try something but you can't use them effectively to innovate. Only to optimise, which is stagnation if you don't also innovate.
And also that choices of HR aren't easy. Should they've fired the other person for a remark that might've been with good intent? That would be at least as damaging.
And they probably had a talk with other people involved, not all actions are disclosed to the affected employee.
Why jump immediately to firing? Talk to people first. Don’t start the process by making someone go on medical leave (medical leave is typically paid at a much lower rate than working; it depends on who the company hires (think Aflack and similar)).
"We have come to the conclusion that you shouldn't feel insulted by this, so we're going to force you to take a break on reduced pay and talk to a psychologist."
Repeatedly going back to HR with this issue clearly indicates that Cruz felt uncomfortable working in this environment. It's unfortunate how this would be enough to trigger a sexism claim (which is backed by law), but not a racism claim.
That's very speculative; it could indicate Cruz felt uncomfortable working in this environment. It might be enough to trigger a sexism claim - though I'm not sure if a single comment is enough to prove a hostile working environment.
I could just as well speculate that badgering HR over a single inconsequential incident got Cruz flagged as a nuisance s.t. they attempted to move him out.
Well, the comment could be made about work more generally, at least at any company that's bigger than say 5-10 people: Your work is not your friend, and even your colleagues who are your friends outside of work are not your friends while at work.
HR can very much act with your best interests at heart... so long as those best interests align with the company's best interests.
I remember many years ago working at a large company that was proud to display "HR Help Hotline" posters at conspicuous locations in all offices. We used to joke that the number was connected to an automated P45 printer....
The only time you'd see one of the HR folks about you knew someone was going to get fired - it was the only reason they'd ever show up at our site.
This sometimes backfires hilariously when HR is trying to do something good.
Case in point from my job history: Official policy (mandated by parent company) was that externals (i.e. contractors etc.) weren't included in christmas event or anything like that. Due to unrelated things the "externals" made a significant chunk of the workers, and well, HR actually wanted to do something good and bypass the policy.
So they send an email telling everyone in the external group to meet on day X in conference room Y. Imagine bushy-tailed head of HR coming with "hey, the policy doesn't allow it, so we're doing it off the books, everyone is invited just without paper trail" to a big conference room full of people expecting to hear they are going to be fired...
Also, these threads often cause comments that have no clue about the reality of black people. For those who are ok with videos, here are some good but enjoyable ones. You may use 'NewPipe' from fdroid or the youtube-dl command line utility to download them:
[8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar regardless of how strongly you feel about something. It's not what this site is for, and it evokes considerably worse from others.
There is an important aspect of how we interact with each other in the work place and this is indicative of a poisonous anti-human agenda to control those interactions.
Unfortunately I didn't really start it off too well and apology for being somewhat inflammatory.
I agree with the first half of your first sentence. But 'poisonous anti-human agenda' — I mean I'm no corporatist but that already starts to sound a bit like internet projection to me. We don't really know as much as it feels like we know about these situations when very-partial stories make it online. We're all filling in a lot of details from imagination, based on our own past experiences, without realizing we're doing that (which is what I mean by projection). In my experience, more thoughtful online conversation starts with slowing that mental process down and unpacking it a bit. I've described this in terms of 'reflexive' vs. 'reflective' in the past - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... Anyhow, you needn't agree—these are just some thoughts that came up when I realized I had a bifurcated response to your first sentence.
I can't even imagine what this comment means/how it's used. There is really not enough context here. "expected?" Like the first time they met them?
It seems like Google HR's initial response of "assume good intent"[0] seems reasonable, absent additional details:
> Cruz, who is Mexican American and prefers to be identified by the pronouns they/them, reported the incident to human resources in 2019 where personnel told them they should “assume good intent,” Cruz recalled in an interview. Unsatisfied, Cruz asked human resources to look deeper into the incident, and an HR official said an investigation into the matter had been closed, Cruz said.
