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> Only nine percent of the British adults we surveyed described politics as “very important” to their sense of identity, and only 22 percent had shared any poli

> Only nine percent of the British adults we surveyed described politics as “very important” to their sense of identity, and only 22 percent had shared any political content on their social channels in the previous year > When it comes to speaking their minds at work, one of these tribes—home of the “Progressive Activist”—is not like the others. “A powerful and vocal group for whom politics is at the core of their identity,” as More in Common describes them. i see this more and more. the loud few make a lot of noise, the majority just want to do their jobs. companies have to cater to everyone... but at some point there’s too much virtue signaling at work

laurencerowe 5y ago
Should companies cater to racists?
- Clewza313 5y ago
  This is a pitch perfect example of polarization: the previous poster said "there’s too much virtue signaling at work", and now you're strongly implying that anybody who feels this way is a "racist".
  - Covzire 5y ago
    It's all the news shows anymore. They could cover many other things, maybe throw in a few positive stories, but cable news and largely the whole industry is just one growing dark cloud.
    - Loughla 5y ago
      Local news (small town of <35k population) in the midwest regularly covers bus crashes and other negative news from other states. States that are like 14-20 hours away. How does that matter to me? It sucks, and it's a tragedy, but it has literally zero impact on my life. But it sure makes good news for people to worry about.
      - nickik 5y ago
        This is why I avoid news media pretty much completely. If you study everything a few years removed you actually get a much better picture. The problem with news media is that people have no context what so ever and often no sense of connection. Afghanistan in 2001 fell from the clear blue sky from a non existing place to being a place that can teleport people to New York. Despite it having been in the news somewhat in the 80s. Even the people who remembered the 80s had no context of what happened in between then because nobody cared basically. A modern example is the Syrian Civil war, if you only follow the day by the news even if you do it everyday, you actually would have very little understanding what so ever. Many of the actual facts only get relieved much later.
  - evgen 5y ago
    The response may have to do with the phrase 'virtue signaling', which is one commonly used by fragile white boys to indicate that someone who objects to certain behavior or will no longer tolerate a certain activity is only doing so because they are seeking approval for this public demonstration and that the belief is not sincerely held. The other alternative is that the person objecting actually believes the behavior is wrong and has no place in the workplace and is willing to take a risk by objecting. Politics has entered the workplace in the past when the former majority had to deal with women joining the workforce and suddenly certain jokes, conversation subjects, and office behavior was forced to change. It was not a smooth transition without controversy and even legal conflict. The paper in question here starts with the assumption that 'viewpoint diversity' is either valuable or worth cultivating on all subjects, this is not true. We are in the midst of another transition, it is going to get messy, and the 'virtue signalers' are almost certainly going to win.
    - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
      > the assumption that 'viewpoint diversity' is either valuable or worth cultivating on all subjects, this is not true. Ah yes. It shouldn’t even be legal for people to question your viewpoint. Because when has discussion ever been a valuable thing? Or when has a political fashion ever turned out to be sorely wrong, and new viewpoints were needed? Wait, I remember a few times - but I’m sure that this time is going to be different. Also, “fragile white boys”? This kind of ad hominem makes you sound like a raging ideologue.
      - evgen 5y ago
        > Ah yes. It shouldn’t even be legal for people to question your viewpoint. Because when has discussion ever been a valuable thing? Sometimes discussion serves no value. I will not bother to discuss racial theories with a member of the Proud Boys or KKK because the discussion is a waste of time. No one has made any claim regarding legality here, so you are free to question any viewpoint and should be prepared to face the consequences in exactly the same manner that the people you are objecting to once faced consequences for questioning your conventional viewpoint. This sort of a discussion and questioning of viewpoints is exactly what is happening here, but one side is losing an argument that they assumed was not up for debate so they try to work the refs. Doesn't matter, but it is fun to watch. > Also, “fragile white boys”? I have never seen _anyone_ other than a frightened white male use the term 'virtue signalling' without trying to be ironic, so if the shoe fits...
- ineptech 5y ago
