As the article says in the second paragraph, the employees that they spoke to left in 2018 and 2019, so this response is irrelevant. I personally find it reprehensible and deliberately lacking context as well but you are entitled to your opinion.
The blog post about leaving politics at the door was in response to the death of Floyd and some employees upset about their perceived "silence" of upper management, where more woke companies did speak up. So it's relevant and provides context to that policy of focusing on company mission, instead of making statements about racial inequality, police brutality, and unfair societies.
You are entitled to political thoughts. If you can handle it, you are even allowed to share them with colleagues. But don't get upset if others have different political thoughts. And certainly not get upset enough to accuse them of racism.
It's very odd how people who openly express deeply-racist sentiments (as your previous comment repeating lies about George Floyd does) get so offended when accused of being racist.
> Floyd was a career criminal unworthy of sainthood or role modeling.
Floyd was arrested for a home invasion, where a 1-year-old baby was present, and he threatened a woman to tell her where the money and drugs was hidden, by pressing a gun to her stomach. After that he was arrested and processed 8 times for crimes related to drugs and theft. The day of his arrest he tried to pay with a counterfeit bill. After his death, Floyd was witlessly treated as some martyr, killed at the hands of racist violent police, and portrayed as a role model for all black people and the struggles they go through, just trying to turn his life around.
> dying from a self-inflicted fentanyl overdose
Handwritten notes of a law enforcement interview with Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, say Floyd had 11 ng/mL of fentanyl in his system.
"If he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD. Deaths have been certified with levels of 3," Baker told investigators.
Offended that you brand me with racism for telling you an unpleasant truthful interpretation? No, I think me and my wife can live with that. But a little scared, yes. You can accuse me and others of deeply-racist sentiment, and that accusation seems enough to financially and socially damage me. At least give me a "fair" trial: Show me where I lied. Or these racist accusations hold as much water as those in the Coinbase article, and are exposed for the bloody clubs they really are.
> As evidence, it cites comments from Andrew Baker, the chief medical examiner in Hennepin County, who performed an autopsy on Floyd. But Baker didn’t say that Floyd died of a drug overdose.
> The medical examiner’s office ruled that the manner of Floyd’s death was homicide.
> The cause of death, according to the medical examiner, was "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression."
You realize that his murder was caught on video right? Tens of millions of people saw it. And for the crime of trying to pass a counterfeit bill at a convenience store. If you've ever exceeded the speeding limit while driving, you have performed an act which posed more of a threat to society and danger to others than the act of passing a counterfeit bill.
"The Hennepin County medical examiner said that Floyd bloodwork showed a “fatal level of fentanyl,” according to court documents, but he didn’t say this killed him."
Seems a bit pedantic and disingenuous to say that the examiner didn't attribute the death to an overdose, without providing the above context.
I'm not here to defend the knee-on-the-neck arrest of a handcuffed suspect, but the evidence as it stands holds it as a possibility that he died from the drug use, which still wouldn't justify the completely reckless/inhumane way in which he was restrained.
Actually I think what the other poster did is disingenuous, which was to repeat a (false) claim that Floyd died from an OD, and not mention the fact that the medical examiner conclusively ruled he died from a heart attack caused by suffocation, and ruled the manner of death a homicide.
He was dying from an OD, brutishly helped along by a poorly applied restraint move, held too long, because filming onlookers challenged the authority of the cop, and the cop was afraid to have to fight Big Floyd, before the ambulance arrived.
Anything to avoid admitting that a cop killed a black man in cold blood by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes, even after he said "I can't breathe" repeatedly.
> because filming onlookers challenged the authority of the cop, and the cop was afraid to have to fight Big Floyd.
Are you suggesting that cops are such snowflakes that they can't do their jobs if a civilian criticizes them? I'm struggling to think of any other customer-facing job where that would be acceptable. This is like suggesting that it's fine if a waiter throws your meal in the trash and refuses to comp you because you complained that it was taking too long. They would be fired on the spot, for the crime of slightly inconveniencing you!
