- Does Google have unusually many conservative employees compared to similar tech companies? Or maybe a different attitude towards "diversity" programs?
- Evidence of Google employees doxing one another is evidence of insufficient HR vigilance against assholes. How could it happen?
- Does the "alt-right" have specific reasons to harass Google, compared to other equally hostile and equally important companies?
I suspect the difference is cultural: Google has actively advocated for people to debate controversial political issues at work. Political discussion groups of various types exist on corporate resources, politics is discussed in company meetings, and politically active individuals have been brought in to speak at Google talks. "Talks at Google" literally has a featured category for it: https://talksat.withgoogle.com/explore/categories/politics
I work in a pretty political environment, where both significantly liberal and significantly conservative views exist. They're rarely discussed, and it rarely is an issue, because it's not a work-related discussion.
> Does the "alt-right" have specific reasons to harass Google
I can think of one, aside from the Damore fiasco. Last year, Google, as a domain name registrar, took an inherently political position in clientHolding a fascist website's domain name - and doing no such thing to any of its overtly communist customers.
Prior to the Godaddy/Google decisions, domains were generally only subject to action of this kind in the case of FBI/DHS/ICE seizures or egregious network abuse (spam, botnet c2, etc).
This action set the precedent, for the first time, that denying access to your own domain names (clientHold prevents you from even transferring your domain to another registrar) on the basis of political disagreement is a perfectly acceptable action on the part of one of the largest infrastructure providers on the planet.
This is really unacceptable. It would be better for everybody if companies stayed neutral and would let law enforcement deal with abuses. What stops them from putting a clientHold on a domain not for political but commerical reasons. We really don't want companies to act as cops.
Have you read through some of the business practices during WWII? Americans almost directly funding the German war effort by moving money around for their own capitalist benefit. I think the subject requires are more in-depth analysis than "companies shouldn't get to say who's business they want".
For the beginning years of the war the US was technically neutral. It would have been seen as an act of war for the government to stop its citizens from trading with the Germans.
We weren't talking about the government, though. We were talking about a company deciding to act with less ambiguity toward certain political groups/forces— like the example with Google above.
For example, it might have been considered better taste after the issuance of the Nuremberg Laws for Coca Cola not to associate so closely with the German Reich and fly their banners next to the swastika at the Berlin games, but that certainly was not the play until they were forced to stop (which ultimately resulted in the invention of Fanta, but I digress).
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An additional sampling of a company just being apolitical in questionable taste.
>> Mark Prendergrast "In March of 1938, as Hitler's troops stormed across the Austrian border in the Anschluss, Max Keith convened the ninth annual concessionaire convention, with 1,500 people in attendance.
Behind the main table, a huge banner proclaimed in German, "Coca -Cola is the world-famous trademark for the unique product of Coca-Cola GmbH" Directly below, three gigantic swastikas stood out, black on red.
At the main table, Max Keith sat surrounded by his deputies, another swastika draped in front of him...The meeting closed with a "ceremonial pledge to Coca-Cola and a ringing three-fold "Seig Heil" to Hitler."
At another convention Mark Prendergrast notes "Then Keith ordered a mass Sieg-Heil for Hitler's recent fiftieth birthday, to commemorate our deepest admiration and gratitude for our Fuhrer who has led our nation into a brilliant higher sphere."...
At the Reich "Schaffendes Volk" ("Working People") Exhibition celebrating the German worker under Hitler, Prendergrast describes "A functioning bottling plant, with a miniature train carting Kinder beneath, bottled Coca-Cola at the very centre of the fair, adjacent to the Propaganda Office. Touring the Dusseldorf fair, Hermann Goering paused for a Coke, and an alert Company photographer snapped a picture. Though no such picture documented the Fuhrer's tastes, Hitler reputedly enjoyed Coca Cola too, sipping the Atlanta drink as he watched Gone With The Wind in his private theatre."
The dirty truth is that a lot of Americans sympathized with Hitler at the beginning of the war. This was a major reason for the US's initial neutrality. The universal hatred of Nazism came only after the war concluded.
Further a lot of major American companies were hedging their bets in case the US remained neutral - in which case Germany would have been a major power. The situation is similar to Apple and Google appeasing Chinese censorship today (albeit without the death camps).
I view things like domain registration as infrastructure. I want companies to stay neutral in these things. If something illegal is going on law enforcement needs to get involved. I don't want companies to block people from important infrastructure. For example we also don't want a utility to turn off electricity for Nazis.
That's quite a false equivalency. Fascism is an ideology that at its core has oppression of free speech and political opponents, white supremacy, authoritarianism, colonialism.
Communism as a political theory has none of these things.
You're confusing it with authoritarian socialism (Soviet Russia, Mao's China, ...).
A simpler rebuttal is that the Daily Stormer is opposed to ISIS, and I would in fact expect Google to be taking down ISIS websites celebrating specific acts of terrorism (as the Daily Stormer did). Both sides!
Are any isis websites hosted on Google? Like, there's a whole anti- terrorism thing at Google dealing with Isis videos posted on YouTube. It's a bit more comples than just " remove them", but it's research backed and in concert with governments.
(Or did misread "I'd expect google to" and we agree)
That's kind of a No True Scotsman argument... I would actually be interested to have an example of a communist regime pointed out that didn't have mass graves in their back yard somewhere; I just can't think of one.
That's true, but the point is none of them have claimed to have created a communist society. They've claimed to have started building a socialist society, and they've claimed that communism was their ultimate goal. More specifically, every single one of them, as far as I'm aware, claim to base their goals on Leninism or a derivation (e.g. Maoism, Juche etc. are derived from Leninism, not directly from Marxism), which is one specific ideology that even if one accepts it as genuinely having the goal of eventually creating communism is in direct opposition to Marxism when it comes to some of the most central points of Marxist theory.
E.g. Marx throughout his life repeatedly warned against trying revolution in an underdeveloped country, as he saw advanced capitalism as essential to the success of socialism, and he specifically called out Russia - a central aspect of Leninism is Lenins contortionism to try to explain away Marx' reasons for that through his idea of the "vanguard party", and his party theory (democratic centralism), which are a large part of what enabled the authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks.
It became the dominant re-interpretation of Marxism after the Bolsheviks gained power, but it's still only one of dozens of ideologies that call themselves communist, and the only one that has been used as a basis for justifying any national regimes of parties calling themselves communist.
If someone wanted to ban specific interpretations of Leninism (because you'll find people picking and choosing from Lenin too - e.g. a lot of his analysis in Imperialism and in State and the Revolution is benign enough; State and the Revolution to a large extent makes the case against state power for example) that are explicitly agitating for violence or anti-democratic methods, then you'd find quite a few communists and socialists who'd be perfectly happy about that - no governments have murdered more communists than ones following Lenin or Leninist derived theories.
Lenin himself grabbed power in a coup (the "October revolution" was not a revolution in any reasonable sense - the Tsarist government had fallen months previously) after months of agitation for violent overthrow of the predominantly socialist/communist provisional government that was actually trying to run a democratic process.
The point is people you don't like will use the same words you do - we don't swear off democracy as a bad thing because the "Democratic" Peoples Republic of Korea uses the word to describe itself, or because pretty much every one of the states you refer to run by parties describing themselves as communist also made a big point of describing their states as democratic in their constitutions.
We recognize that their use does not represent our use of the word, and we look for better ways of classifying them.
The state of Kerala in India (the home of my parents / extended family) has had a communist coalition as one of the two major parties for the last several decades, and to my knowledge has no mass graves.
(The argument "oh, but they're not really communist" here strikes me as about as meaningful/relevant as the argument that the Soviet Union wasn't really communist)
I belong well into the (anti authoritarian) left, and I agree with your last sentences, but the problem here is not that a lot of people see libertarian and anarchist socialist/communist ideologies as equally bad as Stalinism and Maoism - often because they don't know or accept the distinction -, and so sees blocking far right sites but not far left sites as taking a stand against the right, rather than a stand against totalitarian ideologies.
We're better served with a society where communications providers are not allowed to deny service based on their customers views for the simple reason that as long as we allow them to censor, chances are someone who is clueless about distinctions like the ones you make get to make those decisions,
Case in point: Several countries have legislation against spreading communist ideas or using communist symbols that are ill defined enough that they would just as equally hit someone promoting Stalinism as someone who would be first against the wall if Stalinists were to gain power, because they don't understand that the same name encompasses ideologies ranging from those that wants a totalitarian state to those who wants no state or authority. (In other places such laws have been struck down or revised exactly because of that ambiguity)
> We're better served with a society where communications providers are not allowed to deny service based on their customers views for the simple reason that as long as we allow them to censor, chances are someone who is clueless about distinctions like the ones you make get to make those decisions
Are we? I agree that we get some polarization as collateral damage, but the alternative would be to have hateful and violent ideas be able to roam freely, hurt people, and be normalized. There has to a line.
> Yonatan Zunger, a high-ranking veteran engineer who left Google eight months ago, says the internal culture has become a textbook case of the "paradox of tolerance," the notion that if a society is tolerant without limit, it will be seized upon by the intolerant.
To me, this could all be solved by HR releasing a document on what can and can not be discussed on company time and where the lines are. And if a document exists, enforce it on both sides.
Or you know, not talk about politics in the work place.
This could only be the law if and when politics did not influence decisions in the workplace. As that is not - and can not be - the case it does not make sense to ban talk about politics, no matter how futile such talk often is.
Especially with the Marxist / feminist view that everything is politics.
I was discussing space exploration (you’d think this would be a pretty safe topic) at work and suddenly it turned into how space exploration was ruining everything because then people thought they could escape global warming instead of doing something about it.
The conversation ended when I asked the guy how many kids he had he said none cuz global warming, I said that was too bad cuz I was teaching my kids to 4x4 and their superior 4x4ing genes would out breed his inferior genes that convinced him not to have kids and that my kids were going to 4x4 on mars once we had finished ruining this planet.
Guy basically had an aneurism right there on the spot, one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever witnessed at work. I figured it was too much of a troll to actually work but he went fully ballistic
Like, honestly honestly, or jokingly honestly? What if I say "I wish I were allowed to speak about politics at work" at work? That's political. Do I get a fine? How about "am I allowed to talk about this?" If it's a gray area and we start debating it, which one of us gets shipped to the gulag?
Who gets to decide what's politics? Isn't even that question political?
And here comes the view of someone that is interested in politics and is reminded daily of how politics makes everyone's lives worse than necessary:
I wish my coworkers (and my fellow citizens for that matter) would be interested in politics just a little more, so they would realize what is happening around them, and know what they are talking about whenever they touch politics and legislature. My opinion is gradually becoming a minority view all over Europe, with people fleeing to either extreme.
The thing is: We were once "politically uneducated" here in Europe. It made the "third Reich" as a mass phenomenon possible, because a lot of people joined this movement blindly and with enthusiasm and did not realize where this train was heading until it was way too late (and they were completely delusional).
When the allies took over they tried to make sure we would be and stay politically educated, so this would never happen again (spoiler: it did not work). How ironic that America is spearheading the movement to normalize extreme views.
I think everyone should be interested in politics, but that doesn't mean I want to talk politics every day for an hour during my lunch with coworkers. There's more happening in the world than politics. I think that's what the parent is getting at. That also doesn't mean I think there should be a law against it.
Right, but do you want to use threat of punishment to enforce your personal desires? Do you want to live in a society where that's a thing that people can do? If society were headed that way, wouldn't even you want to talk about it? I doubt you'd want to live in the kind of society you want to build.
Assuming you think coercion is a bad idea, your only tool left is discussion and consensus-building about rules. In other words, politics.
(To be fair, I understand the underlying sentiment: I, too, would like to live in a world where my personal desires were somehow the law of the land in such a way that everybody else were also happy with them. But after some long thought (and some good literature) I think that really falls in the "be careful what you wish for" category.)
The "thing" referred to here was enforcing "your personal desires." In a functioning democracy, it's never one individual's personal desires that are enforced. The question of whether various democracies are functioning is an interesting one but not my intention to discuss here.
The worst part is that it’s typically navel-gazing about national politics. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with my coworkers’ views a lot, but good god, does anyone know what the state legislature is doing? How about the governor? Which of our coworkers could name their state rep? Probably very few. Meanwhile, we have a primary coming up in six months and our district has two lackluster candidates, but nobody’s concerned about that (we’re losing our awesome incumbent who’s running for state senate).
This might sound good, but the result of such is tyranny and loss of free speech.
Politics easily being a fuzzy term which can be adapted to fit a very wide range of ideas gives those few in power who set the rules the ability to silence whatever they wish.
It would better if there were more initiatives to improve intellectual discourse so people could like actually talk to one another.
Keyword: Talk. I'm not so sure that online communities are the best place for political discussion. Direct person-to-person communication allows for much more subtle, nuanced conversation and doesn't seem to turn into dumpster-fires nearly as often as online.
It's very hard, probably impossible, to come up with a specific list. The list will either be incomplete (the trolls are cunning) or overly broad and spark anti-authoritarian feelings.
If you've ever been an online forum mod, or similar, you'll know that the larger the "board" gets, the more out of whack it gets. When a company, or forum, is small, and most people know each other, at least a bit, they tend to stay civil. Past some point, that goes out the window.
Not talking about politics is a good idea, but it's very hard to specify what is "politics" and what is not.
I think the simple line that could be drawn is the separate politics and policies. I think[0] it could be fine to discuses a heavy handed immigration policy while not discussing the politician behind it. One has a chance to yield a good discussion, while the other does not.
[0] If everyone involved has an implicit mutual respect for the other person, which seems unlikely.
That discussion is unlikely to go well if any of your co-workers are immigrants. You can't discuss "should you be in this country or should you and your family be deported" in front of someone dispassionately.
Edit: the last few times I've discussed "heavy handed immigration policy" at work it has been because co-workers have had to deal with the Home Office and I'm commiserating how difficult it is. One guy got tripped up by "the middle initial on your ID wasn't present in the name field of this form" (or vice versa).
This is more or less what David Gudeman, the other plaintiff in Damore's lawsuit, wandered into:
> Gudeman further stated that at the suggestion of another Googler, he searched Gilani’s story of being profiled, and found “zero evidence for the claim that [Gilani] was targeted just for being a Muslim.” Gudeman posed more questions about the FBI’s motives for looking into Gilani such as the fact that Gilani had recently visited Pakistan, and that the FBI could have possibly found something interesting about Gilani’s trip or the region that he visited.
If you're going to have a rule about not discussing politics in order to uphold a productive workplace culture, it seems like a very good place to start is that your coworkers should not be able to say something with the subtext "Maybe the FBI had a reason to investigate you for being a terrorist."
I could have used better description for the example. But as a tech company, I do think there are merits to discussing how a modified H1B Visa policy affects us.
