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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by roenxi on Friday November 27, 2020 @07:22PM (#25233885)
Well, I don't know what is going on in Coinbase. But the NYT has in the past overplayed the race card with no evidence.

Now I'm happy to agree that the retention rate of black people at Coinbase raises some questions. But the NYT, having asked those questions, came up with no particular evidence of racism.

The major piece of evidence that these issues are substantially due to race is that the NYT felt it warranted a hit piece. That is weak evidence. Being passed over for promotion and feeling unappreciated - which they lead with - isn't evidence. Most of us have been passed over for promotion plenty of times. Most people are unappreciated too.

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by tptacek on Friday November 27, 2020 @07:43PM (#25234023)
On the contrary, they came up with several examples of biased behavior, including an instance where the Black members of a team were required to relocate while a non-Black member wasn't, an instance where a Black team member was subjected to to insults about drug dealing and guns from their manager, recruiting team member claims that Black candidates were less capable, the fact that Coinbase employs Black workers at less than half the average of the industry, and the fact that Black workers were dismissed in meetings, to the point where a pattern of repeated HR complaints occurred.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by roenxi on Friday November 27, 2020 @07:54PM (#25234092)
Starting with the assumption that they are racist, that is the tip of a nasty iceburg.

Starting with the assumption it is a pretty normal company, that is a list mostly of stuff that nobody should care about.

If someone can articulate what the HR complaints are about then that might be evidence. But complaints to HR are expected - that is why HR gets hired. They are there to deal with HR complaints. And read resumes.

> including an instance where the Black members of a team were required to relocate while a non-Black member wasn't

This one is stupid. Am I meant to believe they are revealing their racist ways by hiring black people then asking them to relocate, racistly? This is bog standard sucks-to-work-in-support activity. Miserable working conditions, but nothing to do with skin colour. A similar thing happened to my father back in the day. He certainly wasn't black.

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Friday November 27, 2020 @10:59PM (#25235146)
Racism is endemic in the US. It was founded with the notion that black people were basically livestock. We've slowly and fitfully moved away from that, but the problem is far from over. With any company we should assume that both personal and systemic bias are present. Which is why well-run companies work to counter that.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by kortilla on Saturday November 28, 2020 @02:10AM (#25235908)
> Racism is endemic in the US. It was founded with the notion that black people were basically livestock.

The existence of slavery in the past isn’t driving the current race issues in the US so much as fallout from much more recent segregation policies. Nobody alive today was a (or was born to) a slave and the majority of the states that make up the United States were not even part of the country during the civil war.

To claim racism is endemic now because of slavery is lazy. Racism is endemic because segregation didn’t end until approximately the same time as TCP/IP was being invented!

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by danShumway on Saturday November 28, 2020 @02:48PM (#25239949)
> so much as fallout from much more recent segregation policies.

The existence of slavery and the view that Black people could be treated as livestock are why we had segregation policies.

The existence of slavery fueled white anger towards the idea that the "livestock" were suddenly being allowed to go to the same places and use the same services as white people. The generations of people who owned slaves raised the generations of people that enforced segregation, and those generations raised the people today who enforce racial discrimination and oppose racial justice.

And like you said, this isn't far-back history, segregation in the US was recent. People have this flowery view that racism just went away and that slavery just suddenly stopped mattering. But the effects are still very much with us today. A few generations isn't enough to eliminate a culturally pervasive, harmful ideology.

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Saturday November 28, 2020 @02:56PM (#25240005)
Agreed, with one caveat. It isn't "people" who think that racism just went away. It's white people.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by danShumway on Saturday November 28, 2020 @03:02PM (#25240058)
Right, good catch.

It's important to keep in mind that Black communities (and a lot of other marginalized communities) as a group don't really have these debates as much, because it's completely obvious to them that they aren't being treated equally.

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wan23 on Saturday November 28, 2020 @09:59AM (#25237898)
But how, in a democracy founded on the notion of equality, did segregation become a policy? How did the people who passed those laws get it into their heads that it would be a useful thing to do?
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by spiralx on Monday November 30, 2020 @09:44AM (#25254208)
A democracy founded on the notion that all white male property owners were equal and slavery was acceptable? Some fancy words in a fancy document doesn't override the actual reality of who was considered equal or not.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Saturday November 28, 2020 @11:38AM (#25238558)
I agree plenty of history happened in between, but your notion that they're unrelated is absurd. Nobody today learned English from Alexander Hamilton, but nonetheless we not only understand the Federalist Papers just fine, we live by many of the ideas he expressed. Culture is handed down.