  The presumption that the world can be divided in to "progressive activists" and "racists" probably has a lot to do with the reason people don't want to express diverse political opinions at work.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    That's true... but so does the presumption that the world can be divided up into races based on the superiority of certain races over other races. And that expands beyond expressing political opinions. When management is labeling your entire being and your whole family as inferior, it sucks to even be at work. Edit: I don't mean to oversimplify, it's not just an issue of casual racism, for some things it's life and death -- when the company lobbies for loopholes in the law and then dumps toxic waste that overflows into your backyard, would a fear someone felt to avoid expressing a political view in support of that loophole override the fear someone else might have for their kids getting cancer?
    - ryan93 5y ago
      Evidence of managements labeling your family as inferior?
      - zxzax 5y ago
        I have literally had employers say to my face that they will not hire people of certain races, or have them as customers. Thankfully I don't work for any of those people anymore.
        ryan93 5y ago
        Since you don’t work there anymore you can name them or at least the company
        zxzax 5y ago
        Without getting into the details, I don't think anyone here has to worry about becoming a victim of these persons, being accidentally hired by these persons, or accidentally doing business with them to the point where it supports their activities. I wouldn't mention it if I thought it was still an issue.
- temp8964 5y ago
  Why this is not automatically killed by bot? But the other reasonable comment by "notsureaboutpg" was? The bot is stupid.
  - dang 5y ago
    One account is banned and the other not. There's no bot trying to decide what comments are "reasonable"—that would indeed be stupid.
    - temp8964 5y ago
      Thanks for your response. I thought the one line offensive response would be easily picked by the bot. But of course I don't know how the bot works.
      - open0 5y ago
        There is no bot, according to the moderator you're responding to.
        dang 5y ago
        There's software, which is probably what temp8964 meant by "bot".
- disposekinetics 5y ago
  If it's profitable, yes. Edit: If it's profitable we would expect to see it, not should in the moral rightness sense.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  One thing I learned after 10 years of being vegetarian: antagonism is a a loosing strategy. Shaming and tribalism doesn't help anybody, and is an arrogant view of the world. You are probably some *ist right now, compared to a future world view. Just because people have an opinion you know is unwise doesn't make them a bad person. They are like you. You are more like them than you think, but like them you have blind spots that prevent you from seeing it. Tolerance goes both way. We all create suffering, at different scales and in different manners. The idea is not to cater to racists, but just to make sure their believes does not translate to hurtful actions in the work place. If it doesn't, then it's ok, they probably tolerate stupid things on your part too. If it does, then first, try to engage with them to make it stop. Only if it doesn't work, should you reject them.
  - speeder 5y ago
    When I was a teenager, I had a classmate that would often point out I was eating corpses and it was gross whenever I was eating a ham sandwich. A friend of his, liked also to point out I believed in fantasies, myths and magic, because I wasn't an atheist. One day the pair grabbed a holy book from my closed backpack (yep, they opened it without permission), and started playing soccer with it, while saying the book was useless for anything other than being kicked. Let's say that wasn't an winning strategy, I am still not vegetarian and still not an atheist, all they did was convince me that they are assholes.
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      Somewhere down the road, people that were against religious extremism took the worst example from it, like dogmatic thinking, blind faith and intolerance, and decided it was ok to use it against religious people. Humanity and irony have a strong bond.
koheripbal 5y ago
As an employer, we have a office policy that advises people to refrain from talking about religion or politics in the office place. At first, there were two people who pushed back very very vocally to this policy and refused to abide by it. After a few warnings, one quit and the other did something inappropriate that caused us to fire her. I was really surprised by the reaction after that. People came up to me and thanked me. It turns out those two people were an enormous distraction for everyone at work, and actively created a divisive and uncomfortable environment. They were obsessing about politics and could not stop talking about it with their peers - badgering anyone that disagreed with them. One of them even tried to use the company website and social media accounts to champion her politics. After her termination, we discovered that she was also collecting client invoices on her desktop computer. Apparently, she had it in her head that we were secretly overcharging customers (she apparently did not understand how compound interest works) and was planning on reporting the company to the financial authorities. Note that even when you're innocent, an accusation of fraud can cause serious reputational damage as well as huge legal fees associated. Activists are absolute poison to a company. I feel that company's efforts to placate them are usually recipes for them to backfire.

laurencerowe 5y ago

Should companies cater to racists?