Why? I'm a immigrant to the country I'm resident to, hoping to apply for citizenship. I don't resent any current citizen/local discussing tighter immigration laws that doesn't insult my nationality, which I'd excludes anything with a factual basis.
But then, I'm a European, living in another European country, so the same racial sensitivity might not exist?
From what I understand, The US has a special view on immigration due to historically lax enforcement, varying history of enforcement, and general diversity of our population. It's hard to compare to other countries.
Speaking as an immigrant: this is bullshit. I've heard a lot of far-righters talk about restricting NEW immigration and deporting illegal immigrants, but have never once been party to a conversation when they implied that I or my family should be deported.
Aside from the feeds of a few dozen Twitter edgelords, the discussions you're imagining (or want us to imagine) do not exist and are a strawman argument.
I'm afraid demands for people to be deported are very common in UK immigration discussion, and very few people seem to be fussy over the legality of it.
I think this is even too far. If this immigration policy affects you, you should talk to your manager about it, but general workplace discussion about anything that isn't "creative" (as in, your hobbies or pets) is a trap.
EDIT: and what I mean by that is, you can discuss with a close coworker whatever you want, but people seem to want "open texted based communication" in a way that invites argument.
Google is the sort of company that invites the entire company to post (and vote on) questions for senior leadership to answer, though. And they believe this is good for the company. "What are you doing to influence immigration policy" impacts the company just as much as "What are you doing to provide thought-leadership in containers" or whatever.
> We share everything we can. We have a weekly all-hands meeting called TGIF, hosted by our founders, Larry and Sergey. In the first 30 minutes, we review news and product launches from the past week, demo upcoming products, and celebrate wins. But the second 30 minutes is the part that matters most: Q&A.
> Everything is up for question and debate, from the trivial (“Larry, now that you’re CEO will you start wearing a suit?” The answer was a definite ‘no’), to the ethical (“Is Google going in the right direction?”).
Annnddddd This is how we get to where we are. Thanks for sharing, I think this is helpful info to give perspective as to why they have these "HR problems" when in fact it's a cultural choice to be exposed to these challenges!
I assume it's been a net positive for them in the past, I wonder if this TGIF policy will get changed.
This kind of thing seems insane to me. If you want to build a cohesive team, you figure out what is common to everyone and rally around that. Bringing in divisive topics unrelated to work seems like you're playing with fire.
> It's very hard, probably impossible, to come up with a specific list. The list will either be incomplete (the trolls are cunning) or overly broad and spark anti-authoritarian feelings.
They should put up a big banner of the question the employees should be asking themselves about their work activities: "Is this good for the company?"
You can just say that there should be no personal attacks, people should be civil to each other, and nothing that a reasonable person would construe as racism or harassment. This is similar to the rules on wikipedia, and it works very well there.
The problem is that there is a small minority of people who don't/can't see things from other people's perspectives, so they either make blatantly offensive comments without realising it, or they get offended and their feelings hurt when no reasonable person would have taken a comment to be offensive.
Perhaps there could be a peer-based mediation panel within Google to make non-binding, non-public rulings on these cases without them going to HR (if both parties agree on the outcome). If these panels were make up of reasonable people (think wikipedia admins), then it might work quite well.
That was my take away from the Damore lawsuit. If the posts are at all indicative[0] of the type of allowed conversation at Google, then the inmates are truly running the asylum. Regardless of personal political affiliation, I would never want to work at Google given what seems like an insane lack of reason in their HR policies.
[0] - I realize the lawsuit would obviously want to make it look as bad as possible.
I brought up the same point in a previous post. There is a line somewhere, and it seems that Google has blown past it miles ago. Is it a lack of HR resources? HR indifference? Failure to define policies?
I'm not sure which is worse, that there are people at Google who (and I know the lawsuit is using extreme examples) have these extreme left-wing views who are in positions to force their views on a large unsuspecting populous, or Google for not fixing the problem.
> Or you know, not talk about politics in the work place.
Depends if diversity is considered "politics". There are lots of diversity measures inside all companies and to say don't discuss these is a bit weird. Perhaps only certain HR professionals can be "allowed" to discuss diversity initiatives?
> Or you know, not talk about politics in the work place.
There's a lot to be said about this approach (and I had a good conversation about this with someone I know who works at Google and leans conservative / Republican but not alt-right, and is unhappy that internal social media is tied to business-related communication - blocking someone who posts a lot of partisan political stuff apparently means that you can't communicate with them in an emergency, if they maintain one of your dependencies, which seems like a pretty bad design).
But I think there are two reasons it's not a completely simple solution.
The first is that Google, as the article says, encourages you to "bring your whole self to work." Heck, Google even encourages you to bring your dog to work. Google encourages you to stay for lunch and probably dinner. Google encourages you to form bands with your coworkers, go on hiking trips with your coworkers, etc. There's a lot of deliberate attempts at promoting social cohesion beyond just normal traditional professional relationships, and by all accounts, that's a lot of why Google is as successful as it is. Requiring "Don't talk politics at the workplace" involves not talking politics over meals, on weekend team trips, and so forth, which is unlikely to be enforceable and also seems like it would hurt the genuine social bonds these things are trying to promote.
The second is that "politics" includes things like "Is it valid to be trans" or "Are certain races inferior to others." I'm not going to deny that this is "politics;" the generalized question of whether whole swaths of people are deserving of recognition under their claimed identity has been part of politics since basically the first empire captured its first nation. But it's unavoidable for a large company to pick an answer one way or another. A hypothetical Google running at the time of Cato the Elder, with Roman and Carthaginian employees, could not avoid the "political" question of whether Carthage should be destroyed and its residents sold into slavery.
Something that always rubs me the wrong way when reading about these issues is that people in (for now) mostly American spheres use both the word and the concept "race" so uncritically [1], with no reflection at all. Heck, if we consider the US Government, then "race" is an official property of humans (see e.g. bop.gov Inmate Locator, which literally has a drop-down labelled "race" with choices like "White" and "American Indian").
[1] It should go without saying that using a different word for the same concept means you're still using the same concept. It's essentially the same as the good-old-fashioned euphemism treadmill.
Lots of large, multinational, Google size companies have a culture of not discussing politics at work. Or if you do, it's with your friends at work, not random coworkers.
Of course you can and how majority of the companies in the US operate. Usually you have no idea how the gal in the cube next to you voted. While most companies try to have diversity.
But you can't have your cake and eat it too. Google and the recent crop of SV startups are what they are, we hear, because they don't have the culture of of the stodgy old multinationals, and Google got to where they are so quickly, and beat so many companies at their own game, with their more freewheeling culture. Lots of large, multinational, Google size companies have no tradition letting individual contributors spending 20% of their own time building a product in a market the company isn't in, and never would have invented Gmail.
This is a non sequitur. They were able to grow so fast because they're in non capital intensive industries with limited constraints on their ability to scale up rapidly and were able to leverage the birth of a new marketplace and an existing telecommunications infrastructure largely financed by the government and by other corporations. The impact of their internal culture with regard to politics is tangential at best and probably non-existent given that these issues have only come to a head in the last few years.
China has similarly dominant tech companies and I'm sure they do not share SV's political opinions.
Yeah, I'm certainly not opposed to the hypothesis that Google's culture had nothing to do with their success, it was just product-market fit and good timing. But it's a commonly told story - everyone praises (or praised, for a while) "Google-style" interviews, Laszlo Bock's Work Rules! was pretty popular, etc. And it's a selling point for startups that they have Xooglers who are bringing in that culture; if Google's success is just "launch the right product at the right time," the fact that you have a random former Google employee should be as relevant as having a random former Yahoo! or Alta Vista employee.
> But you can't have your cake and eat it too. Google and the recent crop of SV startups are what they are, we hear, because they don't have the culture of of the stodgy old multinationals
You could just as easily say they were successful despite this or that aspect of their company culture.
A better approach might be "don't talk politics on chat channels" ie at the pub, over lunch sure but not on company wide official communication channels. We have a semi-unspoken rule at my work around this, partially due to having offices in Scotland and Barcelona (independence movements). No one expects you to not be political or to not discuss politics, but we understand that having these conversations on text systems everyone can read (slack for instance) isn't a great idea. There's a time and place, normally at the pub or a team day out etc.
My past job, I would have political discussion with coworkers but they were people I had formed extremely close and trusting bonds with. We may have disagreed at times but it came from a place of respect and knowing someone a little.
After the US presidential election, the lead execs of the office sent out emails about the results and commiserating with the staff (we had people call in sick, crying, etc.) but, despite the office being 99.9% on their side, lunch conversation later that day revolved around how most didn't think what they did was appropriate because, if there was that .1% that could feel alienated, why do so from on high?
> "Is it valid to be trans" or "Are certain races inferior to others."
In your opinion, did the google memo touch on similar topics? Many represented it as saying "women are inferior engineers to men", but a crux of the argument seems to be that many say this is not what the memo said.
Also, there are tangential topics that are often phrased similar to the above so as to make it seems like we're in a Carthaginian scenario when it isn't necessarily the case. For example, the main argument seemed to be about trans-people using certain bathrooms, that touched on the topic of "trans validity" (or dragged conversation into that), but was also also a separate, related argument about bathroom usage that precipitated that.
> but a crux of the argument seems to be that many say this is not what the memo said.
Those people are right. The full text of the memo is readily available. The author not only didn't say this, but repeated numerous times that this was explicitly not what he was trying to communicate. There is no reasonable, charitable way to interpret those who misrepresent him.
I think this brings up an important point. Some people insist on painting this as a "diversity champions vs blithering racists/sexists" issue, ignoring the numerous legitimate criticisms for the current approach to diversity.
The biggest issue with the memo is that James Damore attached politics to it. Basically a fair bit of the last part of the memo was an open accusation that Google is leftist and is "alienating conservatives", together with several standard tropes from the populist conservative realm that did not advance his argument very much ("universities are leftist" trope, a strangely oversimplified ding at communism / Marxism, mentioning "political correctness" and violent PC protesters, etc.)
The politics instantly put the memo squarely at one side of the current cultural / political wars. With the current binaries in American politics right now, such will never lead to sober discussion.
"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." I'm not sure how to interpret that as not sexist. Prefacing it with "Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are 'just.'" doesn't really help.
While I can see how that statement could be abused to sexist ends, nothing about it is sexist nor prescribes any sort of discriminatory treatment.
Note that it doesn't imply or conclude that a given female applicant is less qualified than a given male candidate nor that the pipeline of female applicants is less qualified in aggregate than the pipeline of male applicants (because there's no reason to assume that the pipeline has the same distribution as the overall population).
It merely suggests that (assuming pertinent biological causes) we shouldn't expect a fair process to result in parity of outcomes.
Whether or not there are pertinent biological causes is a question I leave to scientists, but I do want to note that (contrary to Damore's critics), science has established biological sex differences that may be pertinent, and lots of scientists have validated Damore's position (that biological differences may explain some of the gender distribution in tech). https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201711/the-truth-ab...
(In case you are referring to me, the commenter above, as "those who misrepresent him", I'd like to make it clear that I am not referring to Damore at all - and also that if I were, I'd be arguing that the questions he asked are absolutely work-relevant, and Google should not shut down discussion on the grounds that they're work-irrelevant.)
> In your opinion, did the google memo touch on similar topics?
The latter, yes (in the sense that the question was relevant to the memo, not so much that the memo coherently attempted to address it), but it wasn't the memo I was referencing here here—it was other posts, either in internal social media or on external forums with clear links to employees.
> The second is that "politics" includes things like "Is it valid to be trans" or "Are certain races inferior to others." I'm not going to deny that this is "politics;" the generalized question of whether whole swaths of people are deserving of recognition under their claimed identity has been part of politics since basically the first empire captured its first nation. But it's unavoidable for a large company to pick an answer one way or another. A hypothetical Google running at the time of Cato the Elder, with Roman and Carthaginian employees, could not avoid the "political" question of whether Carthage should be destroyed and its residents sold into slavery.
Seems like you're overcomplicating the problem. Nearly all other companies seem to be doing just fine. Certainly not without incident, but by all appearances, companies aren't waging the sort of internal political wars that this article portrays.
I think your first reason is, itself, a controversial approach and might actually justify the no-politics idea. It's all fun and games when we integrate ourselves into a company past the "business-only" level. Until we get fired/leave and end up losing our company-provided social network, friends and meals. Maybe the presence of politics in non-work activities is simply more evidence that employers should avoid socializing their workplaces beyond what's required for business.
As for the second reason, I think it comes down to professionalism. We can politicize anything if we try hard enough. But if our employer says "no politics, just get the work done", then both sides must adhere to whatever policies are provided, within the law. Don't like the bathroom rules or workplace guidance? Work somewhere else.
> As for the second reason, I think it comes down to professionalism. We can politicize anything if we try hard enough. But if our employer says "no politics, just get the work done", then both sides must adhere to whatever policies are provided, within the law. Don't like the bathroom rules or workplace guidance? Work somewhere else.
That's certainly an incredibly common view, so I'm not going to say that it's wrong or irrational.
But I'm reminded of the bathroom subplot in Hidden Figures - all the restrooms in one building were for white people, and so the one black woman working in the building, who was extraordinarily technically competent, needed to go on extended break to another building every time she needed to use the restroom. "Don't like the bathroom rules, work someplace else" was absolutely the prevailing culture at the time, which had hefty rules about "professionalism" and not "politicizing" things. But it had a serious negative impact on the business, and the right thing to do (which a manager eventually did) was to change the bathroom rules.
The choice to adopt "professionalism," and to bring in no politics and leave the political decisions to whatever existing culture is in place, is a political choice of its own. There are a lot of arguments in favor of that choice, yes. But it remains a political choice.
That's why I said "within the law" - to ensure that it isn't the job of the business to determine what is political and/or allowed. What you describe would be illegal, would it not?
This happened in the early 1960s, when it was legal to have both segregated bathrooms and unsegregated bathrooms, as the workplace pleased, and segregated bathrooms were more common.
This seems empirically untrue if the allegations in either this story or the Damore lawsuit are to be believed. The Damore lawsuit talks about the existence of a whole mailing list called conservatives@ - if what you're saying is true, how are there still active user accounts on that list?
The idea of "checking your politics at the door" implies that there is an apolitical baseline, which, in this case, is wrong.
Note that the debates at Google are not about "is Trump an idiot?". They are about political issues affecting decisions made by Google. In these debates, not bringing up politics is equivalent to continuing the status quo.
That's not avoiding politics, it is simply accepting the politics underlying the status quo. It may sometimes appear to be "neutral" because people have grown accustomed to it, but it isn't.
Yonatan Zunger also had this to say about the memo [1].
> at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you [...] a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face [...] You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.
TL;DR - Yeah I mean, violence against you is totally justified because of what you said -- but if there is violence, it's your fault.
Nothing in Damore's memo justifies violence as a response. Zunger just stops short of advocating a violent response. I don't think he's someone I'd ever want to work for, or pay heed to.
