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    For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

    (www.bloomberg.com)
    677 points saeedjabbar | 21 comments | 16 Jun 20 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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    hn_throwaway_99 ◴[16 Jun 20 21:01 UTC] No.23544053[source]▶
    I thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO.

    I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic racism - here's a great starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q. She also wrote the book "White Fragility".

    Thinking about that, I'm just wondering how different it would be if one of those people who mistook the employee for the CEO instead turned to the CEO and said "I'm sorry, please excuse me for the instance of racism I just perpetrated against you, I promise it won't happen again." I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not. We can't address them if we're so embarrassed by their existence as to pretend they don't exist.

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    claudeganon ◴[16 Jun 20 21:18 UTC] No.23544280[source]▶
    Robin Diangelo’s work doesn’t seem to me very good or well informed on what anti-racism actually constitutes. It seems mostly like a schtick to sell to HR managers. The way that she essentializes race seems like a bizarre, inverted reification of whiteness (and by extension white supremacy), than any deconstruction or attack on it.

    Anti-racism is about taking on the powers and material structures that reproduce racism in our society to put an end to that reproduction. It’s what the multiracial coalition is doing right now, in the streets, forcing changes to laws and policing.

    All of this has little to do with your boss paying someone to lecture you about why you’re bad/biased/ignorant. In fact, it’s contrary to anti-racism, because it positions your boss, who controls your life and buys her classes, as the arbiter of what is and isn’t racism.

    People would be better off studying the life and work of Fred Hampton.

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    nsporillo ◴[16 Jun 20 22:37 UTC] No.23545161[source]▶
    What exactly are the powers and material structures that contribute to the perceived racism in our society?

    From my limited understanding of this position, it sounds like the goal is a dismantling of police and courts which form the backbone of a civil rule of law society.

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    1. nouveaux ◴[16 Jun 20 23:06 UTC] No.23545435[source]▶
    If a publicly traded company is not doing well, the CEO gets canned and no one bats an eye. If one department is not doing well, it's very common to just fire a bunch of people or get rid of the department completely.

    The idea of "dismantling of police" does not mean we do not offer protection. It just means that the current organization "police" is not providing the services it's customers want. Years of "tweaking" the police orgs have failed to provide results. It's time to create a new way to protect citizens.

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    2. 1121redblackgo ◴[16 Jun 20 23:13 UTC] No.23545490[source]▶
    New way same as the old way presumably. This is a baby with the bathwater situation. It can be fixed no need to scrap it.
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    3. geggam ◴[16 Jun 20 23:24 UTC] No.23545572[source]▶
    Not sure I agree. The concept of meeting mental illness or crimes of poverty / lack of education with escalating violence is really uneducated at best.

    Violence being the language folks use after all else fails.

    Starting with violence means you don't really care about solving the problem and just want the incident to go away

    4. nouveaux ◴[16 Jun 20 23:27 UTC] No.23545606[source]▶
    I would agree with you that there would be the same if it's the same people running. This is the systematic part that needs to change. When companies fail, there is a new CEO, new board, new executives. Let's do the same with failed police departments.

    There is 0% chance that all police departments will all change in 2020. I'm happy to voice my support that some cities are willing to try new things. If it works great. If not, back to the drawing board.

    5. wolco ◴[16 Jun 20 23:44 UTC] No.23545751[source]▶
    Defunding would move those roles from public jobs to private jobs.

    In the end the only the rich would have protection. Probably not the best path. For an example see the private police in London. They answer to no one.

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    6. manfredo ◴[16 Jun 20 23:54 UTC] No.23545841[source]▶
    > The idea of "dismantling of police" does not mean we do not offer protection.

    Who offers the protection? Ultimately the are going to be people tasked with stopping criminal behavior, with force if said criminals resist. This isn't a dismantling of the police it's a rebranding.

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    7. bsanr2 ◴[16 Jun 20 23:58 UTC] No.23545886[source]▶
    Perhaps if the funding is used on alleviating the sources of petty crime - poverty, mental illness or social disaffection, joblessness or purposelessness or apathy - the only people who would need protection would be the rich. And you can fine them out of their wealth if they transgress.
    8. free_rms ◴[17 Jun 20 00:13 UTC] No.23546028[source]▶
    Camden NJ rebuilt their police department overnight a few years back. Cancelled the union contract, fired everyone and started over. Rehired some of the same cops I believe as part of the new structure.

    Murders are down 50% from then, it's still not a nice town or anything but it's not the worst town in America anymore.

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    9. DenisM ◴[17 Jun 20 00:19 UTC] No.23546080[source]▶
    > the current organization "police" is not providing the services it's customers want

    Is that really true? What do you think will happen if we put it up for a vote? Something like: defund police - yes/no?

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    10. manfredo ◴[17 Jun 20 00:21 UTC] No.23546101{3}[source]▶
    The police department wasn't dismantled. Camden's police department very much still exists: https://camdencountypd.org/

    Restaffing he police is a vastly different measure than dismantling the police or abolishing the police, which is what many activists are pushing for.