I feel like the journalist failed to actually convince us that this was something newsworthy.
right, especially as "after being told by a colleague that their skin was much darker than the co-worker expected." is a description of what happened, not an actual record of what was said. There are lots of ways that can be said, some of which could be extremely racist.
I was once called racist because I was surprised that someone I had only talked to via irc was black. I come from Scotland, there was maybe 10 black people in my town of 30,000 people. In the IT security scene most people are white. A few years later, I met a woman at one of the meetups she laughed about how everyone was surprised she was female because she aware everyone just assumes you're a guy.
Honestly, I think some people just want to be a victim in some way. Gives them an excuse as to why things aren't going there way.
I don't think that being surprised by the physical appearance of somebody that you only interacted with online says anything about you but I assume that if you were called racist it means that you remarked on it? If so that's at the very least a bit gauche. That the type of stuff I'd keep to myself to avoid making people uncomfortable.
Keep in mind that the 10 black people in a city of 30k are probably tired of having interactions and remarks centering on their skin color, even if they're not negative.
> but I assume that if you were called racist it means that you remarked on it
Well, it was via a telephone call and they made a point of bring it up. So I was "Oh, you're black." literally just shocked. I commented on the conference because I was at a conference and he was meant to be there but couldn't be so we chatted on the phone.
Honestly, I didn't think him thinking I was racist because of his frame of mind made me the victim of anything. If anything it makes him the victim. I've been called many things in my life and normally I don't care because I don't specifically care about what that person thinks.
That you were surprised just shows that there's something wrong with the system (education, social or whatever) that so few black people end up in well paying tech jobs. Being surprised to encounter one isn't racist as long as you're not negatively surprised.
It's the same as being surprised that the CEO of a large company is a woman. That in itself is not sexist but shows that something's wrong with society.
Yea, Scotland is something like 98% white. I literally never met a black person until I was 17. We had lots of Asians and Indians but not black people.
I grew up around Bristol, but didn't meet a black person until 6th-form college.
She was a classmate and we hung out a bit. I bothered her with sooo many questions. I think today it would probably be unacceptable, but this was the 80's so a different age. And I was so curious about what being black was like (and no internet to satisfy that curiosity without asking an actual black person).
He just said he’s from a town of 30k people with 10 blacks. How exactly is assuming someone you talk to is from the 99.9% majority not normal?
Of course this is the perfect example of our society today, where if you try and see racism sexism everywhere, you’ll see it. Even if it’s not actually there
The key is in "expected". Why did someone expect another person to be of a certain color? Note that the person in question is named Benjamin Cruz, and has a skin tone more or less consistent with their name [1], and not especially dark.
So the question is why the expectation of "being white" was there. A reasonable interpretation (with limited knowledge, of course) is that they expected Cruz to be white because they expect mostly white people to be hired at their level. That is clearly racism, as you're attributing intelligence to race.
Of course there are other interpretations, but I wouldn't say that 'you should seek help if you see racism' is helpful at all.
That expectation was there because of a photograph of the employee. The expectation was violated because the employee spent some time in Egypt and acquired a tan in the process. Nothing to do with racism.
I've heard "Wow, you speak English better than I expected!", "You have no accent at all!" and similar said to Indian and Asian colleagues, some of these colleagues were born in the US and for all intents and purposes shared the same American childhood as you and me. Is it racist? I don't know. It does imply a ready and closely-held stereotype, though.
There are probably situations where it's an innocuous remark, but surely you can see that depending on the tone and what is implied, it might be extremely offensive, not very different from saying something like "oh, you're a woman, that's certainly surprising because women are awful at math and coding!"
Hence "depending on what is implied". You make a remark because something surprises you, and the reasons for that surprise might be benign or they might be racist.
And the word is ironically not used anymore for real racism cases like killing someone because of his race or religion (as it happens often in Europe).
I briefly went on Twitter last night to see what the #superstraight stuff was all about. People yelling "Nazi!" at each other, even though #superstraight has nothing to do with the Jews or genocide (as far as I could tell).
