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> I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? Including this bit is interesting. So he is accusing Amazon

> I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? Including this bit is interesting. So he is accusing Amazon of being both sexist and racist in addition to treating workers poorly.

soulofmischief 6y ago
That is quite a bold statement. Perhaps he meant management is generally discriminatory against those with a minority representation within the company, which is a less aggressive framing.
- bigiain 6y ago
  I suspect Tim chose his words extremely carefully there, it's bold because he intended it to be bold.
  - spurgu 6y ago
    This is my hunch as well.
simonhfrost 6y ago
In my opinion it was more from the perspective that minorities may have a more empathetic view on problems, after likely experiencing dealing with problems other more privileged people don't have to. In this case: one of the biggest benefits of hiring minorities... ending up being the reason you fire them.
- soulofmischief 6y ago
  I think he may have meant what I said in my sister comment but I think you're probably right about that being a factor. I googled "are minorities more likely to speak against injustice" hoping to find some threads of discourse or studies, but everything was coronavirus related... perhaps another time when search engines aren't trying to decide what I need to see.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  Counterpoint: Since many companies are under (public?) pressure to fill in some minority quota, they with end with relatively incompetent people from the minority group. Also my personal observation: an incompetent person from a minority group is likely to see a failed transaction through their own colored 'minority' lens. Eg. a woman who has been turned down for a job will attribute it to her being a woman and no other reason. For a white guy who has been turned down - it's life as usual.
  - peterwwillis 6y ago
    Well first of all, literally everyone in the world sees everything through their own colored lens. It's called personal bias, and we all have it. It's part of why minorities get turned down for jobs for reasons other than their technical experience. Or why they get turned down in spite of their technical experience. Second, it's my personal observation that 'many companies' don't end up with 'incompetent minorities', because, anecdotally, I and everyone I know who has worked with 'minorities' at multiple jobs has found them as competent or more so than their 'majority' peers. But a 'colored lens' is what takes your personal experience and turns it into whatever you want to see, not necessarily what is actually there. So who knows if either of us is right if all we're doing is looking with our personal biases?
  - noelsusman 6y ago
    I've seen plenty of white guys blame minority quotas and nothing else after being turned down for a job. There is also little evidence that companies are hiring hoards of incompetent people to fill minority quotas. If they were, then why does every tech company still struggle with a lack of diversity in the workplace? It would be easy to just hire whoever can tick a diversity box and fix those numbers, but they're not actually doing that because that would be stupid.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      Diversity quotas are absolutely real, and publicly documented all over the place. Activist shareholders are filing resolutions and threatening companies with lawsuits and bad PR. I was involved in hiring at some large tech companies and we had very specific targets to meet, ”or else”. I don’t know how anyone can still deny that this is happening.
- sanity31415 6y ago
  > In my opinion it was more from the perspective that minorities may have a more empathetic view on problems, after likely experiencing dealing with problems other more privileged people don't have to. It's best to avoid making generalizations about people based on the color of their skin - even when you think it's a compliment.
ealexhudson 6y ago
I think it's an important point. The warehouse staff get treated worse than the AWS staff because they're fungible; easily replaced and cost little. But they're also over-represented by women and people of colour, so the net effect is sexist and racist. The decision making might not be explictly sexist/racist, but that feels like hiding behind an excuse. It is exactly a power dynamic.
- sitkack 6y ago
  Racism positions the fulcrum, you still have to push the lever yourself. And thus still participate in its effects.
- sanity31415 6y ago
  That's not what "sexist" and "racist" means unless you have evidence that sex and race are the cause of their overrepresentation. If not, this is just race/gender baiting and it detracts from the broader issue of worker treatment.
  - Miner49er 6y ago
    No, that's not really the case. It doesn't matter if something is done on the basis of race or sex. If the end result hurts those groups disproportionately it's racist/sexist. I guess this just may be a difference in definitions, but I think when most people are talking about racism/sexism on a macro level, they are using this definition. You're right, the broader issue is worker's rights, but it's definitely worth pointing out that among workers with the least rights, minorities are overrepresented at Amazon.
    - qppo 6y ago