Yes, he did assign fault. The words he used were: "it's your fault".
If I'm assaulted in the workplace for a political viewpoint I anonymously posted, the fault is with the assaultee. Not with the assaulted. However, Zunger flips the blame.
Didn't you see this coming? You should have known opposing the majority viewpoint would be met with violence. For workplace safety, I have to fire you.
Ironically, he seems to blame tolerance on this. It seems the man doesn't understand what the word means.
Edit: > Saying that jaywalking is risky is not an ethical statement about cars
A) It wasn't posted anoymously and B) yes while it's absolutely the fault of the assailant, the assaulted does bare some blame depending on what was said. If you walk up to someone an say hey your mom is an <insert derogatory term> and get punched in the face. You can't say there wasn't a reasonable expectation of violence as result of your actions.
Yonger is quite correct in that intentionally or not, for better or worse, Damore created a situation in which it would be very difficult to put him on a team anywhere. While work place violence is rarely the answer, and I sincerely doubt anyone at google would raise themselves to that level the fact of the matter is that even the risk of that puts Google in an impossible situation.
Zunger clearly writes that what Damore has done makes people want to punch him in the face. Of writing the memo Zunger says "What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful" and later "its [writing the memo] impact on you: ... a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face." In other words, the impact of writing the memo is that people will want to punch Damore in the face.
Zunger's blog post is extremely obnoxious. Not only does Zunger write something like "everything you say is wrong, but I won't explain any specific way you're wrong, or link to any such explanation" he then goes on to explain engineering to a senior engineer, and grossly misrepresents Damore. In addition he clearly does assign fault to Damore for people wanting to punch him.
He says people may want to be violent against you because of what you said. He makes no claims about the justification of that violence. He makes a statement of fact, not of judgement.
In other posts, Zunger does strongly imply justification for violence. See "Tolerance is not a moral precept; it is a peace treaty" headed with a pic of a Degenderette holding a baseball bat..
I disagree, but even if true, I'm not really sure why that's relevant here. Zunger's opinion may be that violence toward Damore is justified (I doubt that, but it could be the case). That doesn't change what he said, which was a fact: saying things that deeply hurt people will makes some of them want to punch you. Why does who the author is matter to the truth of that statement?
The author only matters since he is being cited as someone with insight, and has written a response to the "Google memo" that I found to be particularly telling.
In a vacuum, yes. Saying certain things may incite a violent response. But we're not in a vacuum. Let's look at three scenarios, and ask the following questions: Is violence expected? Is violence understandable? Is violence justified?
A - While drunk at a bar, a man repeatedly says derogatory things about another man's wife. A fight breaks out between the two of them.
B - While at a KKK rally, a young black man calmly discussing afrocentrism is jumped and beaten by a mob.
C - While at an LGBT rally, an old white man hostilely quoting Leviticus is jumped and beaten by a mob.
In the first scenario, this is targeted harassment. We should anticipate a violent outbreak. If you were to poll a diverse group of people, most people would say the violence was understandable, but not justified. This scenario bears the least similarity to our situation -- although I will make one comment. This is the only scenario where violence could be justified. If the provocateur becomes violent (or makes threats), a violent response MAY be expected, understandable, and justified.
In the second and third scenario, violence is an expected result. While some people within these groups may feel the violence was understandable, the real question lies with the groups organizers. I suspect that the LGBT group would denounce violence, even though the man had bad intentions. (I wouldn't expect as much from the KKK.)
To relate this to Google, Zunger is a leader. He excuses the violent response of the employees, and blames Damore for inciting the violence. (This is an INCREDIBLY poor position to take.) While it's fair to question whether Damore was the provocateur from example C, or the debater from example B, it's unfair to blame him for a violent response.
Like I said already: Zunger isn't blaming anyone. He's making a statement of fact. The fact, which is true, is that damore wrote a memo. The fact, which is true, is that having read this memo, many of Damore's coworkers would not be willing to work with him. These are facts. They're not attempts to assign blame or fault, they are objective statements about the state of the world.
As soon as you say the word "justified" or "understandable", you're not responding to Zunger, you're responding to a strawperson. There is no excusing, justification, or blame in the article. There are statements of fact.
You're conflating causality and blame. Zunger only discusses the former, and there is a huge difference between them. You're transforming his statements on causality into ones on blame when they clearly aren't. Damore wrote a thing. That thing hurt people. Cause, effect. No blame. Hawaiian government employee pressed button. A million people were alerted of an impending missile by accident. Cause, effect. No blame. (To be clear, with Hawaii, the blame, imo, falls onto the design of the system, and not the guy who happened to misclick).
In another post you claim that Zunger uses the phrase "it's your fault" (an assignment of blame), But the word "fault" doesn't appear in the essay. Zunger specifically says that Damore's action "has caused a significant harm" to his colleagues. But that, too, is a statement of causality, and is not assigning blame. (I think this is telling by the way: to justify, to yourself, your disagreement with Zunger, you managed to invent things the essay didn't actually say, without even realizing it!)
To be very clear on this, I think that violence is potentially expected in all three cases you mentioned, and justified in none of them. The exact argument Zunger is making works in the reverse, by the way. "You came out as trans to the office, all of whom are staunchly on the religious right and as a result now refuse to work with you. This is...problematic for your employer, and makes you decidedly less valuable from the perspective of your employer. This is problematic.". Am I blaming the trans individual? I certainly don't think so.
Zunger's argument is almost entirely a utilitarian one: You have made yourself less valuable to the organization, and either we get rid of you, or we get rid of a lot of other people. The choice is, unfortunately for you, obvious. And that's the case irrespective of who is "at fault".
Not really. It would be statement of fact if Zunger were some random, no consequence person. Since he himself and others mention that he is/was fairly senior engineer, his words take rather ominous meaning. Also refer to his other article 'Tolerance is not moral precept'.
A famous Indian political leader quoted Newton's third law "Every action has a reaction" in regards to an incident which further lead to unprecedented violence. All leader did was to quote a scientific law but he was widely criticized in media, it also lead to death of many more people.
I have no problem with what he says including veiled violence threats. It is his political positioning not some ethical advice.
> Zunger just stops short of advocating a violent response. I don't think he's someone I'd ever want to work for, or pay heed to.
That's one thing about the number of folks who've publicly stated positions I find abhorrent: I've got a list of folks I won't work with in the future, because I don't wish to support them.
I don't know if that's a good thing, though. It doesn't seem wise for society to fracture into different polarised groups refusing to do business with one another. Seems like a recipe for recreating Lebanon's mess.
Why can't we go back to the rule of not bringing politics and religion into the office?
Zunger didn't write "this is how I think", he wrote "this is what I'd do". This isn't a matter of supporting someone with a controversial opinion. Zunger goes on in explicit detail about how he would act in response to someone else's opinion.
Tolerance doesn't solve much. It's hard to tolerate people merely tolerating each other.
Acceptance comes through dialogue, and mutual understanding.
Sadly, there's a lot of "open minded people" who are pretty close minded to openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't their own, let alone be able to look in the mirror.
It can be easier (and lazier) to trivialize, dismiss, degrade the viewpoints of others, or be a crybully, rather than have a sincere look at yourself in a conversation.
Add into the mix reasonable themes of fragility, privilege that one group has been raised with (not entirely their choosing but a responsibility to work on), and in another experience at the expense of others, another group having an unfair go for a number of fair reasons.
The reality is bias exists. The best candidate does not win if the decision makers are not of the best and of the most open temperament.
I read somewhere that some of this may be a majority having the experience of a minority for once - and maybe that can help drive a better conversation and mutual understanding.
One thing is for sure, being quiet won't work, and freedom of speech without being thoughtful with your words won't help either.
> Acceptance comes through dialogue, and mutual understanding.
Do you have any actual empirical evidence or research for this? This reads like window-dressing for thought-police. "You don't accept our views? Sounds like you need more dialogue (re-education)."
In a business setting at least, tolerance allows individuals with different beliefs and motivations to work toward shared goals.
Areas of empirical evidence and research are plenty - maybe you can look instead of using it as the first shot across the bow? Topics like Truth and Reconciliation will grease logic wheels into a nicely polished mirror and uncover other areas of study.
Sorry another person's reality can be effortlessly maligned as window dressing to you. Happy to chat offline and you can report back here - email is in my profile. Happy to do a hangout too.
A reality is it's easy to marginalize and dehumanize those you haven't had to sit down, face to face and have an interaction with and have to consider that they might actually hold you to task as much as you are holding them to task.
Getting along with others doesn't only involve logic and the mind.
Interpersonal skills are not purely logical, they require a balanced ability to use one's emotions with intelligence and maturity.
In business settings, teams that practice deep horizontal loyalty generally outperform teams that borderline tolerate each other but would prefer not to. Similar effects happen on sports teams that have proverbial Cinderella runs.
I'm not entirely sure what you're responding to. Your parent comment compared tolerance vs. acceptance, which is somewhat orthogonal to the various topics you mention here (most of which support either approach). The derision of tolerance, which itself is a cornerstone of many societies, requires strong evidence.
In any case, I'm guessing I misread your original intent.
The issue that emerged with the Damore memo is that this seems to be a topic of conversation promoted at a google as part of their pro-diversity efforts.
Normally I’d say “they’re ALL idiots for talking about this at the workplace, and ALL deserve to be fired,” but when your employer is making you attend discussions on this topic... well, it’s fair game, isn’t it?
I mean, they can't do that, 1st amendment and all.
I'm not saying that talking 'politics' at work is wise thing to do, but in the US at least, all people have the explicit right to do so. There have been a fair few SCOTUS cases on this one.
The 1st amendment only applies to government control of speech. You may have the right to your speech, but the company doesn't have to employ you [0], especially in an at-will state.
It's issues like this that make me deeply skeptical of Google's long-term future. For tech companies, I would argue that company culture is by far the single-greatest asset, so seeing these stories about Google it's not difficult to believe that this company's culture is slowly rotting as they increasingly prioritize trivial and outright destructive pursuits. There is clearly no strong leader at this company, no one with guts or a priority for long-term health of the culture. Do I think problems will manifest in the next year or two? No, not really...culture takes many years to calcify. But when it does, man, there is no turning back, it's over. Frankly I think the die has already been cast.
...or, perhaps, these rifts are merely shouting contests between small (but extremely vocal) groups on extreme opposing ends of the political spectrum, and are greatly exaggerated for the usual clickbait / attention economy reasons.
...or, perhaps, it is getting rather contentious, but some as-yet-unknown policy will mitigate these issues, either through honest / open conversation or, conversely, through reasoned limitations on what can and cannot be talked about at the workplace.
...or, perhaps, the benefits of pursuing diversity initiatives continue to be larger than these drawbacks, and in the medium-to-long term they expect this sort of nonsense to die out. (This scenario would imply that their leadership is, in fact, very strong, as it requires a level head to stay the course in the middle of a political / media firestorm when you know that's the right thing to do.)
Which of these is true? All? None? I have no idea without further data, but I'd just as soon not prognosticate utter ruin based on sensationalist news articles.
Were you deliberately leaving out the 4th possibility of Google concluding 'You know what? It is actually wrong to prioritize certain races and genders as a matter of hiring policy, and since it clearly isn't keeping us out of trouble on the public relations front, let's not do it anymore.'
> Meanwhile, inside Google, the diversity advocates say some employees have “weaponized human resources” by goading them into inflammatory statements, which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men.
> Engineer Colin McMillen says the tactics have unnerved diversity advocates and chilled internal discussion. “Now it’s like basically anything you say about yourself may end up getting leaked to score political points in a lawsuit,” he says. “I have to be very careful about choosing my words because of the low-grade threat of doxing. But let’s face it, I’m not visibly queer or trans or non-white and a lot of these people are keying off their own white supremacy.”
I don't understand this mentality at all. Rules requiring civility don't only apply towards white men, and I have never heard of anyone within Google being a white supremacist. Do many of these people think that anyone not pro-affirmative action is a sign of their white supremacist thoughts or something?
>> which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men.
> Rules requiring civility don't only apply towards white men
Welcome to the cutting edge of contemporary social justice culture, significant portions of which seem to want to invert and reorganize racial/gender power structures to put themselves at the top, rather than working to actually wash them away.
To be fair, I really didn't add much to the conversation, just expressed puzzlement towards a mentality that I don't understand. It also drew forth a comment that _should_ have been downvoted. I was actually preparing to delete it myself when it was commented on.
I said it as justification for the downvoting of my post. There are speech patterns that tend to draw toxic comments and reactions, and the existence of such reactions to my post indicate that I probably used such unproductive speech patterns. Those posts should not flourish here.
I don't believe that's true - I think that the Googlers who leaked the memo went to some extent to not name the author publicly, and his name was first posted on Vox Popoli, in fact, by someone sympathetic to him. (Once the name was public, everyone started using it in public.)
Also there's a big difference between "dox" in the sense of "identify a name" and "dox" in the sense of "post lots of personal documents / records about," which is what Kiwi Farms does.
It's common to back channel that information, I have a hard time believing that there was any chance his name would not have come out.
He was also doxed in the regular sense by left wing trolls (which do exist). In one example he was stalked, harassed, and had his photo taken and released from a rather private event.
Yes, I agree, but there's still a humongous difference in scale - backchannels are not public posts, and "trolls" / harassers picking up on public information are different from "trolls" / harassers with direct connections to people with information on their targets.
"Both sides did it" isn't a defense (both sides can be wrong), and it's definitely not a defense if one side is doing it to a much larger and more organized scale than the other, and the other side is generally trying to do the right thing and happens to have some outside trolls who are being misguidedly sympathetic to the cause.
> where employees are encouraged to “bring your whole self to work”
I mean... I do see you have to take this with the usual American-sized boulder of salt, but I honestly wonder how someone thought this was a good idea. I.e. this goal is obviously neither achievable, nor would it be actually a good thing; it doesn't make sense as a slogan.
It is solving a very real problem created by the existence of Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley creates a perfect maelstrom of isolation and loneliness. You have thousands of new people move there every year to find work, and moving tears off a huge chunk of your social network. Even if you manage to keep in touch with some people, you lose the entire portion related to "casually hanging out with your friends and talking about your day". Meanwhile, Silicon Valley is a figurative desert of office parks and suburbs, making it difficult to do anything but work.
Companies like Google (and many before, and many after) solved this problem by creating campuses where their employees could eat, hang out, exercise, play games, and socialize. Their otherwise isolated employees formed new social networks, were happier, more productive, and less likely to leave. It solved many problems, but it also created the other problems that stem from "our employees' work and social lives are too entangled".
'Altman got a verbal warning for writing on an internal board that certain employees should be fired. “I meant only bigoted white men should be fired. They interpreted it as applying to all white men,” Altman says'
I think this statement goes a long way towards helping Damore. That a senior engineer can say something like this openly and not see how it could cause concern and accusations of double standards is telling. I am not advocating for or against Damore but statements like these are not helpful. Saying Bigots should be fired but when you specify race and gender, you are encouraging feelings of persecution and animosity.