Regarding racism:
Meghan Markle has taken this to the extreme, accusing people of racism when her skin tone is light enough for people to assume she is white (her ethnicity never crossed my mind before she started banging on about it - I thought she was white), and having plenty of privilege in her life (more so than 99.9% of UK's population).
Seems to me people using the cover of racism when things don't go their way - which is massively dangerous when there is genuine racism that needs to be dealt with.
her ethnicity never crossed my mind before she started banging on about it - I thought she was white
Ditto. Plenty of the upper-class horsey set have darker tans than her complexion, hair just as dark and straight, and so on. In any Cardiff nightclub you will find White Welsh girls with darker spray-tans. Having not paid much attention I didn't even realise at first she was an American actress, I assumed she was an English debutante.
Shit man, I don't know about you, but if my literal grandpappy made millions off his slave workforce on the sugar plantation before he was forced by a literal army to free them, I'd probably feel bad about that. I'd definitely not horde the money and continue to rule the plantation like god put me there.
By "history" I assume you mean not alive anymore. I'm sure they had descendants who were racist (like most people), doesn't make them all racist now.
She hasn't even said who that person is - so they can't even defend themselves. Additionally one person doesn't mean the whole family are horrible people.
> Additionally one person doesn't mean the whole family are horrible people.
Are the royals horrible people? Let's investigate!
* The wealth they horde is unimaginable. They have more money in the Queen's tiara collection than Musk and Bezos have combined.
* They continually petition against policies which would force them to make their wealth even slightly more transparent as this would be fully bad for PR when there are children starving in this country
* They continually protect sex abusers and pedophillic family members
* There may not be any family members who owned slaves still alive today. But they still have the receipts!
* Don't get me started on colonialism
* Let's not tar the whole family with the racist pedophile brush, I'm sure the various babies are currently innocent.
* They gave zero support to Princess Diana and quite frankly I'm not convinced by the opinion that they didn't have her killed.
This isn't just simply lumping in the existing royals with the atrocities committed by their ancestors, they continue to profit and benefit from the atrocities their ancestors committed with zero remorse or apology or disseminating of wealth back to the rightful owners, or be held to any consequence because they are the god given royal bloodline and it does not matter, they deserve all they have "worked for".
The question is, why make the comment at all? There’s literally no reason to make that comment out loud.
If you’re making the comment, it’s because you’ve internalized a few stereotypes around skin color, and made an assumption based solely on those stereotypes. Stop yourself at the point where you’re making the assumption.
How do you imagine a generic person in your mind? Purple? Multicolored?
Probably each person has some mind-image that’s more common than others (probably guided by early childhood experiences, or mirror image of you), or even if you’re on average unbiased there’s still going to be some image you have in mind for each particular person, which is a perfectly legitimate reason to be surprised upon finally meeting that person.
Honestly the only reason this is controversial is because of “skin color” and the current political climate.
“Oh, I’m surprised, I imagine you having red hair.”
> Honestly the only reason this is controversial is because of “skin color” and the current political climate.
Inherent in assuming a skin color is the implied association between, for example, intelligence and skin color.
"I'm surprised you're black," is not so far off from the acknowledged insult, "You're really $X for a woman."
WRT your example, anger issues are stereotypically associated with red hair, so there could be an implied "you have anger issues" that goes with that. "Oh, no reason," is also a very common deflection when being called out for poor assumptions or implied insults.
It's more likely that folks who claim to not have these associations simply haven't identified their unconscious biases yet.
There is always a reason associations between mental traits and physical features exist, even if you're not consciously aware of it.
EDIT: And to go a different direction, if someone truely doesn't make such associations... Now that they know some people do recognize those associations, just be polite and don't make such comments about people's appearance - be it skin color, hair color, height, weight, etc.
There is a long history of white people assuming white people are more intelligent.
When you meet a software developer, saying they're unexpectedly dark strongly implies you didn't think someone of that ethnicity was capable of being a software developer.
