This is just a rehash of broken-windows theory, whether its proponents know it or not. The Hutus and Tutsis didn’t start with some off-color ribbing and escalate from there.
There is zero evidence behind the “pyramid of hate” — it makes a shallow kind of sense, but has no basis in the real world. An equally valid hypothesis is that harmlessly blowing off low-level steam prevents the atrocities higher up in the “pyramid”. Things only really get bad when people are encouraged to form and defend identities around characteristics like race, religion, national origin, etc. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this kind of hysteria promotes.
Utilization of the pyramid of hate in this way makes me feel like it's just a retroactive justification of hypersensitive behavior amongst overly fragile employees. Honestly a lot of times it's not even hypersensitivity so much is just overt paranoia.
You're on the money about encouraging people to form their identities around these characteristics.
Instead of having a conversation about excessive police militarization and police brutality directed at all American citizens we had it around one group. In the US 75% of the people killed by police each year are not black and nobody knows their names because the media has caused Americans to think that it's a issue unique to, rather than disproportionate for black Americans.
Instead of having a unifying and inclusive movement for police reform we got a politically weaponized racially polarizing movement.
Yep. Watching (unarmed, white) Daniel Shaver weeping and begging for his life as he crawled on his hands and knees down the hallway before officer Philip Brailsford executed him with a spray of bullets — that was as clear-cut a case as you could get that the police in many districts are NOT policing their own as much as they should. In many ways, there is a straight line from Brailsford to Chauvin: a cop with lots of citizen complaints and a bad attitude ends up killing someone who didn’t need to die. Race, even when it is a factor, is an unnecessary distraction from the bigger picture.
Perhaps it didn't "start" with "off-color ribbing" but the usage of 'jokes' (see: Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines) to desensitize people to hatred towards the Tutsis is well documented.
It was unpopular to speak out against this sort of thing, and certainly was something that got worse over time.
Further, racial violence in the Americas didn't start with jokes either, it started with the genocide the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and continued with the trans-Atlantic slave trade ...
Hutus and Tutsi violence didn't start at jokes. It started with German and Belgian colonists literally preferring one group over the other. Raising animosity between two groups of essentially genetically same people.
Hutus used the identity cards colonists left to target their purges.
I'd say those influenced genocide way, way more, than some radio jokes.
Edit: I think it's easier to believe that if we didn't make a jokes here and there we could have prevented an atrocity. It's an easy and quick solution to a complex question.
I think the situation was way more messy and way more muddy. Jokes didn't help but stopping them wouldn't have stopped the genocide.
It's fair to at least 'talk about' the 'pyramid of hate' and maybe 'believe in it' so as to 'make a point'.
But I don't think it's ok to accuse regular, well-meaning employers of 'holding up systems of White Supremacy'.
It's also basically tone-deaf for an executive, facing a 'sensitive moment' to challenge claims of racism with 'reverse racism' - even if the executive might have a rhetorical point - it's just going to inflame the situation.
I think the execs should have basically 'not acted out of contempt', said some conciliatory things and moved on. Even if they had a legit point to make, they're supposed to be 'bigger than that'.
So I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to dig into the rhetoric, but rather, they should have just found a way past the issue.
Finally, it's a good example of how toxic this stuff can be.
When you get sucked in by a US-centric ideology that is almost entirely based out of US universities you get these glaring holes in these theories that don't make sense as soon as you move them to another country.
Explain to me why this movement hasn't caught on in Brazil? Or any of the other numerous South American countries which were huge destinations for African slaves? I don't see this crap happening in Columbia.
This is all just elite overproduction with a bunch of professors who 40 years ago still thought communism was a great idea indoctrinating kids who have a naturally conformist mindset.
Google and Amazon can afford to have this crap but startups can't and that's why you're seeing it evaporate from the small companies first. Let the unproductive all talk no walk poser engineers obsess about this instead of writing code. The rest of us will get to work somewhere else.
This is a gross misrepresentation of events.
They were colonized by European countries, who imported African slaves, to work alongside the SAmerican slaves for their economic exploitation.
Where did they come from? Europe.
The elite/exploiters are never the majority, in fact, they kind of need to stay “tiny”. That’s how power and leverage work, and even the concept of scalability in capitalism.
And they were made in the context of a general propaganda/hate campaign. The medium is the same, the context couldn't be more different.
It's the context that matters 100%, not the medium (jokes in this case) in and of themselves.
Context and details matter a lot. A joke about "niggaz in da hood" by a white person is very inappropriate and insensitive, but it's not the same as some joke where the punchline is that "niggaz too lazy to work" or whatnot. The second does express hatred, the first doesn't, in spite of being misguided.
This is essentially the same argument as {comics,music,TV,films,games} causes {Satanism,murder,drug use,what-have-you}.
Well no shit. But it did happen, and there's plenty of proof that 'jokes' contributed to the culture that made genocide possible
> A joke about "niggaz in da hood" by a white person is very inappropriate and insensitive, but it's not the same as some joke where the punchline is that "niggaz too lazy to work" or whatnot
You really don't think that the first desensitizes some to the point that they think the 2nd is acceptable?? This is what the pyramid is about.
> This is essentially the same argument as {comics,music,TV,films,games} causes {Satanism,murder,drug use,what-have-you}.
No it's not.
No, why should it? It seems to me that the difference is extremely clear for everyone. Is there any good argument beyond "but it obviously does!" – or even better, research – which demonstrates that it does?
You are just refuting what I'm saying without any actual arguments.
Surely you mean Rwanda?
This definition was invented by Nazi Germany and led to countless horrors, are you sure you want to continue to use it?