I personally don't believe that a workplace is the right location for either Altman or Damore's statements. However, if a culture of allowing this sort of talk is created, you cannot arbitrarily decide that one side is right or wrong without inviting a lawsuit.
Google is currently learning that people need clearly defined rules and if you allow people to say and act how they want in a professional environment, confrontations and trouble are inevitable.
> Altman got a verbal warning for writing on an internal board that certain employees should be fired. “I meant only bigoted white men should be fired. They interpreted it as applying to all white men,” Altman says'
Wow. How can employees believe that this type of language is acceptable in the work place? Is this common in other tech companies on their internal communication channels (like slack)?
Welcome to SV. It's becoming increasingly common within tech, even more disheartening is the complete authoritarian shutdown of discourse around the issue. See your sibling post for a perfect example.
Why even discuss this? How can you expect good intentions from your white coworkers if these are the types of discussions going
on publically in the company?
Race agnostically, it is an obvious statement and should be part of company guidelines : "bigotry will get you fired". Simple.
Similarly, how can anyone believe that saying something like "violent black men should be fired" is okay? Just address violence in the workplace race agnostically in your company guidelines and don't tolerate it.
Why didn't they say "Bigots should be fired?". By inserting race or gender into the statement, you're singling out a group as being the only offenders.
While I'm not sure of the extent to which I agree in this context, this is basically a rehashing of the black lives/all lives matter argument.
In that lens, the statement makes sense if you feel that white men get away with bigotry more than their non white male counterparts. In other words, the subtext is "fire all the bigoted white men too".
Like I said, I'm not sure if I endorse that view it not. It makes more sense in the context of lifting up than putting down, but I can at least see it.
> Why didn't they say "Bigots should be fired?". By inserting race or gender into the statement, you're singling out a group as being the only offenders.
IIRC, there's bit social justice ideology that essentially says that only white people can be bigots. I believe the typical formulation is "racism = power + prejudice." "Power" in this context is a function of your race and other identities, for instance white people axiomatically have "power" but black people don't. This assignment of "power" doesn't change based on context, so if your boss is black and you are white, you're still the one with "power." Therefore, by this "logic," a black person can't be racist because he lacks "power." An identical procedure is applied men an women with sexism.
There is another related social justice idea that you should "never punch down, always punch up." In this context "up" are those with "power" (again, assigned by fixed formula based on race, etc.). The act of "punching up," by the people who think this way, has connotations of "fighting for good," and "punching down" with "oppression."
Combining these ideas, "white men" are the most "powerful" and therefore can and should be "punched" in the name of social justice. This is one source of the gratuitous negative references to "white men," and associated hostility to them, that you see in social justice circles.
IMHO, these are pretty screwed up ideas, and they're a recipe for polarization (and bullying) and not progress. Unfortunately people do believe them and think this way.
> IIRC, there's bit social justice ideology that essentially says that only white people can be bigots. I believe the typical formulation is "racism = power + prejudice."
Worse, "racism" is defined cyclically. If you ask "Who has power?", the answer is "whites/men because they aren't victims of racism/sexism".
This means no matter how much actual power non-whites get, they'll never be guilty of "racism", and racism is effectively defined as a sin of which only whites can be guilty.
Well, first, we have to decide for each whether the sentence is meant to mean all in that category have that characteristic. I think that's nonsensical, so let's say it's clear she wants white men who are bigoted fired and black people who are lazy fired. So then the difference in the sentences is whether you expect to find many bigoted whites or lazy blacks. Lazy black people probably isn't a real problem at Google, but white bigots are probably easy to find.
Doesn't the inclusion of race in both sentences cause problems?
One of the typical examples of a micro aggression is the unnecessary inclusion of a description "I went to the women doctor today," "That was a very fine dressed black man," "That old cashier was really slow."
In the same way I see the inclusion of race in both sentences promoting discrimination based on race. I would go so far as to say that the inclusion of race in both statements makes the statement racist (in the sense that racism is the discrimination of a person or persons based on their race).
I'll agree it was unwise. But the person literally clarified the point. Look, it makes me uncomfortable too, but I understand it as a style of speaking and that people get carried away and that non-offensive language sometimes feels ineffectual. Eyes on the ball: fire bigots not people who are a little loose with their language.
Just look for tangible damage vs. mere words being exchanged. If I'm intolerant and have a pattern of keeping black people off my team, then I'm in for consequences.
But that isn't how tech currently operates. If I have a gay coworker on my team, we get along fine, I have never said an ill word or done an ill deed to them I can still get labeled homophobic for speaking in favor of traditional marriage. I can still be disciplined just for words.
How about saying "fire all the bigots" and trust the audience to fill in the blanks (that this would have a disparate impact that counteracts underrepresentation)?
I believe the original text was "If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted white men" — this can be read as either all the white men at Google are bigots, or that Google should only fire bigots if they are a white male.
Highlighting race and gender when making such a statement is completely unnecessary, e.g. imagine the outcry if someone had said "If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted black women".
Sure it can, if a vegetarian friend of yours said "If you want to increase your health remove all the disgusting meat from your diet", would you read that as them saying that all meat is disgusting or just the occasional piece?
English isn't a strict language. The context here depends on the frequency that you would consume disgusting meat and that will change the common meaning. I suppose there are people who literally think all white men are bigoted and could mean it to apply that way, but I find it unlikely that was the original intent.
That said I don't think there was a need to call out white men specifically in the sentence.
I strongly suspect that you would find the statement "If you want to increase productivity at Google fire all the lazy black people." racist because it implies that all black people are lazy.
If both statement seems fine fine to you than okay.
OK, I kind of agree with you. Logically, it doesn't entail that, but it would be insane to treat natural language as pure logic. Pragmatically, taking context into account, I think the original statement is more likely meant to imply that "All (or a vast majority of) bigots at Google are white men" than "All white men at Google are bigots."
It is kind of like the thread I have seen a few times that does something like
>Damore didn't say women are inferior
>> Quotes Damore "I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
>> See he clearly called them inferior.
>>> No he didn't he just said they were different.
Two people see the same sentence and draw very different conclusions. We can either adopt a norm of honoring what the writer intended or a norm of honoring what the reader observed. I think a lot of people who are most vocally pro-diversity use the later norm when determining if something is or isn't ????ist. If this is the norm I think it should be universally the norm. Thus if we are being charitable to the writer I agree with you that the interpretation should be "We should fire all of the bigots (who happen to be white men)" and not "We should fire all the white men (who are bigots)."
This is a really hard principle to apply consistently which is why I tried to highlight the same kind of statement that was racist instead of sexist. In hopes that people could understand why white men might take offense to the original comment.
> We can either adopt a norm of honoring what the writer intended or a norm of honoring what the reader observed. I think a lot of people who are most vocally pro-diversity use the later norm when determining if something is or isn't ????ist. If this is the norm I think it should be universally the norm.
Gods, I hope this does not become the norm. "Everything can mean anything!"
>Gods, I hope this does not become the norm. "Everything can mean anything!"
As a conservative it kind of feels like that is the case. The second named party in the Google suit got fired for an interpretation of his comments he didn't mean.
I agree with you that this statement, on its own, does not imply all men are like that.
However, the following concerns apply
1) I as a (non-bigoted) white man do not trust the good faith of the person speaking (in context, at Google)
2) I have seen analogous comments about eg. black people be auto-interpreted as bad faith when context made it clear that it was not bad-faith.
3) The inclusion of "white" and "man" in that statement are unnecessary, so them being included in spite of that is a signal of bad faith.
I would like to work in a place where everyone is intelligent and good-faith enough to interpret this sentence in its reasonable sense. But the reality is that such a place doesn't exist. At best I can get a place where statements against white men as a group get this treatment, but statements against other groups will always be interpreted as bad-faith, regardless of context.
I would like for all ambiguous statements like this to be interpreted on the same standard, but as long as they will not be, the next best step is to err on the side of caution and have a blanket ban of things like this
Referencing irrelevancies invites the assumption that you have an ulterior message. The race of an undesirable employee is not relevant unless you intend to imply causation.
Ok, based on the replies I understand that many in this thread think white bigotry and other bigotry are equal. That's probably a mistake, but I can see why "fire bigoted white men" is triggering so those who think that way.
>Ok, based on the replies I understand that many in this thread think white bigotry and other bigotry are equal.
This statement implies to me that you think white bigotry != bigotry. This is one of those statements that make me think "no rational caring individual could believe that" because it sounds racist against white people to begin with. Yet I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Can you explain your mindset? Hopefully also how this mindset does not lead to treating people of different races differently or a justification for why it is okay to treat them different?
To answer both replies, I’m saying white bigotry stands out because white people have the power and numbers. Absent that, then you have a different story, but we’re not absent that.
I am sincerely trying to understand this line of thought. Is it that since white people have more power and more numbers we should focus extra hard on white bigotry?
Starting with the assumption that all people should be treated equally than all bigotry is morally objectionable and we should treat all bigotry as such. The only issue that comes in is that since white people have the power and numbers white bigotry happens more than other bigotry and thus we by chance we object to it more.
I don't see any way that this allows bigotry against whites to get a pass, it just gets called out less because it happens less.
Am I missing something? I feel like I am because I still don't feel like I grok your responses.
> Is it that since white people have more power and more numbers we should focus extra hard on white bigotry?
Yes.
> Starting with the assumption that all people should be treated equally than all bigotry is morally objectionable and we should treat all bigotry as such.
Good assumption. I agree.
> The only issue that comes in is that since white people have the power and numbers white bigotry happens more than other bigotry and thus we by chance we object to it more.
I don't really understand this part, but I'll add that not only does it happen more, it is more damaging. A white bigot can get shit done.
> I don't see any way that this allows bigotry against whites to get a pass, it just gets called out less because it happens less.
I don't think it does allow bigotry against whites. I'm not worried much about bigotry against whites. Maybe I will be after white bigotry is reigned in a bit, but for now eyes on the ball.
> Am I missing something? I feel like I am because I still don't feel like I grok your responses.
I don't really know whether we disagree about something, everything, or nothing.
>I don't think it does allow bigotry against whites. I'm not worried much about bigotry against whites. Maybe I will be after white bigotry is reigned in a bit, but for now eyes on the ball.
Ahh, this I think is where I find issue. You say that you think all people should be treated equally and I see the statement I quoted as clashing with that ideal. Specifically saying "I'm not worried much about bigotry against whites." I am trying to be charitable but as a white person I would get roasted if I said "I'm not worried much about bigotry against blacks."
This mismatch is what causes me to make me question your commitment to the ideal that all people should be treated equally. Because to me, if you really were committed to ending bigotry and promoting inclusion and diversity you would be equally enraged by bigotry by whites and bigotry against whites. Yet, that isn't the case.
This puts me in a really hard spot because I want to believe you mean well but now I have to decide, are you lieing about your commitment to equality or do you have a valid reason to disregard bigotry against whites? I have yet to see a good argument for disregarding bigotry against whites so I am stuck with you are lieing. But I don't think you are...
Because bigotry against whites is a sideshow, a minor issue. It is a joke to elevate it to same problem level as bigotry by whites. Now, to your point, any SPECIFIC incident may be treated equally and should be, but taken on the whole, it's ridiculous to treat them equally and to expect people to use language that treats them equally.
To draw what I see as a parallel in my mind. What you are saying is equivalent to saying that the point of the #MeToo movement is something like
>Because harassment against men is a sideshow, a minor issue. It is a joke to elevate it to same problem level as harassment by men. Now, to your point, any SPECIFIC incident may be treated equally and should be, but taken on the whole, it's ridiculous to treat them equally and to expect people to use language that treats them equally.
It seems like doublespeak, bigotry against whites cannot be both treated equally individually but not treated equally on a whole. That might work in the ideal but it will for sure not work in practice because you will end up creating resentment among whites who have been mistreated and are told "Your problems are not as important." This resentment will fester and end up radicalizing some and on a whole result in a net increase of racists.
It also causes a problem when in the future you have accomplished what you are aiming for, say in 2050 there is no longer any bigotry by whites. Yet, there will still be bigotry against whites. Does it the become a major issue? Will we then elevate it to the same importance as the current issue?
Do you see where I am coming from? How I can see this attitude is not the right one to take if the end goal is equality for all? You don't have to agree with me, I just want to know if you see what I am seeing.
I do see what you're saying, and I understand. And we have the same goal.
But we diverge here: my view is putting a bunch of energy into bigotry on whites takes away from the energy needed fight bigotry by whites. It muddles the issue to always have to add, "some black people are bigots too". But, as you alluded, I think that's temporary. I also don't go so far as to say bigotry on whites is ok right now. The original quote didn't say that, and I wouldn't endorse that.
> Because bigotry against whites is a sideshow, a minor issue.
Then why all the resistance to addressing it? If it's such a small problem, it should be a simple and harmless thing to tackle it along with all the other kinds of bigotry. Carefully policing what kinds of bigotry are to be addressed or not sends the implicit message that some kinds of bigotry are OK. It also makes the overall anti-bigotry project harder because it turns what could be a universal moral appeal into a targeted condemnation that elicits defensiveness and justified accusations of hypocrisy.
If there's a hierarchy of power involved, why not focus on protecting those with the least power instead of policing the most powerful? That would allow for flexibility in dealing with inter and intra-racial/cultural/gender bigotry and decrease the most harm the fastest, wouldn't it?
Because there's bigotry in the statement itself. It's like saying "Shoot all gun owners" or "I hate the intolerant" or "Silence all censors." It's a statement that simultaneously says opposite things. It implicitly endorses that which it ostensibly opposes. It is literally doublethink. The person saying it is deeply confused.
If I have on my shopping list "yams," do I fill the rest of the sheet with explicit exclusions like "not pudding?" No, they are all excluded by simply not having been included.
If we propose a raceless society, why are we mentioning a race? That's the weird part.
If I declare we need to eradicate all biting dogs in my town, does it make sense for me to also include biting rabbits on the list? To be arguing this deep into the problems of a unclear sentence is INSANE!
If she were writing a mathematical proof then I would agree with you. From a logical standpoint stating "white male bigots should be fired" doesn't say anything about non-white non-male bigots.
However, in normal discourse context is not generally understood to be that of a logical proof. Things are implied and inferred by what's included or excluded from what's said.
So, for example suppose I were to say simply "white male high-performing employees should be promoted". Logically this doesn't contradict the statement "all high-performing employees should be promoted". But I didn't say that. I made a much more qualified statement regarding white males. Why did I qualify it so. It's natural to ask such a question. I would expect people to think I'm implying something about non-white non-males. Again - It's natural, and in fact part of normal discourse, to infer things from what people chose to include and omit from their statements (please let me know if you disagree with this).
