Not in itself. I'll even sometimes step up myself and at some point managed to get my boss to hire the girl who cleaned our offices since she was qualified only hadn't been considered since she was Polish.
The insistence on punishment (firing, public shaming) for minor offences (wrongthink) withouth due process is worrying though.
I'm going to push back on the critique of shaming. It's literally the only consequence groups without any (economic/political) power have. It bears no force of law. It creates no consequence directly except for a little discomfort on the part of the recipient.
Tell historically disadvantaged communities--the ones with decades or centuries of societal biases working against them--they can't shame people they think are behaving shamefully, and what do you leave them with?
The critique of shaming just seems like another way to prop up a status quo that isn't a very good one for a lot of people.
Shaming by some groups is a badge of honor: If I'm hated by a certain unpopular political group, that's a real point in my favor in some regions. It's credibility you can't buy. And it doesn't matter if the group which hates me is powerful, as long as they're hated in turn by the people I want credibility with.
The only way shaming hurts me is if the group doing the shaming is powerful among people I care about. Thus shaming is an expression of power, and a use of social force which must come from groups which have power.
Why are you not dealing with the response? The very fact that this story got flagged to page two after 5 hours, with 600+ points and only 300+ comments, kind of shows what's going on.
HN has a terrible bias towards white dudes and now that it's their privilege that's being questioned - as opposed to that of blur collar workers, conservatives, hillbillies etc - they are in full panic mode. Can't even discuss or take in another POV - just downvote.