Clewza313 5y ago
This is a pitch perfect example of polarization: the previous poster said "there’s too much virtue signaling at work", and now you're strongly implying that anybody who feels this way is a "racist".
- Covzire 5y ago
  It's all the news shows anymore. They could cover many other things, maybe throw in a few positive stories, but cable news and largely the whole industry is just one growing dark cloud.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    Local news (small town of <35k population) in the midwest regularly covers bus crashes and other negative news from other states. States that are like 14-20 hours away. How does that matter to me? It sucks, and it's a tragedy, but it has literally zero impact on my life. But it sure makes good news for people to worry about.
    - nickik 5y ago
      This is why I avoid news media pretty much completely. If you study everything a few years removed you actually get a much better picture. The problem with news media is that people have no context what so ever and often no sense of connection. Afghanistan in 2001 fell from the clear blue sky from a non existing place to being a place that can teleport people to New York. Despite it having been in the news somewhat in the 80s. Even the people who remembered the 80s had no context of what happened in between then because nobody cared basically. A modern example is the Syrian Civil war, if you only follow the day by the news even if you do it everyday, you actually would have very little understanding what so ever. Many of the actual facts only get relieved much later.
- evgen 5y ago
  The response may have to do with the phrase 'virtue signaling', which is one commonly used by fragile white boys to indicate that someone who objects to certain behavior or will no longer tolerate a certain activity is only doing so because they are seeking approval for this public demonstration and that the belief is not sincerely held. The other alternative is that the person objecting actually believes the behavior is wrong and has no place in the workplace and is willing to take a risk by objecting. Politics has entered the workplace in the past when the former majority had to deal with women joining the workforce and suddenly certain jokes, conversation subjects, and office behavior was forced to change. It was not a smooth transition without controversy and even legal conflict. The paper in question here starts with the assumption that 'viewpoint diversity' is either valuable or worth cultivating on all subjects, this is not true. We are in the midst of another transition, it is going to get messy, and the 'virtue signalers' are almost certainly going to win.
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    > the assumption that 'viewpoint diversity' is either valuable or worth cultivating on all subjects, this is not true. Ah yes. It shouldn’t even be legal for people to question your viewpoint. Because when has discussion ever been a valuable thing? Or when has a political fashion ever turned out to be sorely wrong, and new viewpoints were needed? Wait, I remember a few times - but I’m sure that this time is going to be different. Also, “fragile white boys”? This kind of ad hominem makes you sound like a raging ideologue.
    - evgen 5y ago
      > Ah yes. It shouldn’t even be legal for people to question your viewpoint. Because when has discussion ever been a valuable thing? Sometimes discussion serves no value. I will not bother to discuss racial theories with a member of the Proud Boys or KKK because the discussion is a waste of time. No one has made any claim regarding legality here, so you are free to question any viewpoint and should be prepared to face the consequences in exactly the same manner that the people you are objecting to once faced consequences for questioning your conventional viewpoint. This sort of a discussion and questioning of viewpoints is exactly what is happening here, but one side is losing an argument that they assumed was not up for debate so they try to work the refs. Doesn't matter, but it is fun to watch. > Also, “fragile white boys”? I have never seen _anyone_ other than a frightened white male use the term 'virtue signalling' without trying to be ironic, so if the shoe fits...
ineptech 5y ago
The presumption that the world can be divided in to "progressive activists" and "racists" probably has a lot to do with the reason people don't want to express diverse political opinions at work.
- zxzax 5y ago
  That's true... but so does the presumption that the world can be divided up into races based on the superiority of certain races over other races. And that expands beyond expressing political opinions. When management is labeling your entire being and your whole family as inferior, it sucks to even be at work. Edit: I don't mean to oversimplify, it's not just an issue of casual racism, for some things it's life and death -- when the company lobbies for loopholes in the law and then dumps toxic waste that overflows into your backyard, would a fear someone felt to avoid expressing a political view in support of that loophole override the fear someone else might have for their kids getting cancer?
