Here’s my attempt to explain the situation in a brief way. DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, wrote some things which are considered racist by some people. This caused a prominent Ruby programmer to withdraw his large sponsorship of Ruby Central, a non-profit which organises Ruby conferences, because DHH spoke at one of their conferences. Therefore Ruby Central ended up very dependent on Shopify, a large company, for funding. One theory (mentioned in the article) is that Shopify (where DHH is a board member) then pressured Ruby Central to perform a “hostile takeover” of the RubyGems GitHub organisation, where they revoked the maintainer privileges of long-time contributors. What is RubyGems? It’s a website which is the de facto standard source for “gems”, which are Ruby packages. I guess this is equivalent to NPM in the Node/JavaScript world.
If you want to know the potentially racist stuff said by DHH, he essentially seemed to be unhappy that London is “no longer full of native Brits”. He says “native Brits” now make up “about a third” of London. So by “native Brits” he seems to mean the White British ethnic group, because they made up 37% of London in the 2021 census.
The Ruby programmer who withdrew his sponsorship of Ruby Central (allegedly worth $250,000 according to the article) said this: “I rescinded a six-figure grant because the org invited DHH, a white supremacist, to speak. We cannot tolerate hateful people as leaders in our communities.”
The “hostile takeover” of RubyGems has led some Ruby programmers to create an alternative to the RubyGems website. This alternative is gem.coop. Also there is an open letter signed by influential Ruby programmers which calls for Ruby on Rails to be forked so that DHH no longer has an association with it.
The article that this post links to is an update to the situation: Ruby Central is now taking steps to try and cool the controversy.
Thoughts on this?
Edit: fixed typo.
Is it okay for DHH to express his unhappiness that London is no longer mostly White British? He said “I thought I might move there one day… Now, I wouldn’t dream of it. London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it’s no longer full of native Brits.”
Let’s say a lot of white people move to a previously black area. This causes a prominent person to write a blog saying “I thought I might move there one day… Now, I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s no longer the place I was infatuated with. Chiefly because it’s no longer full of black residents.” That would be racist wouldn’t it?
No. Dude is a racist baby. It’s also the transphobia and support for open fascists.
Let’s not say that reverse racism is a real thing, because that’s an imaginary racist trope.
My view is that racism can happen to any ethnicity: black, brown, white, anybody. It depends on the situation. If a business run entirely by white people disallows entry to a black person because they’re black, that’s racist, but if the races were reversed (a business run entirely by black people disallows entry to a white person because they’re white), I’d say that’s also racist. In fact if I end up talking to a white person about racism I might deliberately give them an example of a situation where a white person could experience racial discrimination, because that might make them think “fair point, I would dislike it if someone was racist to me, so maybe racism is a bad thing”.
I’m not sure it’s worth engaging with the kind of person who uses SJW as a pejorative.
I’m just interested to see what the other side of the argument might be. Sometimes you might very strongly disagree with other people’s views, or even be disgusted by those views, but you might still want to find out what those views are.
Sure, but if they’re using SJW as a pejorative, you already know what their (disgusting) views are. I have yet to meet one of these people who didn’t fall into a rather specific shitty box when it comes to certain viewpoints.
Especially nowadays, long after “SJW” stopped being commonly used. If they’re still holding on to a 2016 anti-SJW “everyone’s so offended!!” mentality, they’re probably not worth engaging with. Just shows they never matured past that point.
Sure, just know that this feedback is coming from people who have probably walked the same path and are trying to save you some pain. Best of luck, but I have found people like that are not engaging in good faith.
Why do you assume that a Danish person talking about “native Brits” means “white”?
Firstly because when he says London is “no longer full of native Brits” he links to a Wikipedia page about ethnic groups in London. So he seems to be talking about ethnicity. Secondly, he says that these “native Brits” are now “about a third” of London. Looking at the Wikipedia page he linked to, the stats show that white Brits were 37% of London according to the 2021 census, which is about a third. It seems to me that’s probably what he’s talking about.
If “native Brits” just meant people born in the UK, or people with a British passport, then those figures are higher: 59% and 77% of London respectively (that page says that “In 2021, more than 4 in 10 (40.6%) usual residents in London were non-UK born, and more than 1 in 5 (23.3%) had a non-UK passport”).
When you start quoting “stats” about “white brits”, you’re only taking your mask off.
Yes, it is ok. Different people have different tastes in cultural, social, etc neighborhoods. This guy prefers classical British culture. See no wrong here.
He doesn’t seem to be talking about culture. He didn’t say something like “London has fewer pubs than it used to”. Instead he seems to be referring specifically to ethnicity. His interest in London seems to be reduced because more non-white people now live in London.
^ mental gymnastics olympian trying to defend overt racism with word salad.
Ethnicity is linked to culture in a very straightforward and obvious way. You’re just making drama here.
…says the racist troll making as much drama as they can manage.
The King of England is ethnicly German.
Ethnicity and culture are different. A person can choose to adopt whatever culture they want regardless of their ethnicity. Also if you said something like “I don’t want that particular ethnicity to move to my neighbourhood due to their culture” then I think that’s probably racist. I think it’s fine to object to certain cultural aspects as long as you don’t tie it to ethnicity though. E.g. if you said “I object to a cultural practice of treating women worse than men” then I think that’s okay.
Correct. And now the question: how can someone detect ethnicity without obvious cultural nuances? Obviously, that guy is talking about people who practice alien and unpleasant cultural practices. And don’t care about local culture. Some immigrants accommodate plus share some interesting culture approaches. Others – completely disregard local culture and behave like they are still at home.
Go to ignore. I’m sick of explaining to every kid around what the difference is between nazism/racism/chauvinism/stereotypes and common sense.
Hmm, maybe you should try understanding those concepts first before you share with everyone that you are in fact a racist. Some food for thought.
Seems like you’re not doing a good job of it, but you also don’t have a good take on those meanings based on your comments, so that’s to be expected.
Sounds like they are just tired of being correctly called out for their “common sense” just being racism.
I think DHH is talking about ethnicity specifically though, not culture. He said London is “no longer full of native Brits”, and he describes “native Brits” as now forming “about a third” of London. White Brits were 37% of London at the 2021 census, so I think that’s what he’s talking about.
It’s possible to express disagreement with a cultural practice without making it about ethnicity. E.g. someone might object to men and women being separated for religious prayer. They might believe that men and women should pray together. It’s possible to make that point without making it about ethnicity.
I am sure everyone was just waiting for you to explain those differences 👍
Damn man, you are really bending over backward to defend this guy… do you owe him money or something?
Classical British culture? London in the 90s?
Lol