The Ruby community doesn’t have a DHH problem

This is a response to the blog post: The Ruby community has a DHH problem.

First let’s start with some objective guidelines. The Ruby community has a notion of MINASWAN: “Matz is nice and so we are nice”. After decades of heated debates, I believe in order to try to follow that code, we need to do three things:

1. Assume good faith
2. Interpret charitably
3. Be tolerant

I think it’s reasonable to say that anyone who doesn’t follow these points is not being nice: assuming bad faith isn’t nice, neither is interpreting what an interlocutor said in the least charitable way possible, and obviously neither is being intolerant.

If we follow these precepts while reading DHH’s controversial blog post: As I remember London, we arrive to a very different conclusion that many self-described “nice” people are reaching.

But I’m going to follow Tekin Süleyman’s critique (author of the aforementioned blog post), which I think is representative.

Natives

Before addressing what Tekin wrote about what DHH wrote, we need to understand what “native” means. And before doing that we need to consider what words are.

It’s just semantics.

Everyone

Many people dismiss semantics, but semantics is the study of meaning. So how can we possibly have a profitable debate if we don’t understand the meaning behind the words we are using? In order to explore what DHH actually said, we need to consider what he actually meant.

So we need to understand two things:

1. A word can have multiple meanings
2. We need to consider the meaning the speaker meant

The word “run” can have many different meanings, for example in “running to the store”, which has a different meaning than in “running the store”. So when trying to parse what someone said, we need to consider more than one potential meaning.

Moreover, language is ambiguous, when a person says “kill me now”, they probably didn’t mean that literally, same with “yeah dad, that joke was really funny”. Just like Occam’s razor is usually useful in problem-solving, Grice’s razor is useful in interpretation: consider what the speaker meant instead of what they literally said.

One definition of “native” is this:

living or growing naturally in a particular region : indigenous

Merriam-Webster

I strongly believe this is what DHH meant by “native”.

For example, I’m Mexican, and my family probably has more than 10 generations living in Mexico, but I don’t look “indigenous” (i.e. native American), I look more Spanish (Whitexican). Am I “native” in the sense that DHH meant? I don’t think so.

That doesn’t mean I’m not Mexican, it just means I’m not native to the region. In other words: most of my DNA doesn’t come from people who have lived in the region for thousands of years.

Reality is much more nuanced that “native” versus “non-native”, because I’m not Spanish either: I’m a mixture (mestizo) — as 99% of Mexicans are. But I’m probably 90% non-native, so “non-native” is a good approximation.

But we can’t expect writers to come up with a whole essay on every word they use, at some point they have to use shortcuts, and it’s our job as readers to try to guess what they most likely meant.

In his post, DHH complains that London is no longer a city he wants to live in because it is now only a third “native Brit”. His use of “native Brit” is as a proxy for “White British”. The implication is clear: if you are not White, you are not British.

Tekin Süleyman

I’m extending to Tekin the same charity I extend to DHH, but try as I might, I don’t see any other explanation for what he wrote.

I see two problems with that paragraph. The first one is the “implication”: “if you are not White, you are not British”. I don’t see anything that DHH wrote that could support that implication. My reading of DHH is quite different, and the closest implication to that statement in my view is: if you are not white, you most likely are not native British.

As a non-native Mexican, I don’t see what is the problem in stating that someone isn’t native. The fact that you aren’t a “native Brit” doesn’t mean you aren’t British. These are just facts. I don’t understand why Tekin has a problem with facts. There’s nothing wrong with being a non-native Brit.

The second problem is statistical. If native Brits are 99% white, that doesn’t imply that if you aren’t white you are necessarily not a native Brit. For example, if 99% of NBA players are above 1.8 m and Earl’s height is below that, does that mean that Earl isn’t an NBA player? This is a hasty generalization fallacy. If you aren’t white that doesn’t mean you aren’t a native Brit, it means you are likely not a native Brit.

But it doesn’t really matter, because the fact is that DHH never said that non-white people aren’t British. That is an uncharitable interpretation of what he actually said, and it is not nice to mischaracterize what people actually said.

Tommy Robinson

In the same post he praises Tommy Robinson

Tekin Süleyman

This is what DHH actually said about Tommy Robinson:

That frustration was on wide display in Tommy Robinson’s march yesterday.

David Heinemeier Hansson

DHH didn’t even say anything about Tommy Robinson: he was talking about a march.

I’m not going to bother investigating if what Tekin said about Robinson is actually true, because it doesn’t matter: it’s a lie that DHH praised Robinson.

I hope I don’t have to explain why lying about what somebody else’s said is not nice.

Generalizing

He then goes on to describe those that attended last weekend’s far-right rally in London as “perfectly normal, peaceful Brits” protesting against the “demographic nightmare” that has enveloped London, despite the violence and disorder they caused.

Tekin Süleyman

What did DHH actually say?

The easy way out of this uncomfortably large gathering of perfectly normal, peaceful Brits who’ve had enough is to tar them all as “far right”.

David Heinemeier Hansson

It wasn’t DHH that described them as “perfectly normal”, it was Trevor Phillips from Sky News.

But Tekin claimed “they” caused “violence and disorder”. As evidence he provides an article which states that 26 officers were injured, and 24 people were arrested for “violence”. That’s 24 out of 150,000 (or more).

So 0.016% people were arrested for “wholly unacceptable” violence, and that’s proof that “they caused violence”. “They” being the 150,000+ people that gathered in the march. If this is not a hasty generalization fallacy, I don’t know what is.

Moreover, only 4 police officers were seriously hurt. So one would have to wonder how many of those 24 people did any serious violence.