Similarly, original statement was about white male bigots specifically, not just all bigots. It's natural, outside the context of a logical proof, to infer some meaning from that.
Wow, this is incredible. So many interpret their statement as either "all white men are bigoted and should be fired" or "all the white bigots must be fired but the other bigots can stay". That literally never occurred to me. Why is that? Occam's razor. Benefit of the doubt. Common sense.
Not only that, but they said as much after the fact. I believe them. Why don't more here believe them?
They would have to be a complete idiot radical for those quoted interpretations to be what they meant.
Shortly after Trump was elected, there was a major problem in work Slack where people upset at the outcome would make undirected threats of physical violence in #general. After about a week of it, I was able to get it to stop by commenting on it something like: I don't think it's appropriate to make threats of physical violence in logged work chat. Tech companies get sued for things like bullshit patent infringements all the time, and it would be very damaging to the company for this to ever come out in discovery"
Fortunately, this comment made them stop (or move to a private channel, who knows). But the fact that they were making these comments for a week was rather shocking to me. Nobody involved seemed to think there was anything wrong with saying that you would, quote, "beat in the face of the nearest Trump voter" in a work chat room with ~1000 members
There is a distinction between those two statements - firing white men in and of itself increases "diversity" by adjusting the gender and racial balance of employees, but hiring black people does not increase average productivity unless you believe that all black people are lazy.
That is, the first statement does not require the assumption that all, or even many, white men are bigoted in order to make sense, and the mention of race and gender is directly relevant. (It would also be true that firing white men at random would accomplish the same goal; the meme author is trying to say, why don't we fire the bigoted subset of this group, because we want to fire bigots anyway.)
I think it's a defensible position to believe that the statement isn't acceptable anyway - but I don't think the two statements are analogous by any means.
It's kind of hard to think of something exactly analogous, but something I think is pretty close is "If you want the choir to be balanced during the quiet parts, get rid of the all the loud basses." People don't choose whether they're basses, like they don't choose whether they're white men. It's ambiguous without context whether this is an implication that all basses are loud, or that there are specific basses who are too loud and the rest are fine - but it certainly could mean the latter. (There is enough of a tradition in musical performance that stays barely on the ironic side of ironic bigotry of making fun of certain people for their instrument or vocal part, so the former isn't an unreasonable possibility.) And certainly there might be sopranos or altos or tenors who are too loud, too - but for the immediate problem of solving balance, the implication is that's not the current problem.
If someone in my choir kept going on about how the basses are too loud no matter what they objectively do, I would tell them to cut it out, and I would hope that the choir director would get rid of them if they persisted; it's pretty demotivating to be told that you're doing something wrong no matter what you do. But if we actually have a problem with auditioning too many basses and it's hurting the sound of the choir, and some of them are just not good at singing quietly, getting rid of them is the right thing to do (unless this is a school choir or something where participation is a more important goal than sounding good).
By some marvel, Linus manages to avoid the language of "people who are X should be fired".
There's a distinction between saying unflattering things about people who do unflattering things (like submit broken or low quality code) and making hostile statements about people who simply have some physical attribute.
Misspelled throwaway because want to talk about this and not have people misunderstand and hate me.
There was a similar small bruhaha in the Rust community severals weeks ago. They hired a community manager who has leanings (nothing wrong with that), but had made tweets like "kill all men".
Believe no actual ill will was intended, but you could see why it may trigger people. In the thread announcing this person's new role, a few people brought up issues like this (that wasn't an isolated sentiment, it was a pattern of behavior) and the mods for a while simply deleted any criticism, then they made a hard rule that nobody could talk about it (because that was related to personal issues). This rule was in the interest of preventing harassment (which yeah, legit reason), but it was completely tone deaf. You can't appoint a community manager who has made pointed statements about people in your community and then shut down discussion in the interest of tolerance.
Check out the thread, it looks like a warzone. It turned me off Rust a little bit.
The very act of censoring people bringing up her past behavior is very indicative that they're fully aware of the double standards within their community.
Indeed. I don't think people should be punished their entire lives for statements they made in the past. A very simple, "we are aware of the statments that X has made in the past and they have assured us that they regret them and will not be a concern going forward." would go a long way.
But if the individual stands by those same public comments calling for violence against a particular race or ethnicity then cause for concern is justified. By silencing that concern they are not doing themselves or anyone else a favor.
There are always facts particular to each case. That's why arguments can continue forever -- there is always some mitigating factor you can point to that makes your side OK.
But if you are objective about it you would probably come to the conclusion that conservative political viewpoints or support will hurt you in the SF area, but even radical liberal viewpoints will not.
The prop was, by any measure, mainstream at the time. It may have been on the wrong side of history, but remember that even Obama expressed a lack of support for gay marriage in the past.
Any political issue seems like the most important thing in the world if you look closely enough and lose perspective. Let's move on. Any political position even close to the mainstream should not cost you your job unless you are a politician. But political stuff, for the most part, should not take over the workplace either.
> Let's move on. Any political position even close to the mainstream should not cost you your job unless you are a politician. But political stuff, for the most part, should not take over the workplace either.
Here, here! Many people seem to need to learn how be able to create some distance between themselves and their ideas, so they can put those ideas away when its appropriate and interact with others on different levels.
But if you are objective about it you would probably come to the conclusion that conservative political viewpoints or support will hurt you in the SF area, but even radical liberal viewpoints will not.
Even those viewpoints radical to the level of inciting violence.
To be fair, it was for the anti-gay marriage prop, not just some generic right wing thing.
When someone peacefully, nonviolently supports the wrong cause, it should be appreciated. It's the very fact that places like the US can settle political debates and get on with life without resorting to violence which makes the USA such a great place to live. There's a reason why the ability to transfer power and make policy peacefully is measured in development indexes.
If you want to gauge the justice of a side, then look for their benevolence and intellectual honesty. If you want to speak truth to power, then look to the side that's hounding people out of their jobs and trying to intimidate their enemies into silence. Nelson Mandela called his commissions, "Truth and Reconciliation" commissions, not "let's look back and see who was on the wrong side and dismantle their lives" commissions.
Technically they didn't fire him—he resigned after a loud/extended uproar. It may have been illegal for Mozilla to fire him for this donation because in CA political activity constitutes a protected class.
I'm willing to let her insitements for genocide slide, it happens to the best of us, but what really worries me is her plan to "improve Cargo by incorporating best practices from npm".
If I wrote "Kill all x" people would call me out for the absolute horror that statement implies.
It doesn't matter if you perceive the party to be in a position of power or not.
> "Kill all Americans."
> "Kill all Google employees."
> "Kill all politicians."
Each of these statements is profoundly evil- If you make something akin to this genuinely, then you are worthy of criticism for making them. Unless you retract them, which she has not.
I'm not really letting it slide, I was extending the premise by pretending to be a sympathetic genocidal nazi, which I hope is still absurd enough to be presumed sarcasm. I'm aware that the joke may not age well so I was happy to get it in while I still can.
The CoC complaint is amazing and has me really worried about Rust and I wonder where the adults are. Usually Meta Language people are meritocracy driven so I'm surprised to see a feminist infiltration. GoLang I could understand...
There's a false equivalence. There's never been male genocide, so "kill all men" is basically a joke. But there's nothing funny about advocating for genocide against the Jewish people, because that actually happened.
That's why the standard for orientation discrimination doesn't apply to straight people. It's why the standard for race discrimination doesn't apply to white people. And it's why the standard for sex discrimination doesn't apply to cis men. The history is just very different.
Are you saying that we should treat entire classes of modern people differently based on the events involving ancestors with similar superficial characteristics like skin color and sex?
Last I heard, it was best to treat people equally.
> Are you saying that we should treat entire classes of modern people differently based on the events involving ancestors with similar superficial characteristics like skin color and sex?
Not at all! I'm saying that the history of women in the US is different than the history of men in the US, and that the experience of women in the US is different than the history of men in the US. For example, women are far, far more likely to be physically assaulted by a man than a man is by a woman. And we're not just talking about a dozen or so cases: violence against women is epidemic in the US (and most of the world).
So rather than using "ancestors", we can use "people currently alive". And rather than "superficial characteristics like skin color and sex" we can use "ascribed statuses" like race and sex.
Or we can leave sex out of it. Let's say there was a group of men who have, for centuries, been victimized by the rest of men. They've been abducted, sold, tortured, murdered, humiliated and exploited for centuries. That's the story of Black men (and women, of course) in America.
We can't make some simple rules about "fairness" and leave it at that. We have to understand the history of people, the history of our culture, and the current ways our culture oppresses people before we can even begin to talk about fairness. If we want to be fair towards Black people we have to take into account the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, and institutional racism. If we want to be fair towards women we have to take into account chattel, disenfranchisement, sexism, and rape culture.
Not doing this is essentially breaking someone's leg before a sprint, and when they lose and they say "Wow, that was super unfair!" we say "Wow you had the same rules! What are you upset about? That whole leg breaking thing happened a _long time ago_"
So you are saying that we should treat entire classes of modern people differently based on the events involving ancestors with similar superficial characteristics like skin color and sex.
Your excuse is "history."
I know of some other groups who have engaged in that sort of ideology. One is the KKK. The other is the Nazis. Also, the Soviets all throughout the USSR, particularly in Ukraine.
Not doing this is essentially breaking someone's leg before a sprint, and when they lose and they say "Wow, that was super unfair!" we say "Wow you had the same rules! What are you upset about? That whole leg breaking thing happened a _long time ago_"
You are super ignorant of history, because you are buying into a far-left propaganda version of history used to justify inter-group conflict. If slavery is leg breaking, then also note that Koreans have been doing it to Koreans, Europeans have been doing it to Europeans, Africans have been doing it to fellow Africans. If there has been a lot of leg breaking going on, the solution is to stop the leg breaking, not engage in recriminations about it.
Since when have recriminations been the solution to peace in history?
> So you are saying that we should treat entire classes of modern people differently based on the events involving ancestors with similar superficial characteristics like skin color and sex.
No I'm not using skin color (can we just say race?) and sex, and I don't think you can just dismiss history as an excuse. For example, there are a lot of people in Africa who look like Black people, but when they come to the US they haven't labored under the same kind of racism that Blacks have, so their history and culture are different, and they don't have the same disadvantages (they still have many). However, if they have kids here that difference pretty much goes away for them.
> I know of some other groups who have engaged in that sort of ideology. One is the KKK. The other is the Nazis. Also, the Soviets all throughout the USSR, particularly in Ukraine.
I earnestly hope you're not comparing me to the KKK, Nazis, and the Soviets, so let's proceed as though you aren't.
> You are super ignorant of history, because you are buying into a far-left propaganda version of history used to justify inter-group conflict.
I really don't know what this means. Slavery in the US was horrible and its effects reverberate today. We're continuing to have a national debate about how to view the Confederacy (which I personally think is ridiculous -- it was a monstrous pro-slavery rebellion resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans) and historic Americans who were also slave owners. Slavery, along with Jim Crow and segregation, really did happen and institutional racism persists to this day.
Also maybe be a little nicer.
> Koreans have been doing it to Koreans
Nobi made up around 10% of the Korean population and wasn't based on race. Black slaves in the US made up about 50% of the population in the South and... are Black. There was no Korean Jim Crow and no Korean segregation, probably both because of WW2 and because, again, slavery in Korea wasn't racial.
> Europeans have been doing it to Europeans
The most recent example of this is Barbary slavery, but again there are significant differences: slavery wasn't inherited and it wasn't race-based. Also no Jim Crow or segregation.
> Africans have been doing it to fellow Africans.
I'm guessing this list is your argument that slavery shouldn't be an excuse today, but Wikipedia has a whole section on effects in Slavery in Africa [1]. It's also in many ways intertwined with the Atlantic slave trade. Africa is a big place so this topic is just too big, but suffice it to say this too was super bad and continues to cause problems today.
> If there has been a lot of leg breaking going on, the solution is to stop the leg breaking, not engage in recriminations about it. Since when have recriminations been the solution to peace in history?
I don't know what you mean by "recriminations" here. If anyone's making recriminations ("an accusation in response to one from someone else") it's the people saying "What are you upset about?" -- their accusation came second...?
Maybe what you mean is "bringing the whole slavery/segregation thing up all the time". But like it or not, we can't escape the actions of people we have no relation to, because those actions had long-lasting effects we continue to deal with. We don't get to disclaim responsibility for the current state of our society, because it's our society now.
I agree we should stop leg breaking -- or really what I mean here is we should address our racist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic culture. Something like 30% of the US is cis, straight, white, and male. That means 70% of the US deals with some form of discrimination constantly, every day, all the time. This discrimination has significant effects on health, crime, the economy, really everything for all of us. Men face discrimination as well: look at the prison population f...
Personally, I have no problem with people saying things like this, especially in their personal lives. I like banter. But part of banter is that both sides are allowed to play. If someone can express extreme ideas like "kill all men" I should be able to make equally extreme jokes, but in different ideological directions.
What bothers me is not the language, but the unfairness. I can understand not permitting banter at work or in organizations. It makes some people uncomfortable. But what I can't understand is just allowing banter of some ideological bent.
> I can understand not permitting banter at work or in organizations. It makes some people uncomfortable. But what I can't understand is just allowing banter of some ideological bent.
I can. The point of "[only] allowing banter of [a particular] ideological bent" is to enforce conformity to that ideology. When that happens fairness isn't a priority.
> What bothers me is not the language, but the unfairness.
I've worked under an HR staff member who had this pin on her bag. I lived, and that job was good enough, but the thought was always in the back of my mind: what if I piss her off some day and she falls back on her prejudices + her position to make my life miserable?
I would support a blanket ban on all things like that _in the workplace_.
That his clear prejudice against women would make him unfit to ever manage women. That the women on his team would know he thought they were inferior (despite him never saying that).
"Kill all men" though... I'm sure the guys on her team would get a fair shake, right?
I'm tired of people using the shallowest understanding of bigotry in order to harass those who call out bigotry. When a feminist says "kill all men", they're saying "the patriarchy has oppressed women for centuries and I'm angry about it". When a racial justice advocate says "kill all white people" they're saying "white people are literally murdering people of color and I'm angry about it". When a white male software engineer at Google makes the argument to everyone at the company that women are biologically less suited to be engineers, he's invoking an incomprehensible history of physical, financial, and cultural oppression -- a mindset that we still struggle to escape today. They are not the same thing.
Please start thinking more deeply about these issues and please do some research. Racism, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, and homophobia are all far more complicated than a few language rules.
If someone doesn't have a decoder book handy to make these translations, how are they supposed to react? How are you supposed to have an actual discussion and change minds if things phrased in such a hostile manner from the start?
If your goal is to have an actual discussion and change minds, you should know about the subject matter. So you don't need a decoder book, you just need to google "misogyny in america".