Also, there were FOUR cops there. Are you trying to suggest that an experienced cop, with three other cops present, was afraid of one guy who was supposedly so incapacitated that he was actively dying before even being subdued?
> Anything to avoid admitting that a cop killed a black man in cold blood by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes, even after he said "I can't breathe" repeatedly.
This shows how you view me. You judged me as a racism denialist, for having an opposing interpretation. It is like I won't accept the Truth of your rendition of that scene, but maybe evil enough to be aware of it.
It would be absolutely horrible if a cop killed a civilian by maliciously kneeling on his neck arteries! That the cop did it, mainly because the civilian was Black and he was white! You sound like you want that horrible reality to be the truth! You already spray-painted his face on a banner with political talking points! Maybe you even got your company Twitter to pay their respects to Floyd.
> even after he said "I can't breathe" repeatedly
He was saying that when he got out of the car. He was under enormous stress from the arrest and prospect of possible jail, with a drug that already increases heart rate. The single cop had to restrain, because ambulance (not arrest car) was called, after it was clear from the "I can't breathe" that he needed medical attention for OD. The other cops did crowd control, because the frantic yelling of Floyd attracted attention. "Hey, man, let him go, he is just saying he can't breathe". Like Philando Castile, that single video footage then went viral, and the cop acquitted on ALL charges, after companies such as Google send out PR condemning police brutality and systemic racism, because capitalism is a tool which employees can play as well (ideally, aligned with -- not damaging -- the company mission!), and now we are here, with you suggesting I think cops are snowflakes.
Give me a court case, a light symbolic punishment to avoid a second protest/riot, while allowing for the possibility that racism exists, and did not play even a minor role in the case of the death of Floyd. That cop looked like a nonchalant fool enough to mess this up. Not foolish enough to kill a black man out of racist motives, while your Asian and Hispanic colleagues are keeping Social Media away from reality.
>>Anything to avoid admitting that a cop killed a black man
Way to stoke a flame war.. At the risk of exacerbating it: anything to bring up Floyd being black, while identical deaths involving people of other racial backgrounds, like in the case of Floyd, Tony Timpa, are never attributed to racism.
Also, way to implicitly accuse him of being a racist for not agreeing with you on the motives and culpability of the police.
Maybe it is the prevalence of this knee-jerk assumption you're exhibiting now, where you attribute any wrong committed to a black individual to some endemic anti-black societal bias, and not Coinbase's workplace environment, that is the reason why so many employees interviewed by Coinbase accused the company of anti-black racism, without
a single definitive piece of evidence.
>>Are you suggesting that cops are such snowflakes that they can't do their jobs if a civilian criticizes them? I'm struggling to think of any other customer-facing job where that would be acceptable.
Would you agree or disagree with the statement that "accusing cops of intentional cold-blooded racist-motivated murder on the basis of his and his victim's skin color, without presumption of innocence, sourced from emotion, and with mob justice, is a major problem in American society"?
See how you can disagree or agree with my question, while your goal-post moving question can only be agreed to if you are a reasonable person? Just because racist-motivated murderers exist and are problematic, does not mean Floyd was murdered with racist motives.
You demand I defend the cop's actions, just for my interpretation of the case does not align with your interpretation. You call me a racist and a liar. You can't even direct quote me, so you put words in my mouth, and then call me disingenuous (I never said "died from an OD"). You are debating from very bad faith, and debating poorly at that. And I don't think you even realize that, nor the damage it does to the debate, working together to a solution, division, and growth of the "silent majority", who is starting to get fed up with this childish I-never-fell-off-a-skateboard Twitter-follower activism.
> You are debating from very bad faith, and debating poorly at that
You're clearly not trying to "debate" out of a neutral position. You are tossing out a mix of unrelated facts and lies in an attempt to prove that George Floyd's murder was not racially motivated, or that he was actually dying from a fentanyl OD so the cop's behavior would have been fine for a healthy person, or not even to prove anything but to paint him as a career criminal who deserved what he got to bias people against him.
