did i miss something? none of her comments in the posted link were racist.

I couldn't find anything either. I guess promoting diversity is supposedly racist?

I'd say the comments where she talks about a potential supplier that was all white men and only had women / POC "several levels down" - specifically that she would "talk to them" about it afterwards, could be perceived as such, particularly if you are into sensationalism and alarmism.

John Scalzi nails it:

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

I think articles that cherry-pick twitter comments lose a lot of credibility.

So you don't think those twitter comments represent the backlash against Sam's Club? Or that they are statistically insignificant compared to positive comments?

I personally don't know the amount of positive and negative comments they are receiving via social media, but the article seems to make it seem like it is a lot. Enough to garner 766+ comments on the WashPo article itself, anyway. Interestingly, there's a pretty strong divide in there, too.

I just think you can cherry pick any type of comment you want from twitter. Twitter is a good way to illustrated complaints or comments, but the people that use twitter, or even it's ease of astroturfing make it suspect.

I mean I have a kegorator that tweets messages.

I think twitter can give you breaking news and insight, but it's a questionable tool what gauging public opinion.

True, it is a questionable tool. I think what's tough to know is whether twitter and comment sections really gauge public opinion, or just the opinion of the loudest, or most crass.

Most people I know off the internet don't personally tweet or post stuff online outside of facebook pictures and the very occasional article there.

Who are these crazy maniacs posting on twitter and Sensible Endowment?

Tell me more about this kegerator...

double post

This is just one of those problems with no good solution. If you have a team selected in a reasonable, merit based manner that happens to be all old, white men, what do you do? Structural racism doesn't require any individual racist choices.

Any choice you make will cause one group or another to suffer, and some of it's members to suffer personally. Either you let the situation slowly resolve itself over generations, letting the structural racism slowly crumble, or you let sex or one's skin colour to be a factor.

Income security is much lower on the hierarchy of needs than structural racism, especially if it doesn't target you. This is always how the powerful have resisted redistribution; they frame it in a way that harms a wide swath of the powerless, so they'll help fight it.

White guys getting butthurt because they feel like they're losing their power over? Oh okay

Nothing more pathetic than a butthurt white guy.

Oh for fucks sake.
There's a word for white people who feel they are somehow victims of racial discrimination: whiny.

last time i checked, discriminating against anyone based on skin color is racism.

Last time I checked, white males were still the most entitled, privileged group in our society and had yet to experience anything like actual racial discrimination. Pointing out the entitlement and privilege does not count as racism.

You have a very narrow view of our society. Executive meeting at a major American multi-national might include men who are 1st generation white males from Ireland who experience discrimination for being Catholic or Protestant; white males from any one of the former Eastern bloc countries discriminated against for their desires for various forms of free thought; gay white men; or any one of a thousand other situations. These are cases of individuals being discriminated against in the name of a more diverse work environment. Not every white guy is a frat boy. Last time I checked it wasn't a privilege or an entitlement to not be discriminated against because of the color of your skin.

Moreover, while your bashing the entitled white guy, it's corporate leadership that is driving diversity, the old white guys are the ones that set the policy rolling years ago. Why? Because they couldn't afford to overlook the talent pool and continue to compete. Greed works for everybody.

OK, the gay thing aside (we are talking about racial discrimination after all), you really think such superficial differences as being Irish Catholic or Eastern European make any difference in the contemporary corporate environment? I gotta say, I find your 19th Century notions of ethnic discrimination oddly quaint and charming.

as a white male the only entitlement of privilege i have noticed is generally being treated better by racists and sexists than they treat black people or women.

but then these assholes treat you poorly once they realize you are against racism or sexism.

You don't have to notice it. You're far more likely to get a callback on a resume if you use the name John than you are for Jamal.

Something to think about- if that racist happens to be say, a police officer or the company HR guy then that privilege goes a long way. In some cases it's life or death.

so what you are saying is that i am not safe around racist black cops?

Yeah. It's all about you.

I'm kind of amazed that the whole "Corporate Mindset" didn't kick in, preventing her from saying anything negative about the company she was running.

She was talking about a potential, and unnamed, supplier.

Sigh.

Why are the feelings of right wing trolls news?

Why are anybody's feelings news?

Are there no wars? No scandals or murders or...you know...actual events to report on?

Because they have on effect on society? My worry is that they have far more power than people would like to admit.

I think Fox News fits the definition of right wing trolls, but now they are a juggernaut that effectively controls much of the United States. If they want to talk about wars or feelings, either way they are changing culture via power and money.

And then you have all the people who listen and watch this kind of stuff.

I think that 20 or 30 or 500 assholes on Twitter(aptly named product, that) ONLY have an effect on society BECAUSE someone at the Washington Post decides it's news, and if not for that story, these particular assholes would have had no effect on anything except their own little pud-pounding community.

Right, but then you'll hear shock jockeys, Fox News, other news stations, etc, start to pick these kinds of things up and legitimize/publicize them to far more thousands or millions of people before WashPo even talks about it anyway. They are aggressive in their messaging.

You might say that's the medias fault, which is fair, but you also have to wonder two things:

1) It's something the media portrays because there are actually so many people who group together to protest these things and therefore are a legitimate part of society (and perhaps its not just 20, 30, or 500 assholes but a lot more - ever see a Trump rally?).

2) Whether these people constitute real power to have an effect on culture even when they're not being reported on, but just left to their own devices on Twitter, social media at large, and, well, society at large.

More importantly, I had to look up "pud-pounding." Thank you for adding that to my lexicon.