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

(www.bloomberg.com)
677 points saeedjabbar | 4 comments | 16 Jun 20 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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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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1. manfredo ◴[16 Jun 20 23:54 UTC] No.23545841{3}[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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2. 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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3. manfredo ◴[17 Jun 20 00:21 UTC] No.23546101[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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4. free_rms ◴[17 Jun 20 00:34 UTC] No.23546224{3}[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.