If you'd like to better understand that, I'd suggest you read Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning", who gives an intellectual history of America's racist ideas. I also think you're mistaken to lay the current troubles at the feet of formal segregation policies, which were only active in one part on the US. Maybe go read "Sundown Towns", which shows that all across America we had towns with de-facto segregation without formal policies. And it takes only a glance at modern maps showing race to see we haven't solved the problem.

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by thu2111 on Saturday November 28, 2020 @11:53AM (#25238657)
Nobody calls them "crypto bros" except the sort of people who work at the New York Times, and those sort of people routinely describe anything they don't like as racist or sexist. Bitcoin is built on the work of many people who are totally anonymous even - doesn't get more neutral or non-racist/sexist than that.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by CryptoPunk on Saturday November 28, 2020 @03:36AM (#25236248)
Vacuous character assassination.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Saturday November 28, 2020 @11:30AM (#25238476)
You claim that there's "absolutely no evidence" that racism is endemic, which is an absurd claim to make. There's enormous amounts of it. Hundreds of studies. Hundreds of books. And the daily lived experience of million of people, who you need only listen to on the Internet. But if you want a very simple, obvious one, take NBER paper 9873: https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

One could plausibly debate the level of it. But to sweepingly declare there's absolutely no evidence isn't so much a claim of fact as a declaration of willful ignorance. Which, unfortunately, is part of why racism is still endemic. See, for example, Loewen's "Sundown Towns", where the later chapters show how America's ongoing de-facto segregation, which was born out of the Nadir, both depends on and creates the sort of refusal to see the obvious that you engage in here.

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Sunday November 29, 2020 @12:47AM (#25243203)
You're conflating endemic and systemic. I clearly said one, not the other. Although you're wrong on both.

That also isn't the strongest evidence. It's just one of the easiest to understand. But given that you're going to strain at gnats and swallow camels even with the pretty basic ones, I'll leave finding the rest as an exercise to the reader.

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by CryptoPunk on Sunday November 29, 2020 @07:05AM (#25244673)
Endemic in this context is synonomous with systemic.

You ignore the evidence showing unarmed black Americans are 25 times less likely to be shot by police than unarmed white Americans in a given interaction with similar circumstances, because it doesn't fit your victimhood narrative.

You've done nothing but lob ad hominem at me for not agreeing with your completely baseless and unscientific quackery/dogma.

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Sunday November 29, 2020 @12:50PM (#25246665)
Well since you believe you understand what I'm saying better than I do, it seems like I'm not needed in this conversation. Have fun arguing with your straw man.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by CryptoPunk on Sunday November 29, 2020 @09:17PM (#25250112)
The only institutional racism in America today is affirmative action that blatantly discriminates in favor of individuals belonging to supposedly disadvantages groups, or the racial victimhood ideology that leads to police shooting unarmed black individuals at 25 times lower frequencies than unarmed white individuals in similar situations.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Sunday November 29, 2020 @10:03PM (#25250355)
Well since you believe you understand what I'm saying better than I do, it seems like I'm not needed in this conversation. Have fun arguing with your straw man.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by CryptoPunk on Sunday November 29, 2020 @10:17PM (#25250416)
That's a pretty immature response, but I guess that's not surprising.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wpietri on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @12:50AM (#25262746)
Well since you believe you understand what I'm saying better than I do, it seems like I'm not needed in this conversation. Have fun arguing with your straw man.
Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by CryptoPunk on Saturday November 28, 2020 @04:04AM (#25236395)
>>they came up with several examples of biased behavior,

In none of those examples is there proof of racial bias.

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wan23 on Saturday November 28, 2020 @09:55AM (#25237872)
I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Are you saying that it is untrue that there are Black employees who feel that racial issues are being handled poorly at Coinbase? Because that's what the article says. It sounds like you're looking for enough information to make a judgement of whether the company is racist, in an innocent until proven guilty sort of way. But that is very much not the point.