How is this apropos to my comment? I didn't say anyone was. The only way I can see how this might fit as a reply to my comment would be the implication that it's okay to throw accusations around, and accepting accusations as automatically true, just because the accusation is not of a crime. That's exactly what we shouldn't do. That's my point and I for one am not gonna start doing such anytime soon, and I also try to keep contact with people who do that at a minimum.
For that matter, I would love if you elaborated on how an accusation must surely mean that a wrongdoing actually happened instead of replying with uncharitable interpretations of my comments.
Innocent until proven guilty is a standard used by law which places a very high burden on the accuser. Such a standard is in place because the consequences are both formal and very significant.
Such a burden is also unreasonable in many informal situations, as being required to establish formal and indisputable evidence of wrongdoing would prevent many people from being able to speak out about wrongdoings (especially lesser wrongdoings) within their community.
Coinbase here had 3 formal racism complaints filed internally and Coinbase is stating in their article that they found that all of these claims were incorrect and baseless. To which I say... really? Even model citizen companies are able to trace down elements of racism within their organization when they look hard enough, because racism is a natural bias cooked into many of us, and overcoming that bias requires proactive effort.
You are asking me to give you charitable interpretations, while at the same time refusing to give charitable interpretations to the folks lodging the racism complaints.
No company is perfect, and especially over 1,000 employees I don't think it's unreasonable to have issues within certain parts of the org. But after those issues surface, it seems problematic to me that you would try and assert that actually everything is just fine. Especially in an industry that is overwhelmingly white and male.
> Such a burden [innocent until proven guilty] is also unreasonable in many informal situations, as being required to establish formal and indisputable evidence of wrongdoing
Not automatically thinking that an accused is guilty is... Unreasonable.
I honestly have to ask if I'm reading that correctly because I'm really hoping I am.
> Even model citizen companies are able to trace down elements of racism within their organization when they look hard enough
Interesting, some people say this a lot, and also say the analogous regarding sexism. Yet when Google (a company that basically has "be evil" now as its unofficial slogan) actually "looked hard enough", they found they were actually paying women more than men.
So allow me to doubt this claim you're making.
> racism is a natural bias cooked into many of us
No, no it's not. Not only it is the naturalist fallacy (and without any solid evidence, unusual for this one), it's fundamentally cynical. People are not "naturally" bigots in any way, and even if the argument were for nurture (or "social conditioning", if you prefer), this claim would still be extremely suspect.
> while at the same time refusing to give charitable interpretations to the folks lodging the racism complaints.
I'm being charitable to both accusers and accused; there's no reason not to be, specially in this case where the complaints were investigated and found to be unfounded. You seem to prefer to be entirely on one side, and not only for this particular example; your original comment was far broader.
> it seems problematic to me that you would try and assert that actually everything is just fine [emphasis mine]
Is that what I said? Well, that you would twist my words this much in order to find them "problematic"—and that you would find such a claim "problematic" in this case—does explain why you think the existence of a complain surely means that a wrongdoing happened. Thanks for clearing that up.
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