It doesn't need to be spelled out -- the implication is very clear, and if an employee claims to be ignorant of this, they should at least be sent on the race awareness training.
The first time I meet a remote colleague I'm often surprised by their height, and a very common statement is "Wow I never realised you were this tall!"
I don't see the difference between that and realising someone is a different ethnicity than you expected.
Racism is (by definition) prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism. Being surprised because someone looks different than you imagined is nothing like that.
Because they're of an unusual height, I assume. You had an expectation that they were of average height.
You can look at the pictures of the person that received that comment. They don't have an unusual skin color, and the ethnicity matches their name (say, they don't have a Russian sounding name with really dark, almost black skin). It shouldn't be unexpected to see their skin color.
Another option is that the expectation didn't come from averages nor names, and it came from prejudice about how software engineers look like. So yes, it definitely can be interpreted as a racist remark.
My color of skin definitely depends on the camera I sit in front of. The best cameras are as good as a mirror, but lower quality cameras built in laptops are awful. Looking at greenish or greyish myself is a bit nauseating.
You're leaping to an incredibly negative assumption of the speaker's intent, and then onto a form of punishment for that person. I think the "assume good intent" approach is more appropriate in these kinds of situations where it's incredibly ambiguous.
Remarking on the colour of some ones skin is like saying you have very blond hair. Are we in denial of skin tone or something and that it's different from various regions of earth, come on.
It's not a remark, it's an expectation. Imagine if you had blond hair and someone said "Oh, I did not expect an engineer to be blond". It's like they are saying "the stereotypes say you shouldn't be smart". At best, it's rude.
Is any discussion about skin color racist? If I see a picture of someone and then see them in real-life where they look different, I'd comment if it was about the color of their hair. Is it not ok to comment if it's about the color of their skin instead?
As long as it has nothing to do with work performance or other character traits, I don't see racism here. Otherwise you'd need to ban any discussion about appearances at the work place.
Just avoid comments about peoples personal appearance all together. Maybe somebody doesn't want to be told they're short or dark or whatever. I was introduced to a guy via email and spoke to him on IRC for nearly a year before he came to the office, when he arrived he was wearing a dress and carrying a handbag - I decided to not comment on his appearance. Try it...
But then you're essentially defining racism as "anything that gets you in trouble."
It's perfectly reasonable to adjust coming anywhere close to discussing race as a strategy to avoid getting fired, but it's insane to redefine racism based on that.
We're doing that, and it results in a constantly expanding definition of racism, to where there are now "microaggressions."
Keep in mind, if you're white, you don't care: as you suggested, you just avoid talking about certain topics and carry on.
If you're a minority group, all these white people are, against their own apparent interests, agreeing that there's pervasive racism everywhere. The minority person has to live believing that all this is true.
We ought to have empathy and get this right so we don't contribute to a pervasive falsehood that makes people's lives seem worse than they really are. What's no big deal for us can be a ton of stress for others.
Context matters - and we don't know the context of the conversation.
If the commenter was being flippant or dismissive or generally uncaring in their conversation it could be taken as racist by someone sensitive to such things.
If the comment was delivered with zero malicious intent and was merely a throwaway observation then it's not racist and only someone looking for offense would take it that way.
Like I said, without background knowledge and context it's impossible to determine if it was a racist remark or not.
Playing the devil's advocate. If someone tells you 'tomorrow you'll meet your new colleague Lars from Sweden' consciously or not you'll form expectation about his skin color.
I had something like that some years ago. My sister has a friend called Christine, and my sister had mentioned her several times before I first met her.
Turned out that while Christine was born and raised here in Norway, she had two Thai parents.
There's not a large Thai population here, and Christine is not a name I associated with Thais, so I was quite surprised by it. Not in a positive or negative way, just plain old surprised.
I actually have one as well. At some point I was chatting a lot with a customer agent from one of our partner. To me their name sounded Russian so I assumed they were of Russian origin. Turns out they are from a Sub-saharan African country. Like you I was very surprised when I learnt it.