I'm sorry - I need help in understanding how this "equally valid". To me this seems like a justification ex post facto to defend "jokes", but it seems to fly in the face history. I find it hard to reconcile that post-slavery attitudes about race in America came about because people were no longer allowed to make jokes. Alternatively this kind of explanation hand waves away the cultural history that makes those jokes funny in the first place.
To note, I believe that DHH handled this situation horribly which has caused the situation to escalate to epic proportions. The adult thing to do when you come across a rather juvenile list of "funny" names to accept that you were wrong and move on. To try and defend this kind of juvenile behavior leads to nonsensical arguments about why it's someone's right to make lavatorial jokes during standup.
This is exactly what he did.
> To try and defend this kind of juvenile behavior leads to nonsensical arguments about why it's someone's right to make lavatorial jokes during standup.
He didn’t try to defend the list he just didn’t believe the idea that this list had some sorta deep seated root in racism. There were just as many “funny” Anglo/European names as Asian/African/etc from what I understand. He called out ppl trying to act self righteous when they themselves participated in the list making in the recent past and said this list is not proof of deep-seated racism in the company. That wasn’t good enough for the activists so they revolted.
ETA: people are logging their disagreement in downvotes but I haven’t seen a counter argument to this at any point in this thread, I’m ok with the dv, just interested in hearing the opposing view.
On what basis are you making your claim that allowing people to openly make offensive jokes prevents higher level atrocities?
The null hypothesis is that jokes neither promote nor prevent genocide, and I see no reason to reject it.
Again, the 'pyramid of hate' logic does not claim that jokes necessarily lead to genocide or that jokes are structurally required for genocide.
Just that they can be one of many causes of erosion of the social boundaries that ensure people think of each other as people rather than dehumanizing others. It is only to the extent that jokes become a tool for hateful sappers to undermine your team that they start to become necessarily problematic, but you shouldn't let things get to that point.
Offensive jokes are very highly context sensitive.
People can be offended very, some may argue too, easily.
Other people are very difficult to offend.
Hard to know.
Humanizing the field of play can do a whole lot of good. Can get people talking in real terms and being OK on those terms.
An overly fenced field of play can see building of tension despite the very best intent.
There can be solidarity in all that. Just being people, same as any people is often solid grounding.
Atrocities are harder in such a scenario. Everyone is more human, do unto others makes more sense when the others are similar, humans, wanting, needing similar things, running in similar ways.
"Those other people" can often be the start of something really ugly, depending on just what gets attached to "other."
We are as offended as we think we are. I am not marginalizing it at all! Being uber offended sucks.
But, we do have options. We do manage our response to others. We do have control over how we see others, can relate to them, see it from their view.
Humor is one of the more powerful ways to do that. It can bridge gaps, open doors, humanize others, make the very ugly, foul, something that does not own us.
We have to be careful with "openly" and "offensive."
The subset of expression sure to not offend is quite small.
The scope of possible good, or at the least not nefarious intent is just as large.
Both hypotheses are extremely difficult to prove or disprove and most likely, neither is strictly true. Human society is complicated / varied and I find it quite possible that there are times where hatred progressed both directions on that pyramid. There are also probably times where good natured blowing of of steam help prevent difficult situations from devolving and times where it inflamed hatred.
I don't understand what would make one theory "ex post facto" and the other not since both have similar temporal positioning...
But I don't think the point was to justify the jokes, I think the point was to call into question the epistemic justifications.
> To try and defend this kind of juvenile behavior
What defense was offered? This list was openly acknowledged as unprofessional, inappropriate, and something that should have been caught sooner.
The concern was that some of these “funny names” were based on laughing at other people’s race, national origin, etc. That’s the opposite of promoting it.
Umm, isn't the notion that catharsis is an effective method of anger reduction also at best controversial?
Aren't you (or whoever makes these claims) purposely stopping the "pyramid of hate" where you see fit? You could go on and say "people who joke", "people who talk", "people who meet". You just set the bar where you find a culprit/cause you are willing to demonize, as if it was that clear cut
My friend, I truly wish interpersonal interaction were 'clear cut', but that is not how things work. And merely wishing that things worked this way does not make it so.
If this is such a common path, why have I never heard of it happening?
How common is this chain of events? What are some documented cases?
Funny. That's the same thing the right-wingers are saying.
> Just like we avoid pest infestation
Well that's a nice phrase for a discussion of genocide.
Your wording seems to have an unstated but implied meaning to it, but I am not getting what it is.
Could you explain the implied meaning if you intended one?
This isn't the argument actually being made here, so if that's what DHH thought when he shut the thread down then that might explain part of the outcry.
The argument is simply that the behavior everyone claims to decry (e.g. racial violence) starts somewhere, far below violence. "Funny names" turn into off-color jokes. Off-color jokes turn into jokes with a darker edge. Then it turns into "just asking questions", and before too long your organization is acting as much as a group radicalization effort as it is a business.
This still isn't "cause and effect", where anyone who chuckles at a funny name is fated to be building the next Stormfront unless stopped by an intrepid band of culture warriors. But we've known since Ben Franklin that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, so under the 'pyramid of hate' argument, a company trying to foster a safe workplace for all workers should strive to keep potential racism from turning into a problem by enforcing standards of workplace conduct that don't wait for actual racism.
Just like we build secure software by building security in early into the release process.
Just like we build functional and well-integrated software by building the testing early into the release process.
Just like we avoid pest infestation by keeping the food off of the tables and floors. On and on it goes.
The standard we walk past is the standard we accept. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRQBtDtZTGA