Denying the charge or defending yourself simply digs you deeper into the hole.
What you're supposed to do is admit you're a racist, fall down on your knees, abjectly beg forgiveness of your accusers, and list all the new things you'll be doing to stop being racist.
Then your accusers have the power to forgive you. But you really, truly have to go all the way in submitting to their demands.
And they still might not forgive you. After all, you're racist scum, the lowest of the low.
It's an incredibly toxic and destructive way of handling the issue of racism.
I know I'm not a racist -- I interact with people of all races. I don't let race enter into my interactions. I sleep well at night, because I know I'm not a racist.
Defending myself against ridiculous allegations of racism is a game I refuse to play. For the good and simple reason that if you play the game, you can only lose.
However, the statement "I know I'm not a racist" is slippery. Perhaps you're not, but guess what, most racist people think the same too. I've seen explicitly racist things told to me with the same statement prefixed to it. How do you absolutely know you're not racist? Perhaps we all are at least slightly racist and should strive every day to just reduce that part of us?
This is similar to 'I know I am not a bad person' - the majority of the people subscribe to this hypothesis and I believe that is the root cause for many ills in society. I subscribe to an alternate hypothesis - "most of us are kinda bad people" - I mean most people here have burned tons of CO2 on plane trips for personal pleasure, or bought fancy cars or thought we deserve luxury when many in the world continue to suffer - all of this is bad in some definition anyway so even if we all don't promise to be saints let's at least acknowledge that we all ain't angels as a first step?
What in the heck are you doing that's inviting frequent accusations of racism?
> The point is, if you want to face reality rather than live in a comfortable fantasy, you have to confront the possibility that the racists are right about one thing: It's possible that some races really do have less intelligence than others.
You just can't go around making statements about race and intelligence, however delicate and nuanced, and not expect people to raise an eyebrow. Do you think he'd make that same statement in a room full of black people?
In case it isn't obvious, not-racist people with a smidgeon of social awareness don't even engage in those sorts of discussions on the first place, because they understand that nothing productive can come of them.
They're his words, and I linked to the full thread to provide context. If you find "this behavior" "very rude," I think many others here would disagree with you.
However, if you want to accuse someone of racism, you better have evidence of you're going to pay.
I’m pretty sure many racists think the same things... You don’t need to be in the KKK to be racist. You don’t need to be saying the n-word to be racist. There are a lot of more “subtle” things you could be doing that /are definitely/ racist.
Btw, the fact you don’t let race enter your interactions probably means you’re not accounting for what people experience as part of their race. So, you’re probably racist for not considering their position.
(I think it was probably the right choice either way given how serious the allegations appear to be, so this is just idle curiosity on my part).
It's a fair question, but I doubt it. While getting a hot scoop and dropping it with a bang is something that feels good (and sells papers, so to speak), it's not the driving force behind how a professional news org works. The NYT is a professional news org. One of the things a professional news orgs does is fact check, get statements, and give its sources a chance to respond.
Also, do you elaborate on your struggle with the NYT elsewhere? I'm interested, but you haven't given us much information at all.
Not anymore. The web advertising industry strongly effected the quality of their work. Now they're just another slightly larger news organization with a spotty track record.
> three of these people filed complaints during their time at Coinbase. All of those complaints were thoroughly investigated, one through an internal investigation and two by separate third-party investigators
Using third parties sounds like a good idea here.
Arthur Andersen taught us that two decades ago.
It's also striking that this reaction could be addressed at itself.
Stealing this from other posts above, apologies friends: under those assumptions, the disagreement you have with Coinbase's choice to address it is sufficient to negate your conclusion - if there is no mob, and no story, and the corporation is trying to get in advance of it, it's likely the story is damaging enough that they need to, it's not pleading with a 'mob'.
Make sure nobody has any examples of you being racist
You can avoid explicit examples with evidence attached ("he called me a n-word and fired me, see <youtube link>") but I don't see how you can reliably avoid claims of bias. And while the nyt article isn't out yet, I'm willing to bet that these (like most) claims is one of bias. Moreoever most actual legitimate instances of racism are also going to be of that form, because most people aren't stupid enough to make illegal things they are doing obvious.
And if you feel so inclined, you can express your understanding to that person who feels that they have been wronged because of their background. Chances are they have been right far more often than they have been wrong and it's very stressful having to deal with an ever-present potential for unprovoked adversity.
It should be a very small burden on you to acknowledge their situation.
To return to the topic, Coinbase doesn't lose a breath acknowledging their Black employees who did file complaints. If they had any sympathy for these employees — which they should have even if they were not wronged for being Black — why didn't they express it in the statement?
(I edited a second half into my original comment that might make this clearer, though I did that before I saw your reply)
I personally think it is a silly case, but 'well, just don't be racist' is a silly defense - so maybe they'll work well together.
But how do you defend against implicit bias? "No, I'm not"? In the current climate, I'm not sure that saves your public image...
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/covington-catholic-hig...
No it doesn't. Perhaps constantly forcing your subjective interpreted and implied meaning on everyone else is the root of the problem.
> "call this being apolitical"
Sure, call it that. It literally means not involved.