    Furthemore, the idea that this was an instance of dismantling the police to reduce police abuses doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny [1]:

    > With the city under duress, over the objection of Camden community members, local officials partnered with Christie to enact a plan to disband the city’s police force and replace it with a regional county force. The goal was to dissolve the local police union, which would allow for a cheaper force that would enable more policing, not less.

    > The new force embraced broken windows policing. In the first year of the new force, summonses for disorderly conduct shot up 43 percent. Summonses for not maintaining lights or reflectors on vehicles spiked 421 percent. Summonses for tinted car windows similarly increased 381 percent. And farcically, summonses for riding a bicycle without a bell or a light rose from three to 339. It was straight out of the Giuliani handbook.

    > Unsurprisingly, these moves provoked tensions between the community and the police producing a parallel rise in excessive-force complaints. These tensions were still bubbling in 2014 when a particularly harsh and disturbing arrest was caught on video with officers using violent techniques similar to the ones that killed George Floyd in Wisconsin. When pressed about the incident, Camden County Public Affairs Director Dan Keashen said that an investigation showed it to be “a good arrest.”

    1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/16/camden-nj-...

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    11. free_rms ◴[17 Jun 20 00:34 UTC] No.23546224{4}[source]▶
    I was just saying that there are reasonable ideas under the "defund" umbrella.

    When several city depts don't seem to feel like they have to take orders from elected government, drastic measures start looking more reasonable.

    12. fzeroracer ◴[17 Jun 20 00:38 UTC] No.23546249[source]▶
    With what, exactly? You can pass more laws, but laws don't matter if the police don't obey them anyways. You can enforce things like bodycams, but then the police cover up the cams or conveniently turn them off.

    At what point will you be convinced that you need to start over? Because removing corruption is like removing an invasive species: you don't solve it by taking a half-assed attempt with trimming and call it a day.

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    13. jacobush ◴[17 Jun 20 01:26 UTC] No.23546635[source]▶
    I don't understand how you make the conclusion that the money must go to private jobs? Can't the municipality reallocate the funds and spend it elsewhere in the public sector?
    14. Larrikin ◴[17 Jun 20 01:38 UTC] No.23546728[source]▶
    The people who have faced the discrimination, know people affected by it, or have educated themselves about the discrimination will vote yes and the people who have not faced the discrimination and want to believe its mostly made up because they have never been personally effected by it will vote no.

    20 years ago its easy to see how the vote would have ended up, but now with tons of cell phone footage and large scale protests its interesting to see which side people will land on now.

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    15. ntsplnkv2 ◴[17 Jun 20 01:59 UTC] No.23546875[source]▶
    It can be fixed, but will it under the existing paradigm?
    16. DenisM ◴[17 Jun 20 02:07 UTC] No.23546924{3}[source]▶
    > people who have not faced the discrimination and want to believe its mostly made up because they have never been personally effected by it will vote no

    So, you think that only people who do not believe in discrimination will vote "no"?

    17. commoner ◴[17 Jun 20 03:07 UTC] No.23547295[source]▶
    > In a poll conducted by ABC News/Ipsos on June 10-11, 34% of US adults supported "the movement to 'defund the police'" and 64% opposed it. Support was higher among black Americans (57%) than among whites (26%) and Hispanics (42%).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police#Public_opini...

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/64-americans-oppose-defund-p...

    18. malandrew ◴[17 Jun 20 08:03 UTC] No.23548990[source]▶
    Only someone that has never lived in other countries with serious crime problems could claim that the police here are not providing a service people want.

    Almost no one lives in fear of organized crime like the mafia in Italy, PCC, Comando Vermelho or Terceiro Comando in Brazil, the FARC in Colombia, the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, etc. this list is very very long.

    Americans life very safe lives with relatively low crime and this is largely the result of very effective law enforcement. Is it perfect? No. But to claim it isn’t providing a service people want is pure ignorance.

    Law enforcement in the US is so effective at stopping crimes that we aren’t even aware of the value they provide.

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    19. churchillracist ◴[17 Jun 20 10:14 UTC] No.23549755[source]▶
    > Law enforcement in the US is so effective at stopping crimes that we aren’t even aware of the value they provide.

    Any concrete evidence of this? How was that conclusion derived?

    20. raxxorrax ◴[17 Jun 20 10:34 UTC] No.23549858{3}[source]▶
    People who faced discrimination often like the police and stability instead of mob justice. Since there is a problem with racial profiling there might be some skewed results.

    Many parents of black children tell them to be wary of police. Police sees more crime in these areas and we have a self reinforcing problem of distrust. Additionally there are clueless white people talking about being their personal savior.

    21. pbhjpbhj ◴[17 Jun 20 12:43 UTC] No.23550689{3}[source]▶
    The ruling elite don't obey the laws either, USA have let the President flout the law on the international stage; if "so long as you can subvert the 'courts' it's fine" goes for the President then how are you ever going to have a strong Rule of Law?