No one imagines him sitting around spewing racial epithets or purposefully discriminating, or even thinking bad racial thoughts, but that is not a very

No one imagines him sitting around spewing racial epithets or purposefully discriminating, or even thinking bad racial thoughts, but that is not a very high bar. Orwell had it wrong. His vision of the future was, in some respects, too optimistic. For even if Arrington is innocent of thoughtcrime ("thinking bad racial thoughts"), he must still somehow be guilty of something. Thing is, these fine gradations between "racist" and "racially insensitive" may mean something to the original poster, but for the vast majority of people there is little functional difference between the two. Zooming out from Arrington, this is what usually happens after someone prominent is accused of heretical beliefs. A lot of people come out of the woodwork to kick a man when he's down. Now Arrington may deserve it more than most (surely there's a lot of schadenfreude in the Valley now) but this sort of witch hunt could easily have been mounted against any prominent figure in tech. There is really no defense. You can't say your friends are black. You can't point to the pipeline. You can't point out Asians. And you damn well can't mention the statistical implications of the B__l C___e, even as a hypothesis, as it will drive the neo-Puritans into a hissing rage and convince them that you "just don't get it". All they want you to do is confess to your sins in a struggle session. Even if you've never been "thinking bad racial thoughts", that is not enough for them. Nothing ever is.