If you have been accused of racism that's because somebody has an example of you being racist. If you did not have racist intent you can clarify your intent. Simply claiming you're not a racist won't do because pretty much everyone accused of racism makes that claim (example: central park dog walker, or any other person in the news accused of racism).
Edit: I am talking about instances where the facts are not in question. For example, you did not hire Xyz, and you're accused of racism.
Anyone can accuse anyone of anything; that’s not sufficient to suggest that the accused must be guilty on some level.
> any other person in the news accused of racism
You’re kind of proving the point by claiming it’s always so clear cut.
If only that were true.
Happy employees don't accuse their employers of racism. If you are being accused of racism by your employees, surely something went wrong and there are things you can identify to improve, and then commit to improving those things as part of rebuilding your integrity.
This is "guilty until proven innocent", when exactly did this mentality catch on? Well, in any case I hope the trend reverses because it's directly opposite to how the law works.
For that matter, I would love if you elaborated on how an accusation must surely mean that a wrongdoing actually happened instead of replying with uncharitable interpretations of my comments.
Such a burden is also unreasonable in many informal situations, as being required to establish formal and indisputable evidence of wrongdoing would prevent many people from being able to speak out about wrongdoings (especially lesser wrongdoings) within their community.
Coinbase here had 3 formal racism complaints filed internally and Coinbase is stating in their article that they found that all of these claims were incorrect and baseless. To which I say... really? Even model citizen companies are able to trace down elements of racism within their organization when they look hard enough, because racism is a natural bias cooked into many of us, and overcoming that bias requires proactive effort.
You are asking me to give you charitable interpretations, while at the same time refusing to give charitable interpretations to the folks lodging the racism complaints.
No company is perfect, and especially over 1,000 employees I don't think it's unreasonable to have issues within certain parts of the org. But after those issues surface, it seems problematic to me that you would try and assert that actually everything is just fine. Especially in an industry that is overwhelmingly white and male.
Not automatically thinking that an accused is guilty is... Unreasonable.
I honestly have to ask if I'm reading that correctly because I'm really hoping I am.
> Even model citizen companies are able to trace down elements of racism within their organization when they look hard enough
Interesting, some people say this a lot, and also say the analogous regarding sexism. Yet when Google (a company that basically has "be evil" now as its unofficial slogan) actually "looked hard enough", they found they were actually paying women more than men.
So allow me to doubt this claim you're making.
> racism is a natural bias cooked into many of us
No, no it's not. Not only it is the naturalist fallacy (and without any solid evidence, unusual for this one), it's fundamentally cynical. People are not "naturally" bigots in any way, and even if the argument were for nurture (or "social conditioning", if you prefer), this claim would still be extremely suspect.
> while at the same time refusing to give charitable interpretations to the folks lodging the racism complaints.
I'm being charitable to both accusers and accused; there's no reason not to be, specially in this case where the complaints were investigated and found to be unfounded. You seem to prefer to be entirely on one side, and not only for this particular example; your original comment was far broader.
> it seems problematic to me that you would try and assert that actually everything is just fine [emphasis mine]
Is that what I said? Well, that you would twist my words this much in order to find them "problematic"—and that you would find such a claim "problematic" in this case—does explain why you think the existence of a complain surely means that a wrongdoing happened. Thanks for clearing that up.
American society, certainly. Some white Europeans are a bit miffed at being lumped in with America’s problems. Europe has race/diversity problems of its own, but not on the same scale as the US’s.
In America I see similar things. I think it is seductive to be swept up with identity politics, and suddenly that promotion that went to a white person, feels different, feels racist. Or you employ a neurodiverse low-social skill person who makes an edgy unfunny joke, because he is nervous. That's "racist humor on the work floor" when going to a lawyer or journalist. It is a dangerous world out there. Current climate not helping.
I think journalists are also able to tell the difference between “some dude made a poor-taste joke once” and “dudes were always making poor-taste jokes targeted at one specific minority when the employee was present”.
I’ll also say that, at my reasonably woke US company, I’m not aware of any neurodiverse person getting in any trouble for making a bad-taste joke.
Then the offended person changes jobs, complains on Twitter about sexist humor driving her out of her previous job, a journalist searches for leads on their next story, and suddenly you are in the news with "multiple people complained about sexist and racist humor on the work floor, but nothing was done about it, and no complaint or investigation resulted in any action. We asked the company for a response and they replied that these internal investigations turned up nothing and that they don't accept discrimination of any kind".
Nearly every company has incidents of sex between co-workers, or people taking illegal drugs on a company get together. Depending on who you get to talk to that's "it seemed like every other week I saw a used condom in the stair ways" or "management regurarily used cocaine during company parties". You won't talk to anyone relativating it, and company PR is shy to even admit that stuff.
Now, it's also true to some degree that I benefit from society in a way that blacks don't (at least not to the same degree). And the right thing to do is to work for a world where blacks share in the benefits of society to the same degree that I do. (Where they don't have to be any more careful in a traffic stop than I do, for example.) But "acknowledging the role that my ancestors played"? I do, with pride.
They could have waited until the story was published I guess to share this statement, but publishing it preemptively makes sense too I believe (it's an always open entity that is incredibly easy to switch away from).
But truly, when you get accused of racism, what can you even do?