Short of a written declaration from Derek Chauvin, stating that "I killed George Floyd because he was black and I was having a bad day", there is nothing that will make you admit this murder was racially motivated, and I think it's pretty obvious to most readers of this thread why that is.
>>You're clearly not trying to "debate" out of a neutral position.
I recommend you practice some introspection, because this statement is so out-of-touch with your own obvious bias and ideological perspective, that it makes discussion with you almost pointless.
>>in an attempt to prove that George Floyd's murder was not racially motivated
There is absolutely no proof Floyd's murder was racially motivated.
Please don't flame me. I could just easily flame you and I'm not.
I substantiate this very easily: affirmative action means preferential treatment for job applicants who are black, and affirmative action is very common.
> Please don't flame me. I could just easily flame you and I'm not.
Your first claim so blatantly false and wrong that it's pretty appropriate to assume that you're trolling. I mean, systemic/institutional racism doesn't exist and/or isn't a problem in the US, what?
> I substantiate this very easily: affirmative action means preferential treatment for job applicants who are black, and affirmative action is very common.
So on the one hand you deny that it exists towards black Americans, but you find affirmative action to be so significant that it however substantiate systemic racism in favour of black Americans?
Am I correct you assume that you've honed in on the word systemic and will only accept that it solely means whatever is explicitly written down? So that systemic/institutional racism does not include implicit bias?
>>Your first claim so blatantly false and wrong that it's pretty appropriate to assume that you're trolling.
You do realize that I think exactly the same about you, right? To assume that your perspective is so superior, that it gives you a right to ignore civil protocol, is incredibly arrogant.
>>I mean, systemic/institutional racism doesn't exist and/or isn't a problem in the US, what?
You're not providing a counter-argument. Your incredulity at my statement of fact doesn't give your absurd allegation of systemic racism any more credibility.
>you find affirmative action to be so significant that it however substantiate systemic racism in favour of black Americans?
Affirmative action is a form of systemic racism, in that it's racism that institutionized, meaning part of the formal structure of organizations, and accepted by the social contract.
>So that systemic/institutional racism does not include implicit bias?
The formal structure of institutions, as defined by their formal usually written rules, is the best description of their systemic/institutional properties. Only laws and other formal structures can have a systemic effect, and anything institutional by definition consists solely of them.
One can stretch the definition of systemic/institutional a bit to also include the social contract.
In neither case can one claim there is anything except systemic/institutional racism in favor of black Americans.
Implicit bias is not a systemic property, as it varies between individuals. There is also significant implicit bias in favor of black Americans.
This study shows police are 25 times more likely to shoot an unarmed white male than an unarmed black male:
> You do realize that I think exactly the same about you, right? To assume that your perspective is so superior, that it gives you a right to ignore civil protocol, is incredibly arrogant.
I'm curious to know about what year you think, approximately, that systemic racism against black Americans ceased?
That you find me uncivil doesn't really bother me.
> "The formal structure of institutions, as defined by their formal usually written rules, is the best description of their systemic/institutional properties. Only laws and other formal structures can have a systemic effect, and anything institutional by definition consists solely of them.
One can stretch the definition of systemic/institutional a bit to also include the social contract.
In neither case can one claim there is anything except systemic/institutional racism in favor of black Americans."
As I thought. You have just decided to entirely redefine the accepted definition of systemic/institutional racism so suit your argument. "But it doesn't say anything about race in this formal document!". Ignoring anything - apparently no matter how established and prevalent - that goes against your arguments is the fallacy of cherry-picking.
The definition at the outset of the article is accurate, and consistent with what I said:
>>Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organization.
Anything "embedded as normal practice" is either part of the formal rules of the organization, or its informal social contract, just as I described.