But none of that has anything to do with DHH, because he wasn’t in the march. His description of the march was based on third-party reports, which could be inaccurate. Maybe he didn’t know about the “violence”, maybe he didn’t know how many police officers were hurt.

Let’s go back to the principle of assuming good faith. Why do we have to assume that DHH’s “misrepresentation” of the march has to mean he is a racist? Isn’t that the least charitable interpretation of what he wrote? Couldn’t we assume he just didn’t know about the violence?

In my view the fact that 0.02% of people did engage in violence doesn’t contradict the claim 150,000+ people in the march were predominantly “perfectly normal”.

To assume bad faith and the least charitable interpretation is not nice.

Chain

To all of that he ads a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself.

Tekin Süleyman

This is such an archetypal causal chain fallacy that it’s ridiculous.

Let’s begin at the end.

Tekin claims the Quilliam Foundation has ties with the Tea Party movement and Tommy Robinson — presumably because he believes anyone with such ties is incapable of issuing accurate statements. This is an obvious guilt by association fallacy, but let’s give the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s true: anyone associated with the Tea Party is incapable of accurate reporting.

Also, let’s ignore the fact that one of the founders of Quilliam Foundation is a Muslim: Maajid Nawaz.

We don’t even need to read Dr. Ella Cockbain’s article regarding this “discredited report”, because by association we know that anyone with ties with the Tea Party cannot be accurate. Even though Cockbain’s work has been discredited as well: Statement on misinformation regarding the work of Dr Ella Cockbain.

Tekin claimed the “Pakistani rape gangs” was cited as one of the reasons for the unrest, but actually: DHH never said that.

So finally we reach the beginning: “he ads a dash of Islamophobia”. Which obviously is true because we were just bamboozled by a chain of obvious proofs. Nevermind the fact that DHH linked to an article by The Economist: The grooming-gangs scandal is a stain on the British state.

This article linked to a report by the government of the UK: National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.

That report states:

Many cases of group-based child sexual exploitation have involved men from Asian or Pakistani ethnic backgrounds.

GOV.UK

But worse than that, it acknowledges that ethnicity data has been intentionally hidden and should be better tracked: “report after report criticises the lack of ethnicity data and calls for better data collection and research into ethnicity and cultural issues that might improve our understanding of offending and increase our chances of tackling it”.

So, even when ethnicity data is “lacking”, a picture is very clear:

What does this have to do with the Tea Party, the Quilliam Foundation, or Dr. Ella Cockbain? Nothing.

We are talking about verifiable facts, presented in an official UK government report.

It seems according to Tekin, believing UK government reports is a “dash of Islamophobia”.

I think unfairly accusing someone of “Islamophobia” for verifiable facts as reported by the UK government is not nice.

They’re still reeling from the Pakistani rape gangs that were left free to terrorize cities like Rotherham and Rochdale for years on end with horror-movie-like scenes of the most despicable, depraved abuse of British girls.

David Heinemeier Hansson

Even if DHH was wrong, he is operating based on a report that came from the UK government, so how can you in good faith accuse someone of “Islamophobia” by simply believing a UK government report?

And that’s before we consider the crimes per-capita (there’s clearly less Pakistani people per 100 K UK residents).

I think it’s Tekin the one that is not being nice.

Conclusion

According to DHH, there is nothing racist or xenophobic in saying “Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits”, which again let’s be absolutely clear; by “Brits” he means White people.

Tekin Süleyman

No. 99% of native Brits are write, that doesn’t mean all native Brits are white, and it doesn’t mean that all Brits are white.

This is an intentional misrepresentation of what DHH wrote. This is not nice.

Because in 2025 racism against white people is acceptable, let’s switch the category to Mexican brown people.

Mexico is a country primarily for Mexicans.

Felipe Contreras (a Mexican)

As a white Mexican, I don’t see anything wrong with that statement. As an example I’m going to use a famous Mexican quote:

We Mexicans are born wherever the fuck we want.

Chavela Vargas

Chavela Vargas was a famous Mexican singer, but she was born in Costa Rica.

Why is Vargas considered a true Mexican? Is it her skin colour? No. There’s white, brown and black Mexicans. It doesn’t really matter. Was it her place of origin? No. She wasn’t born in Mexico. So what made Vargas a true Mexican? Her attitude.

Mexicans have an attitude of defiance, proudness, and freedom. Vargas had all of those.

More than that: her quote actually stated “donde se nos da la rechingada gana” (wherever the fuck we want). But “rechingada” is not a Spanish word. “Chingada” is a Mexican word that has a lot of history, but ultimately comes back to native betrayal.

Mexicans actually have a negative word to refer to the act of praising something foreign in favor of the native, just because it’s foreign: malinchismo (anti-nationalism).

The fact is that anyone with Mexican values can be a Mexican, regardless of skin colour or place of origin.

That excludes most people from Pakistan, and yes: I intimately know people from Pakistan.

Is it such a stretch to say that most people from Pakistan can’t be British either?

That doesn’t mean anyone. If a person from Pakistan can share Mexican values, she can be Mexican, just like if she shares British values, she can be British.

Skin colour is such a distraction in the case of Britain, but in the case of Mexico it’s not. What is racist about saying “not everyone can be a Mexican”?

What is wrong about Mexican people exalting our values despite skin colour or place of origin?

If you assume something racist about the values that constitute a nationality, you are not nice. Period.

So, as a Mexican who has experienced actual racism in Eastern Europe, I don’t see anything racist in what DHH wrote. In fact, I see the opposite: to assume the worst about what he wrote isn’t just “not-nice”, it’s mean.