  - ryan93 5y ago
    Evidence of managements labeling your family as inferior?
    - zxzax 5y ago
      I have literally had employers say to my face that they will not hire people of certain races, or have them as customers. Thankfully I don't work for any of those people anymore.
      - ryan93 5y ago
        Since you don’t work there anymore you can name them or at least the company
        zxzax 5y ago
        Without getting into the details, I don't think anyone here has to worry about becoming a victim of these persons, being accidentally hired by these persons, or accidentally doing business with them to the point where it supports their activities. I wouldn't mention it if I thought it was still an issue.
temp8964 5y ago
Why this is not automatically killed by bot? But the other reasonable comment by "notsureaboutpg" was? The bot is stupid.
- dang 5y ago
  One account is banned and the other not. There's no bot trying to decide what comments are "reasonable"—that would indeed be stupid.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    Thanks for your response. I thought the one line offensive response would be easily picked by the bot. But of course I don't know how the bot works.
    - open0 5y ago
      There is no bot, according to the moderator you're responding to.
      - dang 5y ago
        There's software, which is probably what temp8964 meant by "bot".
disposekinetics 5y ago
If it's profitable, yes. Edit: If it's profitable we would expect to see it, not should in the moral rightness sense.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
One thing I learned after 10 years of being vegetarian: antagonism is a a loosing strategy. Shaming and tribalism doesn't help anybody, and is an arrogant view of the world. You are probably some *ist right now, compared to a future world view. Just because people have an opinion you know is unwise doesn't make them a bad person. They are like you. You are more like them than you think, but like them you have blind spots that prevent you from seeing it. Tolerance goes both way. We all create suffering, at different scales and in different manners. The idea is not to cater to racists, but just to make sure their believes does not translate to hurtful actions in the work place. If it doesn't, then it's ok, they probably tolerate stupid things on your part too. If it does, then first, try to engage with them to make it stop. Only if it doesn't work, should you reject them.
- speeder 5y ago
  When I was a teenager, I had a classmate that would often point out I was eating corpses and it was gross whenever I was eating a ham sandwich. A friend of his, liked also to point out I believed in fantasies, myths and magic, because I wasn't an atheist. One day the pair grabbed a holy book from my closed backpack (yep, they opened it without permission), and started playing soccer with it, while saying the book was useless for anything other than being kicked. Let's say that wasn't an winning strategy, I am still not vegetarian and still not an atheist, all they did was convince me that they are assholes.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Somewhere down the road, people that were against religious extremism took the worst example from it, like dogmatic thinking, blind faith and intolerance, and decided it was ok to use it against religious people. Humanity and irony have a strong bond.

koheripbal 5y ago

As an employer, we have a office policy that advises people to refrain from talking about religion or politics in the office place. At first, there were two people who pushed back very very vocally to this policy and refused to abide by it. After a few warnings, one quit and the other did something inappropriate that caused us to fire her. I was really surprised by the reaction after that. People came up to me and thanked me. It turns out those two people were an enormous distraction for everyone at work, and actively created a divisive and uncomfortable environment. They were obsessing about politics and could not stop talking about it with their peers - badgering anyone that disagreed with them. One of them even tried to use the company website and social media accounts to champion her politics. After her termination, we discovered that she was also collecting client invoices on her desktop computer. Apparently, she had it in her head that we were secretly overcharging customers (she apparently did not understand how compound interest works) and was planning on reporting the company to the financial authorities. Note that even when you're innocent, an accusation of fraud can cause serious reputational damage as well as huge legal fees associated. Activists are absolute poison to a company. I feel that company's efforts to placate them are usually recipes for them to backfire.