Much of the rest of the article doesn't describe anything systemic or institutional, or it doesn't describe racism, so yes it's blatantly inaccurate. Wikipedia is articles that any one can edit, and when there is such an extreme ideological bias in the Humanities and Social Sciences, there is always the risk that the articles begin to reflect ideological conceptions of these terms, that don't match the words that the terms contain, like "institutional" and "racism".
>>I'm curious to know about what year you think, approximately, that systemic racism against black Americans ceased?
I think the end of Jim Crow laws was the end of most institutional racism, with some remnants of it existing in the social contract that was quickly dismantled in the 1970s, as society took a severe stance against anti-black discrimination.
But now we have institutional sexism and racism in favor of groups that are deemed to be disadvantaged, like women and black Americans.
>>You have just decided to entirely redefine the accepted definition of systemic/institutional racism so suit your argument.
Accepted by who? I don't accept the socialists' definition of "slavery" or "expropriation of surplus value", to include workers earning a wage, and investors earning a profit, respectively, either.
Alright, so you've redefined the entire concept into something else and then went about dismissing the established concept entirely. Because that is, unlike your objective science, based on "extremely ideologically biased humanities and social sciences". Good for you.
> I think the end of Jim Crow laws was the end of most institutional racism, with some remnants of it existing in the social contract that was quickly dismantled in the 1970s, as society took a severe stance against anti-black discrimination.
This is just staring oneself blind on the letter of law, ignoring everything else. That's not how societies work.
It's pointless to discuss subjects with someone who will just redefine them entirely and then refuse to even recognize anything else - everything else is now false, no matter how established. If this is not trolling it's at least dragging the level of discussion into never ending discussion of definitions and revisionism.
I'm referring to the terms "institutional" and "racism", when put together. If an ideological camp wants to put the terms together, and refer to a class of properties that are not both institutional and racism, I have no obligation to accept their arbitrary redefinition of the terms, and I can point out that the term is extremely misleading, like the "wage slavery" used by Marxists.
>>This is just staring oneself blind on the letter of law, ignoring everything else. That's not how societies work.
This is just ignoring what the terms "institutional" and "racism" mean, to push a grievance ideology narrative that castigates society.
I'm commenting on "institutional racism", not racism in general. Institutional racism is "racism that is embedded as normal practice within society", which only occurs through the mechanism of systemic properties like its laws or rules, or its social contract, just as I explained.
>>It's pointless to discuss subjects with someone who will just redefine them entirely and then refuse to even recognize anything else
You're the one redefining "institutional" and "racism", and resorting to ad hominem when any one points out the pure absurdity of your narrative.
> Institutional racism is "racism that is embedded as normal practice within society", which only occurs through the mechanism of systemic properties like its laws or rules, or its social contract, just as I explained.
Come on. You've cherry-picked a single vague line from the preamble of that article because it's so general that it also fits your narrow definition. The rest of the article goes on about the established definition.
You're redefining an entire concept coined to mean what we are talking about. Instead your clutching at straws adamantly sticking to the textboox definitions of the each word. That's just childish and have to place in any adult conversation.
Just in the last week you've redefined the following to fit your unsupported narrative here on HN and called everything else objectively false and refused to even discuss the other definition:
* Institutional/System racism, ignoring ~50 years of history (for the term itself, the practice itself is obviously much earlier).
* Soclal Democracy, ignoring ~200 years of history
* The concept of personal property and it's distinction from private property. Ignoring ~200 years of socialist history.
You do realize that you don't have to agree with the concept to at least discuss it? Something like "Yes, if we use established definition, which I disagree with, there's systemic/institutional racism against black people in America".
Because what definition do you even think people are using when asking you if it exists? "Do you like the color blue?", "No! there's no blue color". That's just childish and will never generate any constructive discussion at all, and is for all purposes just trolling or at least sabotage - answering a question that contains an established concept/definition with an entirely new one that only you know about.