True, but there's a difference between having an expectation and clumsily articulating it in a welcome meeting. On the balance of probability a new software developer is likely to be male and so you might be surprised that new dev with unisex name is female, but saying "oh, we weren't expecting a woman" when they walk in is obviously going to raise some very significant questions about your attitude
It is not explicitly implied in the sentence, which can make it harder to parse for those of us on the spectrum, but no doubt hearing this kind of comment has an othering effect for most people. The fact that you’re not as “expected” can imply you’re not part of the right group.
Racism is the structural discrimination and exclusion of certain groups of people, and this is one of the ways in which it perpetuates. If every person who isn’t white is made to feel unwelcome (even if unintentionally), is that not de facto discrimination?
A lot of this stuff goes over my head, but it is there and it’s up to us to learn to recognise it when it has a detrimental effect on our friends and coworkers.
By the whole surrounding system that treated differently and badly people according to their skin color for ages? People who say a skin color comment is just like a hair color one are delusional. Obviously there are different levels of racism, but a comment like this is already racist because it's expliciting expectations based on people's origins.
What is racist about expecting a correlation between origin and ethnicity? Would it be racism to expect Mr Wang from Shanghai or Hanako from Kyoto to be ethnically Asian?
Now that I think about it, my (white) ancestors have been enslaved by people with darker skin color, and they never enslaved people with a darker skin color. Does that mean I can call black people racist if they point out my skin color?
Yes, it just happened slightly longer ago. Romans took slaves from and performed genocide on european populations who were generally lighter skinned and the cultural attitude considered them uncivilized animals. Later on, one set of my ancestors had a habit of enslaving another set of my ancestors, however writing was something fairly novel to both of them so it wasn’t well recorded.
Slavery in many kinds is everywhere in human history, there aren’t many ways to divide up humanity so that any group hasnt been both victim and perpetrator at some point.
You don't have to go as far back as the Romans. The Barbary Pirates (from north Africa) took something like a million slaves from Europe over the 300 years that they terrorised European coastlines, mainly raiding the Mediterranean but sometimes coming as far north as Britain and even Iceland.
Note that Barbary slave raids weren't suppressed until the early 19th century, around the same time that the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended (emphasis on trade; slavery continued in the Americas for decades after the slave trade itself was ended). So slavery of white people was widespread for much of the time that whites were enslaving Africans. (And of course, Africans were enslaving each other for hundreds of years before Europeans showed up and continued to do it after Europeans stopped.)
The only thing more absurd than pretending slavery never happened is pretending that Europeans were the only people who ever practiced it.
No, because the new dogmatic definition of racism and sexism excludes the possibility of white people and men as a gender ever being discriminated against at.
Also known as “There’s no such thing as reverse racism!”, which as a premise to fight racism (different treatment based on skin-colour) starts off by dividing people into different skin-colours, so that they can be treated differently (and the equivalent mental exercise for sexism/gender).
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s being done seriously and gaining momentum.
Would the statement "your hair is much lighter than I expected" be racist? How about "your eye color is much lighter than expected"? Why is skin color different than any other superficial characteristic?
It might be racism if one enjoys putting the gravest label imaginable on a situation. But if that is the worst the person experienced it is something that anyone should be prepared do deal with without invoking all sorts of institutions. I have experienced things like that occasionally because I am gay. The lightest shades of homophobia can be dealt with by just ignoring them. Just being ignored makes a decent person already think something along the lines of 'ow... maybe I should not have said that ...' and they will most likely just stop. The problem with the modern forms of equality thinking seems to be that we need to work very hard to eradicate even infinitesimal levels of racism or homophobia. This then deteriorates into a rather scary thought police that is much worse than the problem it allegedly attempted to solve. I am saying 'allegedly' because these people probably just enjoy bossing everybody around and found this issue as a means to do that rather than actually caring about he issue. The bigger problem is that when people in minorities start believing such things it makes them weaker and not stronger.
