I'm having a "The boy who cried wolf" moment right now.
https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-f...
Looks like his fathers background is actually hard to pin down. A biographer of Musk believes his father made most of his wealth from his engineering business.
> Elon was born on June 28, 1971, to Errol and his wife Maye Musk when they were both in their 20s. This is important because the parents divorced in 1979, nine years after getting married, and it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the emerald mine in question came into the picture.
> The family owned one of the biggest houses in Pretoria thanks to the success of Errol’s engineering business,” a business that included “large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base.” Elon even admitted his father is “brilliant at engineering” despite being an overall “terrible human being.”
It's a primary source, not speculation. Here's some additional context: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-abou...
Judging people by skin color, not okay, we both agree.
But judging people by their ancestors seems to be the same kind of wrongdoing to me. Both are pretty arbitrary criteria that the target has no control over.
The information that Elon 'might' have a racist upbringing is not really relevant. Whats relevant is whether self-responsible Elon is doing (directly or indirectly) harm to others based on skin color or race or anything like that.
I am sure that happened, and it is awful, and Tesla should answer for it in court and through the proper channels. But to some degree, this seems like the type of thing that (unfortunately) can happen in an environment like that. It doesn't seem like there is much indication that is a part of Tesla at a high level or happening in Elon's other companies.
(Also all 3 of those articles refer to the same lawsuit.)
I've not heard Musk being accused of being personally racist - that was more one contractor used racist language in the presence of some other contractor stuff.
California's actions seems pretty consistent with this to me: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.31...
Do I think that people leverage their positions of power in the govt to strike blows when they are offended or threatened? Absolutely.
It's not that people in the government have a vendetta against him. He's just petulant and thinks himself above the law. So, while I'm sure it's enjoyable to to knock him down a peg, he's doing it to himself allowing blatantly illegal shit to happen in his companies.
"Black Tesla employees describe a culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’ " https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-25/black-tesl...
"California sues Tesla, alleging rampant racism at factory" https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080884899/california-sues-te...
"Black workers accused Tesla of racism for years. Now California is stepping in" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/tesla-cal...