      You're basically identifying the difference between institutionalized racism and individual racists.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Getting pedantic here. Folks can 'see' race and not be racist. The Census taker for instance. Or the affirmative-action recruiter. To be meaningful, conventional racism has to include damage. Its an old debate technique for racists to complain that affirmative action is 'reverse racism'. Because, you see, it sees race and takes action.
bigiain 6y ago
Right at the end he says: "Spot a pattern? · At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance. So they’re gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength." Pretty clear where the bottom of the power balance is... Sadly, sexism and racism is an inevitable fallout of that in contemporary American culture...
Simon_says 6y ago
That was my read -- that he's accusing Amazon of being biased against hiring white men. But that kind of accusation needs a little bit more evidence behind it, and probably another standalone post.
- detaro 6y ago
  How do you get that from the article?!
  - chippy 6y ago
    With a bit of satirical imagination you could easily read that from the article. > I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?" "hmm, seems like most people who work in the warehouses must also share the same proportions of race and gender as those fired, meaning there are no white men working there" To explain the joke a bit further: it's satirical and absurd as it's clear that the intended message is that those working the warehouse are diverse and that there are white men working there too in large numbers and who are also unhappy and that the employer fired them because of racism and sexism. To flip it and say, yes the employer was racist and sexist because theres obviously no white men being employed and therefore sacked is funny because it's absurd.
- bigiain 6y ago
  I don't think that's a particularly valid or accurate "read". Here's what I understood: Tim had just just written about 8,700 signatures on an open letter, and 3,000 tech workers participating in the climate strike. Then said "Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era." and "Instead, they just fired the activists." Then he make the statement under discussion: "I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?" Then further down that post, he talks about a 9 hour long youtube video-chat, with workers from three different countries as wel as multiple locations in the US. It's obvious (to me anyway) that this statement has nothing at all to do with "biased against white men", in fact he's pointing out exactly the opposite. Zero white men got fired for being part of any activism discussed here. 100% of the people who got fired were POC and/or women. He is making it clear that Amazon's worker intimidation policies result in sexist and racist outcomes. Because as he concludes at the end "At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances." I'm really super curious - what thought process or line of reasoning led you to conclude he was accusing them of "being biased against hiring white men"?
draw_down 6y ago
He is right to.
lazyjones 6y ago
Seems so, but it also shows he's particularly concerned with such issues and might have let emotions and peer pressure overwhelm him.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  Yeah man. He let those emotions overwhelm him. Not like us: perfectly rational actors free of emotion.
moduspol 6y ago
I'm sure they're working as fast as they can to automate these folks out of jobs so that someone else can be blamed for being sexist and racist by employing them. And then the new employer can be the "villain of the month" on HN.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Employing someone is not a gold star that entitles you to treat workers however you'd like. One cannot excuse terrible/racist/sexist treatment of workers with, "at least they were employed."
  - moduspol 6y ago
    Nobody is excusing that. I'm pointing out the irony of the most probable outcome after all the moralizing and hand-wringing here by (primarily) well-paid, privileged, white collar tech workers. The jobs will be automated away, Amazon will be no more morally virtuous than they were the day before, yet the outrage will simply shift to the next employer. A fair assessment of Amazon's worker treatment would involve comparison to the workers' treatment if Amazon were not employing them. Presumably nearly all would be employed elsewhere. How would they fare at other employers? Better? Worse? More or less the same? If the answer is, "more or less the same," then it hardly seems like Amazon is the problem. Perhaps they're just a more convenient target.
    - WilliamEdward 6y ago
      I understand the disease-symptom dichotomy, but if amazon is only a symptom then it is one of the biggest ones out there. This makes tackling amazon more important than tackling a mom and pop shop who treats their workers poorly, even if they're both symptoms of a bigger working class oppression disease.
      - clevergadget 6y ago
        you are really doing the good work of trying to find a compromise pov here and I respect it :D A+ discourse
gjs278 6y ago
maybe minorities are the only ones protesting
supergeek133 6y ago
The way they treated Chris Smalls in the news was clearly a veiled attempt to label him as the "Stupid black man".

soulofmischief 6y ago

That is quite a bold statement. Perhaps he meant management is generally discriminatory against those with a minority representation within the company, which is a less aggressive framing.

bigiain 6y ago
I suspect Tim chose his words extremely carefully there, it's bold because he intended it to be bold.
- spurgu 6y ago
  This is my hunch as well.

simonhfrost 6y ago

In my opinion it was more from the perspective that minorities may have a more empathetic view on problems, after likely experiencing dealing with problems other more privileged people don't have to. In this case: one of the biggest benefits of hiring minorities... ending up being the reason you fire them.

soulofmischief 6y ago
I think he may have meant what I said in my sister comment but I think you're probably right about that being a factor. I googled "are minorities more likely to speak against injustice" hoping to find some threads of discourse or studies, but everything was coronavirus related... perhaps another time when search engines aren't trying to decide what I need to see.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dennis_jeeves 6y ago
Counterpoint: Since many companies are under (public?) pressure to fill in some minority quota, they with end with relatively incompetent people from the minority group. Also my personal observation: an incompetent person from a minority group is likely to see a failed transaction through their own colored 'minority' lens. Eg. a woman who has been turned down for a job will attribute it to her being a woman and no other reason. For a white guy who has been turned down - it's life as usual.
- peterwwillis 6y ago
  Well first of all, literally everyone in the world sees everything through their own colored lens. It's called personal bias, and we all have it. It's part of why minorities get turned down for jobs for reasons other than their technical experience. Or why they get turned down in spite of their technical experience. Second, it's my personal observation that 'many companies' don't end up with 'incompetent minorities', because, anecdotally, I and everyone I know who has worked with 'minorities' at multiple jobs has found them as competent or more so than their 'majority' peers. But a 'colored lens' is what takes your personal experience and turns it into whatever you want to see, not necessarily what is actually there. So who knows if either of us is right if all we're doing is looking with our personal biases?
- noelsusman 6y ago
  I've seen plenty of white guys blame minority quotas and nothing else after being turned down for a job. There is also little evidence that companies are hiring hoards of incompetent people to fill minority quotas. If they were, then why does every tech company still struggle with a lack of diversity in the workplace? It would be easy to just hire whoever can tick a diversity box and fix those numbers, but they're not actually doing that because that would be stupid.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    Diversity quotas are absolutely real, and publicly documented all over the place. Activist shareholders are filing resolutions and threatening companies with lawsuits and bad PR. I was involved in hiring at some large tech companies and we had very specific targets to meet, ”or else”. I don’t know how anyone can still deny that this is happening.
sanity31415 6y ago
> In my opinion it was more from the perspective that minorities may have a more empathetic view on problems, after likely experiencing dealing with problems other more privileged people don't have to. It's best to avoid making generalizations about people based on the color of their skin - even when you think it's a compliment.

ealexhudson 6y ago

I think it's an important point. The warehouse staff get treated worse than the AWS staff because they're fungible; easily replaced and cost little. But they're also over-represented by women and people of colour, so the net effect is sexist and racist. The decision making might not be explictly sexist/racist, but that feels like hiding behind an excuse. It is exactly a power dynamic.

sitkack 6y ago
Racism positions the fulcrum, you still have to push the lever yourself. And thus still participate in its effects.
sanity31415 6y ago
That's not what "sexist" and "racist" means unless you have evidence that sex and race are the cause of their overrepresentation. If not, this is just race/gender baiting and it detracts from the broader issue of worker treatment.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  No, that's not really the case. It doesn't matter if something is done on the basis of race or sex. If the end result hurts those groups disproportionately it's racist/sexist. I guess this just may be a difference in definitions, but I think when most people are talking about racism/sexism on a macro level, they are using this definition. You're right, the broader issue is worker's rights, but it's definitely worth pointing out that among workers with the least rights, minorities are overrepresented at Amazon.
  - qppo 6y ago
    You're basically identifying the difference between institutionalized racism and individual racists.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Getting pedantic here. Folks can 'see' race and not be racist. The Census taker for instance. Or the affirmative-action recruiter. To be meaningful, conventional racism has to include damage. Its an old debate technique for racists to complain that affirmative action is 'reverse racism'. Because, you see, it sees race and takes action.

bigiain 6y ago

Right at the end he says: "Spot a pattern? · At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance. So they’re gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength." Pretty clear where the bottom of the power balance is... Sadly, sexism and racism is an inevitable fallout of that in contemporary American culture...

Simon_says 6y ago

That was my read -- that he's accusing Amazon of being biased against hiring white men. But that kind of accusation needs a little bit more evidence behind it, and probably another standalone post.

detaro 6y ago
How do you get that from the article?!
- chippy 6y ago
  With a bit of satirical imagination you could easily read that from the article. > I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?" "hmm, seems like most people who work in the warehouses must also share the same proportions of race and gender as those fired, meaning there are no white men working there" To explain the joke a bit further: it's satirical and absurd as it's clear that the intended message is that those working the warehouse are diverse and that there are white men working there too in large numbers and who are also unhappy and that the employer fired them because of racism and sexism. To flip it and say, yes the employer was racist and sexist because theres obviously no white men being employed and therefore sacked is funny because it's absurd.
bigiain 6y ago
I don't think that's a particularly valid or accurate "read". Here's what I understood: Tim had just just written about 8,700 signatures on an open letter, and 3,000 tech workers participating in the climate strike. Then said "Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era." and "Instead, they just fired the activists." Then he make the statement under discussion: "I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?" Then further down that post, he talks about a 9 hour long youtube video-chat, with workers from three different countries as wel as multiple locations in the US. It's obvious (to me anyway) that this statement has nothing at all to do with "biased against white men", in fact he's pointing out exactly the opposite. Zero white men got fired for being part of any activism discussed here. 100% of the people who got fired were POC and/or women. He is making it clear that Amazon's worker intimidation policies result in sexist and racist outcomes. Because as he concludes at the end "At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances." I'm really super curious - what thought process or line of reasoning led you to conclude he was accusing them of "being biased against hiring white men"?

draw_down 6y ago

He is right to.

lazyjones 6y ago

Seems so, but it also shows he's particularly concerned with such issues and might have let emotions and peer pressure overwhelm him.

AlexandrB 6y ago
Yeah man. He let those emotions overwhelm him. Not like us: perfectly rational actors free of emotion.

moduspol 6y ago

I'm sure they're working as fast as they can to automate these folks out of jobs so that someone else can be blamed for being sexist and racist by employing them. And then the new employer can be the "villain of the month" on HN.

Pfhreak 6y ago
Employing someone is not a gold star that entitles you to treat workers however you'd like. One cannot excuse terrible/racist/sexist treatment of workers with, "at least they were employed."
- moduspol 6y ago
  Nobody is excusing that. I'm pointing out the irony of the most probable outcome after all the moralizing and hand-wringing here by (primarily) well-paid, privileged, white collar tech workers. The jobs will be automated away, Amazon will be no more morally virtuous than they were the day before, yet the outrage will simply shift to the next employer. A fair assessment of Amazon's worker treatment would involve comparison to the workers' treatment if Amazon were not employing them. Presumably nearly all would be employed elsewhere. How would they fare at other employers? Better? Worse? More or less the same? If the answer is, "more or less the same," then it hardly seems like Amazon is the problem. Perhaps they're just a more convenient target.
  - WilliamEdward 6y ago
    I understand the disease-symptom dichotomy, but if amazon is only a symptom then it is one of the biggest ones out there. This makes tackling amazon more important than tackling a mom and pop shop who treats their workers poorly, even if they're both symptoms of a bigger working class oppression disease.
    - clevergadget 6y ago
      you are really doing the good work of trying to find a compromise pov here and I respect it :D A+ discourse

gjs278 6y ago

maybe minorities are the only ones protesting

supergeek133 6y ago

The way they treated Chris Smalls in the news was clearly a veiled attempt to label him as the "Stupid black man".