That's the constructive thing to do, if you're interested.
edit --
Hey I wrote a little screenplay to demonstrate how a conversation like this might go, in order to placate some of the totally earnest replies below:
A: kill all men
B: huh, A, what's that about?
A: Peter Thiel blames the 19th Amendment for the collapse of our society; the patriarchy is everywhere
All of which is to say that if you ask, "huh, A, what's that about?" instead of, "you genocidal maniac feminism is the worst and you're the worst" you can have a discussion.
I don't understand. If I read something that says "kill all men" and I am not aware of the context attached to it, how am I supposed to make the leap to Google "misogyny in america"?
Edit: To respond to your edit, I'm saying through the initial phrasing of the statement, a good portion of people will be alienated and likely not get to the point where they ask "huh, what's that about?". I don't know if that's intentional or not but given how pervasive these problems are framed, I would think attracting as large of an audience as possible would be beneficial.
> in order to placate some of the totally earnest replies below
This is not conducive to any productive discussion. I've responded with questions because I'm curious about the intent and goals behind these tactics. If you don't think I'm being earnest then why bother responding?
> through the initial phrasing of the statement, a good portion of people will be alienated
There are plenty of people out there teaching us about feminism. Trolling Twitter to find straw men to burn is not constructive. It's not every woman's responsibility to teach us about feminism. They get to be angry and frustrated; they don't have to be perfect ambassadors at all times.
> I'm curious about the intent and goals behind these tactics.
These aren't tactics. These are just people fed up with the patriarchy.
> If you don't think I'm being earnest then why bother responding?
Mostly because I find it hard to believe anyone's actually worried about male genocide, and false outrage is like the #1 tactic in discussions like this. You can see it in other responses like "well well well, who's SEXIST now?!"
There are a lot of assumptions in your post and I hope my response clarifies my position.
>There are plenty of people out there teaching us about feminism. Trolling Twitter to find straw men to burn is not constructive. It's not every woman's responsibility to teach us about feminism. They get to be angry and frustrated; they don't have to be perfect ambassadors at all times.
I was not referencing Twitter, I was quoting what was in your post. I did not say anyone was responsible for teaching anyone about feminism or how they should function as ambassadors. I do not feel like I need to be educated on this matter and do not care about how ambassadors conduct themselves. However, if you put yourself out there as an ambassador, it's natural that people scrutinize things you say a bit closer than others. When people are able to say that you represent something or are a spokesperson for a cause, they are going to attach your words to it. This ties into the next quote.
> These aren't tactics. These are just people fed up with the patriarchy.
Tactics, messaging, whatever you want to call it, I'm just trying to understand the intent. If people are fed up and this is just venting, then sure, do you I guess? I personally just think it hurts the cause more than it helps it and am wondering if that's a concern or if there's something else going on.
>Mostly because I find it hard to believe anyone's actually worried about male genocide, and false outrage is like the #1 tactic in discussions like this. You can see it in other responses like "well well well, who's SEXIST now?!"
I have not expressed any concern about male genocide. I have been upfront about asking about the intended efficacy behind the type of language used in this. That's all. Assuming ill intent when it's presented upfront is a really good way to lose people who might have been otherwise agreeable to a cause.
I didn’t realize that saying “kill all men” was attempting to foster a useful discussion. In fact, I’d say there’s nothing constructive about saying that even if you know the context.
Right. I don't think that "kill all men" should be taken very seriously and I'll go for it not being as bad as (say) "kill all Jews" for historical reasons. The weird thing is that there's a huge gap between it not being "that bad" and it being no obstacle at all to a leadership position in the community, especially given the Rust community's infamous obsession with language (can't say "thanks guys", can't say "bad style"). The optics on this are really bad.
I fully support equality for all and believe that as long as people are not hurting others what they do with their life and body is their call but your argument is not advancing that cause.
You seem to infer immunity on the part of those you deem oppressed from having their statement being taken at face value but don't extend this same courtesy to those you deem oppressors.
You believe that someone should read "kill all men" and respond in a curious manner, because you think you are in the right, regardless of whether they are a parent of small male children. We exist in a nation of free speech but if you say something, it is not the responsibility of the listener to do the research to figure out if there is some deeper meaning to what you are saying. Even if there is a deeper meaning, calling for the eradication of a gender or race is not going to initiate the productive conversation between the speaker and those being targeted that you think it is. I have young boys and once someone says to me "kill all men" anything else they say is pretty much meaningless. There are better way to initiate a free exchange of ideas.
Many would not extend this courtesy of looking for deeper meaning to those whose view points you are trying to change. Would you be happy to initiate a calm thoughtful conversation with someone who tweets out that "Women are ruining this great nation" or would you call for their firing and censorship?
Individuals have different ideas on life and that's ok but the workplace is not the right place to discuss controversial topics unless the freedom of expression is extended to all view points, and there has to be an understanding that feelings may be hurt on both sides.
Finally, words have specific meaning, especially the written word. Words also carry consequences. If someone says "Kill all men", I will believe that what they mean is "kill all men".
> If someone says "Kill all men", I will believe that what they mean is "kill all men".
What do you think someone means when they say "I'm gonna kill the person who wrote this"? Do you call the cops?
> You seem to infer immunity on the part of those you deem oppressed from having their statement being taken at face value but don't extend this same courtesy to those you deem oppressors.
There's a long history of men oppressing women. There is no history of women oppressing men. So when someone says "kill all men" they can't be referencing a history of oppression. On the other hand when someone says "biologically, women are worse engineers than men", they're referencing a school of thought that has denied women basic human rights and still has modern adherents.
My point is we're not on the verge of a male genocide (it feels ridiculous to even type this). We are always on the verge of taking away freedoms from women and people of color. So I think we need a more nuanced rule than "face value", or whatever.
> Would you be happy to initiate a calm thoughtful conversation with someone who tweets out that "Women are ruining this great nation" or would you call for their firing and censorship?
Censorship? Nah. Firing? If they have an important position then certainly. The same way I would advocate that if they said "Slavery was a good idea" or "Nazism has a lot going for it". We know slavery is wrong. We know Nazism and fascism are wrong. We know misogyny and sexism are wrong. Protesting the patriarchy or being angry about it isn't the same thing.
I'd also be willing to have a conversation with them though, so "both" is the answer to your question I think.
> Individuals have different ideas on life and that's ok but the workplace is not the right place to discuss controversial topics unless the freedom of expression is extended to all view points, and there has to be an understanding that feelings may be hurt on both sides.
Global warming is "controversial" despite being obviously the truth, but we can't move forward on addressing it because we continue to pay lip service to people who just don't believe in it. The same is true of feminism, economics, the criminal justice system, gay rights, immigration, and so many other things. I do care what people think and I want to treat them with respect and consideration, but that doesn't trump our right to things like equal pay, clean air and water, due process, etc.
Or to put it another way, at some point I don't care what bigots think and I don't think they should dictate policy. I don't have to agree to listen to the KKK at work if I want to be able to say that women deserve equal pay. That's nonsense.
>We are always on the verge of taking away freedoms from women and people of color.
Do you honestly believe this? Do you think that tomorrow, most people will wake up and decide women shouldn't be allowed to vote? Is that an active thing that you fear?
I think there are a lot of ways to make it harder for specific groups of people to vote. There are active voter intimidation and misinformation campaigns in every federal election. I don't think we'll repeal the 19th Amendment. I do think it's possible we change how people vote so that it's a lot easier for men to vote than women. Many women work retail and service jobs. It's possible to move voting from public precincts to private workplaces (Indiana's Vote Centers are like this in some ways), with some safeguards about traffic, exposure, etc. You could argue, like the proponents of Vote Centers did, that this is far more convenient and that in order to protect voters and votes, we'll only put Vote Centers in secure offices. Afterwards, fewer people will need precincts so we'll save money by shutting many of them down.
Would a policy like that ever pass? Again, Indiana's doesn't have the "office" stuff but it's pretty close. Would it prevent all women from voting? No. But you don't need to do that really, you just need to pull their turnout down. Same thing with gerrymandering, voter intimidation, etc. You just need to give yourself an solid advantage. And putting Vote Centers in secure offices where the majority of people are male, and then cutting precincts where the makeup is balanced, increases voting access for men and decreases it for everyone else (well OK, middle class and higher men, but you get my point).
Or if limiting voting access is too abstract, look at equal pay. Look at women's health clinics being forced to shut down because they provide abortion services (a crucial component of women's health). Look at women not being allowed in active combat until very, very recently (military promotions are hard to get w/o active combat -- wonder why only 7% of the US' generals are women...).
So no, I don't think we'll repeal the 19th Amendment tomorrow. I think people who are racists, anti-feminists, homophobes, etc. have other tools they use that are actually pretty effective.
I don't think that has an effect on male voter turnout because far worse things happen to you if you don't sign up for selective service.
But you're right, gender roles harm everyone. You can look at the effects of our idea of "masculinity" on male health, they're pretty devastating. One of the main goals of feminism is to eradicate gender roles so people are free to live how they like without laboring under some ancient, outdated ideas on how they should act based on their sex -- which they had no part in choosing.
>When a feminist says "kill all men", they're saying "the patriarchy has oppressed women for centuries and I'm angry about it".
That might be your intent, but that is not how it is interpreted. It sounds bigoted, thus, that language should be avoided if the speaker cares about stopping bigotry.
1. Are you making an "intent is irrelevant" argument about speech outside the workplace?
2. What if the speaker cares about expressing frustration about bigotry? Do they have to get your sign off on how to express it?
3. It's a little wicked to oppress people for centuries, and then tell them they have to choose between expressing anger about it or participating in a constructive dialogue about ending it -- especially when a lot of us don't even recognize the problem.
You should probably be aware of the term "tone-policing," because I think you're very close to being directly accused of it.
In short, it's the social justice idea that:
1) people with the correct identities (LGBT, POC, women, etc) should be able to express themselves as rudely, angrily, or abusively as they like; and that
2) people with other, disfavored, identities (such as white men) cannot object to that rude, angry, or abusive manner of expression. If they do, it's an objectionable form of "oppression." Instead they must take the incivility, be supportive of it, and desperately and submissively search for some kind of positive meaning in the nasty statements. You see this all of the twisting around "kill all men."
However, IMHO, all of that is really just a tactic pushed by a bunch of assholes who want to be jerks to others and get away with it.
Yeah I felt like searine was tone policing a little, but your characterization is... not helpful?
> 1) people with the correct identities (LGBT, POC, women, etc) should be able to express themselves as rudely, angrily, or abusively as they like;
It's not about correct or disfavored identities. It's about people who have been oppressed by society. If I chopped off 20% of your paycheck, you'd probably be angry about it. If I then were like, "whoa, there's no need to be angry", that's super dismissive. You can't do something bad to someone, and then come down on them for reacting angrily.
It's also not "as they like". It's really only specifically about social issues.
> Instead they must take the incivility, be supportive of it, and desperately and submissively search for some kind of positive meaning in the nasty statements.
Basically none of this is right. "submissively"? Really just understand that our culture makes things harder for people who aren't cis straight white men, and don't give them grief when they get frustrated about it.
Bigotry isn't really about words or drawing lines around sex, gender, or race. It's about the institutions that oppress people of color, LGBT people, and women. That's why saying "kill all men" as an expression of frustration isn't the same as, "women are biologically worse engineers than men". The US has no history of male genocide and it's silly to even consider. The US does have a history of curbing the rights of women though, and if people like James Damore have their way we'll start walking back down the path where we curtail the rights, freedoms, and opportunities of women and justify it using "biology".
There is no correlating behavior here. If feminists win out, women will pay the same for health care as men do, we'll have as many women working in STEM as we have men, women will be paid the same money for the same work. You can't equate that with sexism. You can't say that if we want to advocate for equal rights for women in the workplace that we have to tolerate people advocating against equal rights for women in the workplace. It's deeply and clearly wrong. It's like if I want to say "vaccines don't cause autism" we have to give equal air time to people who think they do. No, we don't. They're wrong.
That's why these things aren't the same. I would guess you'll probably just say (again), "people who say 'kill all men' are expressing hate against men, that's misandry and it's bigoted", but please at least consider what I've written now to... idk 8 people in this thread. The worst thing that happens is you come to the conclusion I'm just spending a lot of time ineffectively trolling and burning my karma. But I'm hoping you'll start to consider that the issue is much more complicated.
Bigotry isn't just words, but words matter. A lot. Instead of dumping a ton of words defending bigotry, maybe just use a few well chosen ones to denounce it.
I've spent a lot of time explaining this to you. If you don't want to listen that's fine, if a little disappointing. But really, please do some reading on feminism and anti-racism. Look here [1]. Look at the differences in hate crimes against white and Black people. Or look here [2] and see the differences in unemployment. Or look here [3] and see the difference in prison population. Or look here [4] at the differences between male and female victims of domestic violence. These things happen because of institutional racism and sexism, and if we're going to deal with them we're going to have to be informed.
It's not bigoted. Men have oppressed women -- basically since there have been women. Hell if someone did that to me I'd want to kill them too. Merely recognizing the sex of your oppressor isn't bigoted.
You're asking for a deep knowledge and understanding of bigotry but making a mistake by applying a shallow definition to race in the first place, and isolating that as a direct cause of behavior rather than taking the time to understand the intersectionality of race, class, gender identity and cultural history, among other things.
I'm really tired of having to explain to people that claim to have studied this exact thing why it's not as simple as white people vs everyone else. When you boil it down like that you don't get solutions.
> I'm really tired of having to explain to people that claim to have studied this exact thing why it's not as simple as white people vs everyone else.
Isn't it though? Look at the race numbers for prison, school quality, poverty, profession, representation in media, etc. Even when you control for everything else (especially socioeconomic status; people love to argue that being poor and white is just as hard but hey, racism is still something that poor Black people have to deal with that poor white people don't) race is a huge, dominating factor.
If an individual who I have never met before approaches me wearing a pin that says "kill all men", it is not my responsibility to understand the years of philosophy reading that have caused them to express a totally reasonable and nuanced perspective in very easily misunderstood words. It is 100% reasonable for me to expect that those words mean what they say, and not some other, more subtle meaning that I am unaware of.
Even if this is actually true! Even if it is actually true that "kill all men" expands into this reasonable position. Because I have no access to what goes on inside someone else's head. All I have access to is what I see.
And when I, a man, see a person with management authority over me, wearing a pin that says 'kill all men', I get scared. This is not appropriate for a workplace, no moreso than any white supremacist garbage is.
> It is 100% reasonable for me to expect that those words mean what they say.
Sure, because when someone says "put your money where your mouth is" you eat your wallet. When someone says "keep your chin up" you walk around looking at the sky.
If you ever, in your entire life, encounter someone who believes all men should be killed, do you really think you're gonna notice their "Kill All Men" pin before they get you?
