4 ms·
There are a lot of comments quickly taking issue with and interpreting the phrase “anti-racist” as being actively racist. If you give Jeff he benefit of the do
by gdudeman 4y ago
There are a lot of comments quickly taking issue with and interpreting the phrase “anti-racist” as being actively racist.
If you give Jeff he benefit of the doubt here, you can read this to say they’re going to think about whether layoff choices are made with implicit bias and/or racism and be thoughtful about that.
It’s possible that the non-benefit of the doubt interpretation is valid, but I don’t see evidence of that here.
HN is a place where debate is welcomed, but drive-by comments accusing them of going out of their way to lay off white and Asian employees when there is no indication that’s what they’re doing is not helpful to the discourse.
- bhahn 4y ago> implicit bias and/or racism I think it'd be better for them to re-market this principle as "bias-free" or something more generic. Calling it "anti-racist/anti-oppression" is, fair-or-not, going to invite this reaction from outsiders.
- HereIGoAgain 4y ago"It's not racist or discrimination because I say it isn't"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ejb999 4y ago>>If you give Jeff he benefit of the doubt here, Sorry, not giving a virtue-signaling billionaire the 'benefit of the doubt' - he explicitly says that race was taken into account when deciding who to fire and who not to - that is de-facto a racist statement. You don't fix racism by being racist. If jobs need to be eliminated, they should be eliminated by making decisions about which departments/projects/initiatives are no longer needed, which people are no longer performing well, or which area's are not profitable etc. As soon as you say, we took into account peoples race when deciding who should be fired, it is racist, period.
- ViViDboarder 4y agoAnd if everyone picked every pregnant woman on leave and every minority, leadership should totally just assume that it wasn’t some bias or racism. /s It makes sense to review to ensure that there is no slant to your layoffs to me.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- staticautomatic 4y agoPhilosophical issues aside, the Supreme Court is sort of ok with “fixing racism by being racist” if it’s done to compensate for historically being racist.
- maxehmookau 4y agoMany countries do this and it's not controvertial. The UK Equality Act says that given two candidates of equal ability, it's legal to pick the candiadate from an underrepresented background purely because of that.
- maxehmookau 4y ago> As soon as you say, we took into account peoples race when deciding who should be fired, it is racist, period. Oy. I expect better from HN discussion, because this is a solved problem. Auditing your decisions for implicit bias along racial lines _is not racist_. In fact, it's the opposite.
- kweingar 4y agoThis is a tired debate that won’t be resolved here, but here’s the other perspective anyway: Suppose you work for a company and your boss is from Country X and you are not. Your boss hired several other people from Country X and regularly socializes with them more than others in the office. When layoffs come, your boss instinctively advocates for the people he is closest to, which happens to be people who look like him and speak the same native language. “That’s not fair!” you say. “I’m a higher performer than them. This is just favoritism.” Your boss says that he did not take race into account in his decision. Your company agrees with you and tells your boss that his favoritism is unacceptable. There are now processes in place to flag this kind of situation. Your boss grumbles “well I didn’t take anybody’s race into account before, and now I have to. This is racism!”
- ViViDboarder 4y agoTotally agree. Saying they are ensuring that their layoffs didn’t disproportionately impact minorities and pregnant women doesn’t mean disproportionately fire white men.
- yttribium 4y ago
- mizzack 4y agoWouldn't that just be "not racist"? "Anti-racist" _is_ an active position.