This might be somewhat of a tangent, but I'm extremely pale. I don't tan, I burn, no matter how hard I try, and I stay milky white (or turn lobster red) no matter how long I stay in the sun.
I used to get teased for this constantly as a teenager. Every time the weather was nice, and especially if I was returning home from a holiday in a sunny destination, I knew I'd get the same idiotic comments about my failure to get a tan. I hated it, and I resented people who said this to me. Not because I'm insecure about the colour of my skin (really, I don't give a fuck about tanning) - just that it was so boring. The same stupid, boring, tedious jokes again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Give me a break.
This doesn't make me a victim of racism, and I can't think of any other disadvantages to my skin colour except perhaps an increased suncream budget. But I do find it offensive. You're not funny, and I've heard it a million times before.
Rant over.
(Edit: to be clear, I don't find it offensive if someone simply described me as "white" or "pale" - only when they make unoriginal jokes about it.)
Ditto, I have that fine pale, eastern european, 12 hours in front of a screen colour going. Honestly, the lobster jokes were quite funny for me as sometimes I would wear a matching red t-shirt without noticing just how lobster looking I was. I've had plenty of sun strokes too when I was younger and playing football in peak lunch heat. That's my level of pasty. My wife tans in minutes so I am jealous but so what.
I had plenty of eastern european cheap labour jokes from friends, I just played along depending on their skin colour or race. No one was upset and we all laughed at our unique differences.
I mean, yes, judge people on the quality of their code, not the colour of their skin. It's opinions like these that make me think that clearly public shame isn't enough to get it into people's heads.
If I recall correctly (from the other HN discussion) the person in question had vacationed some where tropical and the comment was about how much she had/hadn’t tanned.
I believe the person making the complaint actually raised the topic originally.
I dunno, having a bit of ginger myself has made me the target of jokes and ridicule. Being a bit of a nerd means my skin is far often pastier than others, and people comment on it. I have been called translucent and have asked if I have half a soul because my beard is ginger and my hair is brown. People say ignorant idiotic crap all the time. It's ignorance, judging people based on their appearance, and it's been happening to anyone not white for centuries.
Sure, but making everyone scared to have any sort of discourse with people for fear of offending each other will do nothing to improve racial integration.
I'm of Irish decent and it has had it's fair share of stigmatism throughout history yet most of us pretty pasty white.
I don't know about you, but I don't really wanna discourse with people who are so superficial as to ridicule my appearance. If you offend me, why the hell should I engage in civil discourse?
It's a pretty weird comment though, it's hard to judge without knowing more context. Whether this is actually racism or not it's hard for me to imagine a context where such a remark would be appropriate at work. In general I think it's good advice to avoid commenting on your coworker's physical appearance unless you have a very good reason to do so.
IMO it's also a bit rude for you to say that "one should seek help" when you don't really have a good understanding of the situation at hand.
What I'm reading from the description of this situation (this BBC article is scant on details, previous posts had more information) is that the suggestion for medical leave came only after a prolonged, repeated escalation/appeal of a relatively minor complaint.
Let's assume that the complaint was accurate, it wasn't a misunderstanding, and that there was an incident in 2019 where a colleague intentionally verbally insulted Benjamin Cruz for some reason. That's bad, but it's not a major issue, that's a single incident, Cruz did not claim that it was a pattern in their work environment, or that they had to continuously work with a colleague that kept insulting them, or something like that - their claims of abuse stop at that single incident. HR looked into the complaint and, one way or another, came to a decision which Cruz did not like. So far, it's a "meh" situation, not nice, but something that's still within bounds of an acceptable work environment no matter which side is right. Okay, a minor bad thing happened, people talked about it, hopefully people will try to be better. If it repeats, then you would have a reason for escalation or further complaints.