All this nonsense about "I believe those words" is bananas to me. Get out of here.
had made tweets like "kill all men"...Believe no actual ill will was intended
If someone thinks "kill all X" is okay, depending on the value of X, then there's something really weird going on! What if X is any of these? Women, Black people, Jews, Lesbians, Asians, Gay people, Republicans, or Rich People? Back in the good old days, "prejudice" meant judging people on their surface characteristics as opposed to on their merits, and such a statement would have been seen as highly suspect. Now, it's seen as the kind of stuff "Social Justice Advocates" say? People who are "community managers" have such a distorted sense of fairness that they can't parse what they're doing?
I guess even supposedly intelligent tech people believe this "X-ism == Prejudice + Power" crap? Sorry, but racism is judging people by only their race, and sexism is judging people only by their sex. The direction of the arrow does not matter. Anyone who believes something like that hasn't learned skeptical thought, and anyone who promulgates that is supporting a supremacist position of one group dominating another.
Power is contextual. This is clearly true, as demonstrated by history. Anyone who promulgates "X-ism == Prejudice + Power" as if Power is a global, unchanging vector is either dishonest, disconnected from reality, or ignorant of history.
SlateStarCodex had a good article on this. Basically, if you keep on complaining about bad <X> people then <X> people are going to start worrying that you are targeting them because you are referring to <X> people when you could just complain about bad people.
This can also cause strife between well meaning people who wouldn't otherwise be at each others throats. Like you have someone complaining about bad <X> people, an <X> person gets triggered and lashes out, the original complainer now believes the triggered person is a bad <X> person.
I think a sizable portion of the diversity arguments are brouhaha caused by people who don't speak specifically and clearly.
I'm not always good at it myself. But when "say what you mean, and mean what you say" isn't at least someones goal for their choice of phrasing, then they're probably just going to make things worse.
Also, people don't have an obligation to instantly re-cast everything they hear into the best possible argument for a poorly made point. You can make a good point poorly. We should stop blaming the reader for not bending over backwards to take it the way the writer wanted. Or, maybe, at least stop calling them autistic.
"Meanwhile, inside Google, the diversity advocates say some employees have “weaponized human resources” by goading them into inflammatory statements, which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men."
Does anyone else think that "goading them into" is basically transferring responsibility to others for saying stupid, inappropriate things at work?
Unrelated to what "side" of the "war" people making statements are on, I would think that the typical role of the HR department would be to examine the context surrounding inappropriate statements at work before taking action.
If the HR department doesn't operate that way, or the company guidelines suggest that some statements demand reprimand regardless of context, then I would suggest the issue would be surrounding the way the HR department operates rather than the people making complaints to HR.
Honestly, I could see HR legitimately reprimanding inflammatory statements, regardless of context, that were strong enough to get them involved. It's an escalation of a disagreement and employees should be expected to behave more professionally.
That line stuck out to me as well. It's a good example of this victimhood mindset where even when the people on the left are the ones being reprimanded they insist that the other side started it and forced their hand somehow. There is not a single note of personal responsibility. Obviously the whole article has this bias but it is wild to me how oblivious lines like this look.
It is telling that the top most comment in reaction to an article about right-wing harassment and doxing campaign is about how the maligned the poor majority is.
Conservative Americans openly advocate for white supremacists but somehow want to escape the label of 'racist'. Since the trouble is having discussions openly, the first step would be to first fully embrace our own positions. It would be far more helpful for the discussion if all these 'what about white men?' types just get the courage of their convictions.
And one thing we certainly don't need is more people expressing the "courage of their convictions" with remarks like "kill all men" or "acts of courage" like the shootings at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park.
Yes, if someone is conservative and is also openly advocating for white supremacy and also wants to escape the label of racist and also is saying 'what about white men?' they should do so openly.
Not all conservatives are advocating this, not all of those who do want to escape that label, and not all of those who are both talk about what about white men.
If you are all of those things, you are an extreme minority, one that I doubt is present in this discussion.
Trump is like the figurehead for a culture war where the deeply religious, those who describe themselves as having traditional values and racists, all of whom have felt under siege (rightly or wrongly) and have come out of the woodwork.
How anyone who works at Google can feel oppressed is honestly beyond me. In my own experience, the company bends over backward to accommodate you, as a general rule.
I'm actually perplexed by the argument from some that things like Damore's memo are an issue of freedom of speech. It is not. More importantly, defenders seem oblivious to the fact that implicitly questioning whether your coworkers deserve to be there inevitably creates a hostile work environment and that's really the problem.
The low point to me is how some (reference in the article) feel justified in leaking conversations and personal details of their coworkers to the likes of Breitbart. That is truly disgusting behaviour as far as I'm concerned.
If you're a white male conservative Google engineer who feels oppressed and leaks such details, maybe the best thing for you to do is question your belief system that's so warped that you've managed to convince yourself that that's OK. Because it isn't.
Excellent post. I am just shocked reading some of the posts on this thread. Honestly wonder if there is not an agenda to try to divide us everywhere in the US from gov to companies like Google.
The problem is (at least in part) the two party system. It really helps fuel the us vs them mentality. It allows people to write off people's opinions with a broad stroke. For example, "Oh, that person is Republican. They must be racist and hate poor people," or "That person is a Democrat, they want everything handed to them and an authoritarian state." Both of these statements clearly do not represent the average person on either side.
Opinions are a spectrum, but we are constantly blasted with the extremist opinions on both sides. Social media has only amplified these issues. Extremists generate many responses from both sides and thus a lot of eyes end up on these opinions. Talk to your neighbor. Regardless of their political affiliation, they're probably a pretty decent human being (obviously there are outliers). Just try to remember the person you're talking to is a human being and their opinion is probably more nuanced than you give them credit for.
> which is understandable, since defenders don't hold this view. Which parts of the memo are you referring to.
I'm not going to dissect the entire memo and get into a back-and-forth about the exact comments but one example is illustrative:
> - A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates
The implication being that it's easier for "diversity" candidates to get hired. This implicitly devalues any such coworkers you have because you've just said they were held to a lower standard.
If you can't see how that might create a hostile work environment then I'm afraid I can't help you.
> AFAIK the memo itself was a result of a leak, which sets the tone.
So that justifies opening up your colleagues to very public harassment and open attacks by leaking not only what they said but their personal information? Because the memo leak set the "tone"?
I sure hope you're not saying that. And if you aren't, what are you saying, exactly?
Is it really your view that it's unacceptable to draw attention to a high priority queue or something like that, just because it might 'devalue' the beneficiaries of the policy?
My Twitter feed (former software engineer) has become an endless, open harangue targeting white men. My industry collegues don’t even think twice about openly saying white men are at the root of all problems in tech.
Everyone knows, the definition of “making something diverse” is “removing white men from a group and replacing them with anyone not white and male.”
If I were to post anything remotely resembling disagreement , it would end my professional career. I would be called racist, sexist, transphobic, you name it. So I keep my mouth shut. I’m not the only one.
If I were to reveal that these statements make me deeply uncomfortable, I would be accused of “white fragility.”
Trump isn’t the problem. Any sort is disagreement has been effectively banned and silenced by use of the exact same coercive tactics that are now being turned back on these far Left Google employees.
Liz Fong Jones for example, who would openly disparage white men on Twitter on a regular basis - Still has a job!
Despite all of the harassment, administratively, if you disparate white people due to their race, age and gender (old white men), you are still employed. Maybe you get a mean tweet now and then but your job is intact.
Think about that. If I were to post any of the following:
Women don’t work as hard as men and have different priorities due to their biology, All gender bathrooms are stupid and don’t make sense etc - I would get fired.
If me saying those things is wrong and fireable, so is their left wing equivalent.
It’s time for these large corporations to realize that allowing the minorities to disparage the majority isn’t the solution or acceptable either.
Something tells me it wasn't a conservative that originally leaked Damore's memo; I think it was likely a left-wing idealogue who're unable to tolerate alternative perspectives on the subject of diversity.
And let's be completely honest, Damore's memo was mischaracterized in the wider media; at no point did he say that women made worse engineers than men, and at no point were his suggestions regarding improving Google's diversity efforts (which is something he spent time and thought on) even glanced at by his detractors. I'd challenge anyone who thinks I'm misinterpreting the memo to prove me wrong; I would welcome being corrected as right now the coverage of Damore makes me feel like the only sane person in the crazy house.
So is your argument that leaking the memo justifies opening up your colleagues to public attacks and harassment? I sure hope not.
You're not the only person to have mentioned that the memo leaked. So what? That's basically the "well, they started it!" argument. Or even "two wrongs make a right".
Knowingly opening up colleagues to a barrage of hate is a vile act. There is no justification for it. Condemn the leak of the memo if you want but it is unrelated.
It's not unrelated, to quote your original comment:
> If you're a white male conservative Google engineer who feels oppressed and leaks such details, maybe the best thing for you to do is question your belief system that's so warped that you've managed to convince yourself that that's OK. Because it isn't.
Here you are implying that white male conservative Google engineers who leak such details should question their warped belief system, yet you're excusing others who presumably aren't white male conservatives who have done exactly the same thing.
I was responding to this element of the parent post: "The low point to me is how some (reference in the article) feel justified in leaking conversations and personal details of their coworkers to the likes of Breitbart.". Tit-for-tat tactics aren't justifiable, but they're hardly surprising and I was pointing out that by leaking the memo, one side legitimized that tactic. It's an observation, not a value judgement.
- Neo-nazis committing violence in Charlottesville with a president who almost refused to condemn them and tempered any hollow condemnation with claims of their being very fine people on both sides;
- The Chief of Staff peddling the quite racist view that the Civil War was a "failure to compromise", implicitly blaming Northern aggression;
- Defense of civil war statues and monuments. Personally I have mixed feelings about this one because you can't erase history no matter how ugly. But that wasn't the point. The point was a rallying cry to the descendants of former slave owners who seem unable to get over the fact that they can't own slaves anymore;
- Puerto Rico basically being abandoned post-Marla. Compare that to the response after the Houston flooding. On its own this may simply be incompetence. It fits a pattern of behaviour however.
The existence of racist acts prior to Trump becoming president is beside the point. The issue is the quantity and nature of events after (compared to before) and how such purveyors of hate and intolerance have been emboldened by the white nationalist-in-chief.
The emboldening was caused not by Trump, but by the media itself. For example with Charlottesville, Trump's initial response was:
> We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.
This addressed the extreme-right/neo-nazi violence, as well as the increasing violence perpetrated by extreme-left/antifa agitators (which you conveniently ignored). I would hope my president would condemn all political violence equally.
The media took his statement and ran with it, arguing that it somehow supported extreme-right violence. Alt-right people believed them and became emboldened. If the media had focused on the actual political violence and emphasized that all such acts should be condemned, maybe the agitators would have crawled back to their basements.
Also consider under new religious protection rules, one may discriminate against gays and transsexuals in business if it is important to their religious views. This is considered a conservative victory.
When people think of mainstream American conservative views, do they mean like those on the Texas GOP platform? People should go take a look. Or on Reddit's /r/conservative?
What do people here think about the fact that for the past 2 decades, the only issues worthy of national Christian consensus have been sexual issues? And now there's this transgender business? For example, do people remember the push for a Constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage? Was that used to rally the base?
Jesus, can people just not talk about politics/religion/sex at work? This isn’t a problem for other work environments. Maybe it’s an age thing? Or maybe it happens when people become too friendly with their coworkers. Either way, I’ve been in that situation recently and it’s not fun. E.g., there are people at work who shitlist you if you support the ACLU, because the ACLU recognizes that our existing first amendment jurisprudence comes from Supreme Court cases involving the KKK’s right to free speech. But there’s a contingent of the left that has a knee-jerk reaction to that, and I work with some of those people.
I also know for a fact there are conservatives at work who are uncomfortable too because they don’t have the majority view, and that’s not okay. You should never feel uncomfortable at work just because you’re in some kind of minority. One real easy way to avoid that is just not talk about politics at work or outside work with your coworkers.
Being able not talk about politics is privilege. When being a trans person who is treated with respect is somehow a political thing or when being an Iranian whose freedom of movement is somehow a political thing then it becomes impossible to leave politics at home. "Hey can I use the women's restroom" is a question that is filled with politics.
I would imagine that, for the vast majority of people working at Google, politics do not affect their day to day work life, so there is no reason to talk about it. Even with the issue of trans people and bathrooms, as long as there is a company wide policy about how to deal with it, no one needs to worry about it.
I’m actually gay, but thank you for assuming I don’t struggle with LGBTQ issues. :) Anyway, there is a difference between getting into an argument about socialism (happens at my work) and using the restroom that matches your identity. The former you don’t need, and the latter, at least where I’m at now, nobody would care at all.
And that’s not to say companies can’t make political decisions. Company policy for letting trans people use the restroom that matches their gender identity is fine because it’s not people arguing about Trump during lunch, it’s an official company policy. I just want my coworkers to stop getting into arguments about things that then make it really awkward to work with them.
See, that’s the thing: nobody gives a crap who uses which bathroom at work. Really. Nobody argues about that. But arguing about policy or socialism or who is a real communist or not is not work-appropriate.
How do you avoid talking about politics when the contentious item is a decision that must be made by the company? And this same item is up for debate in tons of industries. Just look at the Oscars.
Funny how age is still not one of the items discussed at Google when it comes to discussions of diversity. Seems like it is so ingrained in the SV culture that it is just generally accepted that age is an instant disqualifier.
Word on the street is that Google is over-staffed. Can’t they warn/fire people until they get the message to chill out? They’re already being sued and the employment contracts are at-will.
> Meanwhile, inside Google, the diversity advocates say some employees have “weaponized human resources” by goading them into inflammatory statements, which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men.
Something like this has happened to me. I will say this, the alt-right are excellently adopting the tactics of the SJWs in taking offense at everything. Horseshoe theory at work?
It's not horseshoe theory. It's more akin to weapons escalation. If your enemy develops a more effective weapon and uses it against you, you had best develop your own version or get wiped out.
Why not use 2017 numbers, especially since diversity is often about achieving something close to parity with the general population:
"56% White, 35% Asian, 4% two or more races, 4% Hispanic or Latinx, 2% Black and less than 1% American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander" (only US employees)
"women make up 31% of all employees at Google"
http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/
I don't see why a group that has the majority cannot be discriminated against. If Google said "we're only offering maternity leave to women" that would be a discrimination against men, even if there is more of them at google. Blind interviews have nothing to do with this.
Is this the "what about white history month" argument? I don't see inclusion programs as discrimination against the majority. Neither does the majority of corporations or the US government.
>Blind interviews have nothing to do with this
Seems like hiring is decided by merit. Any diversity recruiting program seems like it's about outreach to identify underrepresented candidates but the bar is the same once those candidates are interviewed.
>>I don't see inclusion programs as discrimination against the majority.
