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Comment by throw14082020 | Hacker News Reader

throw14082020

I spent a lot of time reading about this... TLDR: Basecamp had a list of funny names which originated a long time ago. You can imagine that certain ethnicities have names which sound funnier than a common name, so these names go on the list. Some people think its racist, others don't. These people who don't think its racist still admit its rude/ unprofessional though, just not racist.

Anyway, there was too much political arguing going on in the company, and the founders offered people they can get paid a few months salary to leave, and some people are taking them up on this offer. "About one-third".

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FWIW, DHH stated that only a handful of names were Asian. The vast majority of names on the list were English or Nordic. :|

I don't see why the percentage is super significant. If the reason they are on the list had to do with their ethnicity, it's still bad and something that should absolutely be addressed.

Like 90% of the runtime of old racist Disney movies are fine and don't contain racial stereotypes, but that doesn't absolve the remaining 10% in any way, and if the movie was twice as long, the 5% of remaining insensitive content wouldn't be more justified.

From the outside it sounds like the "racist name list" is a bunch of ethnic group one laughing at ethic group two where in practice its actually ethnic group one laughing at other ethnic group one people. I feel like that perspective paints a slightly different picture. This means the percentage is of some import.

So they have an asshole list of "funny" names. When they get caught they argue that most of the people they are racists towards are white, So it's fine? White people can definitely be racist towards other white people, you can easily find examples of that in Europe, so that is definitely a thing. As an ethnic Norwegian, I'm not impressed over doing the list in it self, and then doubling down on the racism towards us by pretending it isn't. That makes it way worse.

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