However, if a year has passed after a single insult and a HR decision you don't agree with, and you can't let it go and keep escalating that issue because it still affects you so much that it hurts your work and causes serious personal anxiety, then that's a problematic overreaction. Letting go seems like a reasonable option, seeking mental help seems like a reasonable option, and quitting seems another reasonable option, and IMHO that's it, you should pick one of these - which was exactly what (according to Cruz) was suggested by the HR.
In your opinion what should a perfect HR have suggested for Cruz to do in this situation, assuming that they have determined that some punishment to the other employee (which - in my guess - is what Cruz might have requested by asking HR to reconsider that investigation) is simply not justified?
If you expect that you'll never ever have a minor personal conflict or one-off remark at your workplace, that's an unreasonable expectation. If you expect that in every dispute with a coworker the HR must take your side and you refuse to accept a judgement that's reviewed more than once, that's an unreasonable expectation. If you expect that employer will ensure that any assholes get fired after their first asshole utterance, that's an unreasonable expectation. If you can't work because these unreasonable expectations aren't met, then that's on you, not the employer; deal with it or leave.
Obviously these HR guys have no moral compass. Their company literally delegated that task to these individuals who they then sacked. Ironic. I need to figure this one out...
> In all of Google, I'm certain that there are at least thirty (1 in ~3500) mentally ill employees
Just curious about this statistics. Is 1 in ~3500 the prevalence of mental illnesses in the general population? If so, why would you assume that this frequency would remain the same in a leading tech company which selects its employees through a rigorous (one would hope) interview process, which might significantly skew the sample? It may be much lower than in the general population. Or, alternatively, much higher.
It's not reasonable to assume that mental illness = delusions of persecution, of course, but it is reasonable in my opinion to expect that at least one person in the ~120K people at Google mistakenly believe they are being persecuted for their race when they are not, and I think it's not reasonable to assume there is only one, given today's climate.
If it's a slow news day, journalists seek out the mentally ill - say, those who believe that the world will end on some specific day or those who believe their blood is full of spiders - and make a story out of it.
I believe this happened with this story. Whatever personnel problems Google has, harboring closet racists is not it. Google HR reasonably and compassionately tells some people who are over-stressed about racism in their lives to take a medical leave - and BBC / NBC spins this into a story about Google harboring racists, which exacerbates the initial mental health issue.
It's reprehensible, and BBC should be ashamed. NBC News should be too, but they are shameless and it's too much to ask.
This is a story based on an NBC interview [1], which was published on Sunday - linked in the article and referenced several times. This article follows a wider story that can be traced in the "More on this story" section at the end of the article, with additional articles published in December and February.
Prominence - It's currently only being linked to in the least prominent headline slot (7th) on the Tech section of the news site, after being published for less than a day. Presumably it will be shunted off altogether by tomorrow.
Timing - It's release is based on source material that was just released a couple of days ago - around how long it might take to write an article to cover a story which is not breaking news.
I'm sure whoever you think is manipulating the BBC could find a more effective tactic for delivering a propaganda attack.
Everything is calculated. Calculated risk. Calculated reward. If they have moderation to check if something should be posted or not, then you can sure bet that the moderation goes the other way and determines timing et al.
So the overlords insist on sidestepping journalistic integrity to create a punishing propaganda piece in the party organ to rile up their opponents, but they are so worried about appearing to break editorial guidelines that they tone it right down hide it in an obscure corner of the website?
You can't have it both ways - either they're trying to make a point or they're not. If it's so subtle that it takes this level of interpretation, then it's not an attack.
I'm certainly no fan of the current government, but if you want some actual corruption stories to get stuck into, then just buy a copy of Private Eye - corruption is usually a lot more straightforward that this.
No. There was a story in HN about this issue yesterday and the BBC journalists read HN and other sources for topical stories.
The British establishment is not as cohesive as you think. The BBC is more likely to be mildly Republican and anti monarchist than not, reflecting the intelligencia.
Modern Britain is a racially diverse, mixed culture and this google story is interesting because it poses questions people are interested in.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The question of bias in the BBC is pertinent. The whole of the exec team are Conservative donors.
Modern Britain was "racially diverse, mixed culture" up until the day fully half the country decided to turn insular and vote for Brexit. Which allowed the racist, bigoted and hateful half of the country to feel like they could voice their opinions without consequence.
The exec don't define editorial policy at this level of granularity. You're just being hyperbolic. Reportage by the BBC is not subject to the kind of whims Rupert Murdoch brings to news Ltd press.
The BBC is no angel but suggesting this is the home office, number 10 or the foreign office using the old Boys network in the tory party establishment to serve one out on America is stupid.
Sorry, but I'm neither sorry, nor wrong. Your opinion is not more valid than mine.
Brexit did not end racial diversity in Britain. Rishi Sunak did not instantly disappear, nor did Dianne Abbott.
> The exec don't define editorial policy at this level of granularity.
Are you sure about that? There's no "keeping editorial policy unbiased" committee at the BBC - They're funded by the government and licensees who get seemingly no say in the editorial policy.
> You're just being hyperbolic
Perhaps
> Reportage by the BBC is not subject to the kind of whims Rupert Murdoch brings to news Ltd press.
Now you're just being silly, of course it is, it's just the whims of more people than just one person.
> The BBC is no angel but suggesting this is the home office, number 10 or the foreign office using the old Boys network in the tory party establishment to serve one out on America is stupid.
Have you been living under a rock, or has the whole cronyism scandal of the last year gone completely unnoticed by the British masses/
> Sorry, but I'm neither sorry, nor wrong. Your opinion is not more valid than mine.
Categorically incorrect. Opinions are funny things, like if it was my opinion that I could jump and miss the ground and fly off into space, that opinion is a) up for debate and b) can be proven wrong.
Your opinion is that Britain is a) modern, b) has modern ideals, c) is culturally diverse, d) is racially diverse
It depends on your definitions of the meanings of "diverse" but I'm sure a quick googling of the racial demographics of the UK would prove otherwise.
Britain certainly tries to be modern, whilst literally being ruled by a Monarchy. So I don't think your argument holds much water.
> Brexit did not end racial diversity in Britain. Rishi Sunak did not instantly disappear, nor did Dianne Abbott.
up until the day fully half the country decided to turn insular and vote for Brexit
We have the most racially diverse Cabinet ever, elected by a massive majority. Priti and Rishi enjoy huge popularity. Your narrative doesn’t match reality.
Imagine being so racist that you think any non-white person who holds conservative opinions has no agency and is just a pawn being used by his white masters.
The problem is with this line of reasoning is that won't work on me because I have dealt with an overly conservative family and government for years. People have merits sure, but they also have agendas.
> We have the most racially diverse Cabinet ever, elected by a massive majority. Priti and Rishi enjoy huge popularity.
insular = ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience.
I have examined Priti Patel's statements and behavior. Her moral and cultural compass would be what I would exactly define as insular. For example, going on TV justifying applying the death penalty to innocent people which predominantly affects minority populations. I would strongly suggest watching this short clip of her talking about this in such a ridiculous way. She keeps repeating the phrase "does what it says on the tin" and "ultimate burden of proof" to justify killing innocent people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU
In short, Priti Patel is a pretty insular personality, ie: a person who just happens to have brown skin but in fact reflect a highly insular conservative viewpoint. "Model" minorities such as her are often used by power structures to justify further reinforcement of highly biased policies that perpetuate a cycle of disenfranchisement.
In other words, having a "racially diverse cabinet" doesn't mean anything if they all share the same Etonian viewpoints of how the world should be structured and society should be structured and how and where resources should be expended.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google after threatening to quit unless Google reveled the identities of the reviewers of her paper that was not received well while accusing them of sex/race based discrimination.
You can find some of the experiences of her from previous colleagues. You'll find the toxicity that she used in her time there and how she is picking the race/sex card on every situation. This is likely a continuation of that.
Not that the allegations can't be true, but people like this are really diluting the message and making it hard to tell the legitimate from exaggerated hit pieces.