Well, I guess there's a line between an activity specifically designed to include minorities and an activity specifically designed to exclude the majority. The first one is not discriminatory towards the majority - the second one obviously is. I am fairly certain there is a difference between the two, no?
Going back to my example - if you specifically only offer parental time off to one gender, you are specifically excluding the other one. That's discriminatory, even if that other gender is in majority.
If you run a black history month, you are not specifically excluding white or asian or any other history - you are just focusing on the black history month for now.
If its such a horror- why not make up a company of theire own- instead of hijacking a pre-existing one?
SJW Incooperated then can provide all the search the world ever needed, without a single with male.
> Some employees see similarities between some of the behavior inside Google and alt-right manuals for fighting advocates for social justice, such as one written by Beale that instructs readers to “Document their every word and action,” “Undermine them, sabotage them, and discredit them,” and “Make the rubble bounce” on your way out the door.
> Beale says they’re right. “I know that there are a number of people there who have read [the guide], I know that they’re using it,” Beale told WIRED. He claims to have had contacts inside the company for years and dozens of followers. He says he doesn’t know if Damore has read his guide, but is following the playbook. Damore says he has not read the manual.
This is a science fiction author, someone outside tech, who admits that he has contacts inside Google following a playbook for sabotaging people with political views opposed to his own. This is an outsider attempting to get Google to prioritize politics over technical merit - and he seems to be succeeding.
> He's been a video game developer for decades. Is that considered to be "outside tech" now?
Isn't it the opposite - he hasn't been a video game developer for decades? I think the last project he was involved with was The War in Heaven in 1999, which I can only find negative reviews about, both in terms of storyline and technical quality.
And even if he were still involved, I think an indie video game studio is still in a relevant sense outside the tech industry - I don't believe he's e.g. interviewing at Google or any other tech company. I take voice lessons and sing at churches and so forth, but I'm certainly an outsider to the music industry, even though I can sing pretty well. If I were trying to push my politics on the music industry, that would be pretty different from someone who has a recording contract doing the same.
> How is that any different from Saul Alinky's Rules for Radicals?
As far as I know, nobody is saying "I'm following Alinsky's playbook to disrupt this tech company I don't work at." (There might be conspiracy theories that people are doing that, but that's rather different from someone outright saying as much, which is what we have here.)
I do agree that if someone were doing that, it would be equally worth criticizing.
> he hasn't been a video game developer for decades?
No, his primary source of income is still and continues to be video game development. He simply shifted to the European market when he moved there.
> As far as I know, nobody is saying "I'm following Alinsky's playbook to disrupt this tech company I don't work at."
You must not be looking too awfully hard, then. There have been hundreds of instances of people trying to get other people fired at companies they don't work for. Most (if not all of them) have read that book. In fact, there were entire countries that were overthrown in the 70s where that book was used as a manual.
I did not know that, thanks - I thought his primary income was science fiction writing. What has he worked on recently? Web searches are not bringing up much, but maybe he's just secretive about his employment (which would be entirely understandable)?
Do you have any reason to believe Beale isn't just talking out his ass trying to boost his own persona and relevance?
I find it particularly suspect the way he tries to align Damore with his interests and politics.
"He says he doesn’t know if Damore has read his guide, but is following the playbook."
This looks to me like Beale is trying to make everyone view Damore as a member of the alt-right. It makes the left see them as a growing organized group that's waging war.
It's the same tactic that terrorist groups use when they take credit for attacks that they in reality had nothing to do with. It makes them seem bigger and scarier if people think they're organizing all these attacks around the globe.
> Do you have any reason to believe Beale isn't just talking out his ass trying to boost his own persona and relevance?
It's a good concern - but Beale's concrete and measurable involvement with the Hugos and with Gamergate makes me inclined to believe he's not at a loss for followers or in need of magnifying his own influence.
To be clear, I don't think Damore is a member of the alt-right, nor do I think that Damore planned to disrupt anything at Google. (The best explanation to me is that he was earnest about the points in the memo, had a little bit of the why-can't-I-answer-this-from-first-principles tendency that is incredibly prevalent in tech, and got coopted by alt-right folks, yes.) I believe there are lots of other people at Google doing this, though, on purpose.
People in this thread are trying to come up with some HR policies which can help mitigate the problem, such as "never discuss politics at work", but that, in turn, means not talking about presidential elections which were, objectively, the most important event of 2016. (quick test -- "what's important/surprising/almost impossible really happened in 2016?" -- we all know the answer, and it's not "Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill met in Cuba", or "Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was impeached").
It's hard to make people not to talk about main event of the year, happening in their country, in real-time, and probably such ban is counterproductive.
Thinking about it a bit more, the underlying problem here is not politics per se, but exteremely polarized society. Not sure this is something fixable with HR directives.
The thing is, the most important event of 2012 was the reëlection of Mr. Obama, and the most important event of 2008 was his election, and the most important event of 2004 was the reëlection of Mr. Bush, and that of 2000 his election. Somehow we all managed to get by in my workplaces back then. Yes, we all knew that we had different politics: yes, we knew that some of us were deeply opposed to others of us. But we moved forward and got the job done, because we weren't getting paid to kvetch about politics.
Russian trolls aside, millions of people voluntary and completely for free (as a beer) spent much more time kvetching about politics in 2016 then in 2012 or 2008. There should be a reason for it.
In Western Europe the amount of kvetching is ten times lower on average, meaning people really care about elections 4 weeks before and 4 weeks after and then move on with their lives, as opposed to US, where political fighting is never stops.
My pet theory (which may cause downvotes here) is that US democracy seriously differs from Western Europe. In Western European countries you have different parties with their different pet issues, but you don't have different ideologies.
In US, there are two different ideologies, having different views on everything -- gender, religion, race, well, any topic you can pick, actually. What we observe is these two ideologies maturing, crystallizing and diverging from each other.
I often wonder how it will play out, in a long run. ;)
> In US, there are two different ideologies, having different views on everything -- gender, religion, race, well, any topic you can pick, actually. What we observe is these two ideologies maturing, crystallizing and diverging from each other.
That's a really good insight. On many issues, I look at the viewpoints of those I disagree with and wonder how a sane person can think what they think; no doubt they look at me and wonder the same.
> I often wonder how it will play out, in a long run. ;)
And getting back to Damore memo -- from what I know about large european IT companies (and I do know something), if such memo was published on some intranet in, say, Netherlands or Denmark, you will end up with some flamewar (not even guaranteed) and maybe locked thread, thats it. Nobody would be fired, and it's absolutely impossible to imagine such case resulting in nation-wide news story. Zero chance. Nobody will really pay attention, because why.
But when you have two opposing ideologies, even a symbolic victory matters. So even if the reason is just some words some random dude typed on some private intranet (lol), outrage on national scale ensues. Soldiers from both ideologies armies are recruited, downvotes fired, and we have something NYT and Wired writing articles about. Just because of some post on some corporate portal.
Good thing that this is still contained to online flamewars. Still.
> But we moved forward and got the job done, because we weren't getting paid to kvetch about politics.
No, the difference was that we didn't have modern social media amplifying and echoing and re-broadcasting all the noise; so political arguments burned themselves without a wide conflagration
It's unfortunate that Wired frames this debate as one of "diversity advocates" against "the (racist) alt-right". It seems to imply a dichotomy where you're either pro-diversity or a racist. However, there are lots of moderate liberals and conservatives who are making very reasonable arguments against Google's politics (including its handling of the Damore fiasco) while at the same time being vehemently opposed to any racism coming from the alt-right.
I appreciate that the alt-right's response is a valid piece of the story, but it would be nice if they at least acknowledged the presence of the significant middle ground.
When you start a war against co-workers which has different opinions than yourself, to the point that you try to get them fired...
Maybe you shouldn’t be surprised to find people fighting back at you.
This is the toxic diversity-advocates in Google effectively getting the same treatment they have been giving others, their own methods used against them.
From your use of the word "leftists", I suspect you and I wouldn't agree on much; however, on this point I agree with you. Someone above mentioned the "paradox of tolerance" and I think your observation fits perfectly with that. I feel strongly about many of the same things that BLM and MeToo does (just to give some concrete examples) but I don't think believing in those things necessitates erasure of people who think differently. Unfortunately you find a lot of the "erasure" sentiment out there and usually they are the loudest voices.
To be clear, by leftists I meant misguided diversity-advocates who had no trouble employing the exact things they claimed to be fighting (racism, sexism and intolerance) as long as it fit their cause. My bad for being imprecise.
I find opposing such hypocracy perfectly reasonable, but I can tell from the voting that the HN consensus is that they would rather leave this giant elephant untouched. In which case, you reap what saw.
I'm very much a leftist, and I agree that there is a problem with this. But being more precise is important, because there is a long tradition on the left for pushing for tolerance as well. Libertarianism started on the left.
Fittingly for this debate, the word "libertarian" was first used by the anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacques in attacking the anarchist Proudhon for his misogynistic views [1]. But unlike the "diversity-advocates" you complain about, Dejacques argues for diversity as a consequence of liberty, and argues for liberty as essential to the humanity of all.
Applying power over others to force diversity is the antithesis of this, and there is a major schism over this on the left just as there is between authoritarian and anti-authoritarian ideologies on the right too.
“The science and analysis in Damore's memo is at best politically naive and at worst dangerous.”
- heh, and here I was thinking discussions of science were about deciding degree of correctness. I’d better attend the political re-education camp before math class, to avoid making any “politically naive” or “dangerous” statements...
That line caught my eye too. It's as if whether a claim is true or not isn't a relevant issue, just whether it's smart to say it or whether some group believe that it may lead to undesirable outcomes.
I think a lot of people tend to think (or act like they think) that to get rid of racism/sexism/.*-ism, you need to kill the privileged people, instead of getting rid of the privilege itself.
Killing the privileged people will only create a newer class of "privileged". It's like a never-ending cycle of martial artists killing another martial artist, and his son coming back for revenge and killing the aforementioned killer martial artist, and so on. (Sorry I should have used "her", and "daughter" instead of "him" and "son")
Why does Google have an internal list for political discussions and stuff?
Are Google employees allowed to post their stuff on their publicly viewable personal blogs, HN, etc., while at Google?
What happens if someone posts a link on the Google internal lists to their publicly viewable blog entry and requests publicly viewable comments on it? Would they get in trouble?
Macro-level observation, kind of related to Yegge's memo:
Google is big and kind of not really busy with building products anymore. Anytime a company starts losing its busy-ness, its focus, you see "politics" come to the forefront. Once HR and Legal run the show, stick a fork in it.
GE and Six Sigma was the same shit, different angle. Products and their success rule, everything else is distractions and blockers.
Note how Amazon is kept focused and on track. Note how Apple is able to do this, but only after SJ came back and turned it into a busy product place again.
Facebook has Sandberg and others coming to the forefront, Twitter had all kind of drama - jury still out on those. Uber ditto.
Understaffed/lean teams working on winning, running for their lives - and drama is less likely. Breeds camaraderie and cuts the crap. Hard work is the best equalizer.
369 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 289 ms ] thread- Does Google have unusually many conservative employees compared to similar tech companies? Or maybe a different attitude towards "diversity" programs?
- Evidence of Google employees doxing one another is evidence of insufficient HR vigilance against assholes. How could it happen?
- Does the "alt-right" have specific reasons to harass Google, compared to other equally hostile and equally important companies?
I work in a pretty political environment, where both significantly liberal and significantly conservative views exist. They're rarely discussed, and it rarely is an issue, because it's not a work-related discussion.
Senator Hillary Clinton!
That's truly hilarious. Don't bring politics at work, they say.
I can think of one, aside from the Damore fiasco. Last year, Google, as a domain name registrar, took an inherently political position in clientHolding a fascist website's domain name - and doing no such thing to any of its overtly communist customers.
Prior to the Godaddy/Google decisions, domains were generally only subject to action of this kind in the case of FBI/DHS/ICE seizures or egregious network abuse (spam, botnet c2, etc).
This action set the precedent, for the first time, that denying access to your own domain names (clientHold prevents you from even transferring your domain to another registrar) on the basis of political disagreement is a perfectly acceptable action on the part of one of the largest infrastructure providers on the planet.
Have you read through some of the business practices during WWII? Americans almost directly funding the German war effort by moving money around for their own capitalist benefit. I think the subject requires are more in-depth analysis than "companies shouldn't get to say who's business they want".
For example, it might have been considered better taste after the issuance of the Nuremberg Laws for Coca Cola not to associate so closely with the German Reich and fly their banners next to the swastika at the Berlin games, but that certainly was not the play until they were forced to stop (which ultimately resulted in the invention of Fanta, but I digress).
---
An additional sampling of a company just being apolitical in questionable taste.
>> Mark Prendergrast "In March of 1938, as Hitler's troops stormed across the Austrian border in the Anschluss, Max Keith convened the ninth annual concessionaire convention, with 1,500 people in attendance.
Behind the main table, a huge banner proclaimed in German, "Coca -Cola is the world-famous trademark for the unique product of Coca-Cola GmbH" Directly below, three gigantic swastikas stood out, black on red.
At the main table, Max Keith sat surrounded by his deputies, another swastika draped in front of him...The meeting closed with a "ceremonial pledge to Coca-Cola and a ringing three-fold "Seig Heil" to Hitler."
At another convention Mark Prendergrast notes "Then Keith ordered a mass Sieg-Heil for Hitler's recent fiftieth birthday, to commemorate our deepest admiration and gratitude for our Fuhrer who has led our nation into a brilliant higher sphere."...
At the Reich "Schaffendes Volk" ("Working People") Exhibition celebrating the German worker under Hitler, Prendergrast describes "A functioning bottling plant, with a miniature train carting Kinder beneath, bottled Coca-Cola at the very centre of the fair, adjacent to the Propaganda Office. Touring the Dusseldorf fair, Hermann Goering paused for a Coke, and an alert Company photographer snapped a picture. Though no such picture documented the Fuhrer's tastes, Hitler reputedly enjoyed Coca Cola too, sipping the Atlanta drink as he watched Gone With The Wind in his private theatre."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203586.For_God_Country_C...
Further a lot of major American companies were hedging their bets in case the US remained neutral - in which case Germany would have been a major power. The situation is similar to Apple and Google appeasing Chinese censorship today (albeit without the death camps).
Having a domain held wouldn't prevent them from issuing a newsletter or press release or visit affiliated forums and passing off an IP address.
I imagine there are all kinds of pretty nasty domain names that wouldn't be appropriate to rent out.
Communism as a political theory has none of these things. You're confusing it with authoritarian socialism (Soviet Russia, Mao's China, ...).
(Or did misread "I'd expect google to" and we agree)
The ruling parties, however, did/do. For example: the Communist Party of China or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
E.g. Marx throughout his life repeatedly warned against trying revolution in an underdeveloped country, as he saw advanced capitalism as essential to the success of socialism, and he specifically called out Russia - a central aspect of Leninism is Lenins contortionism to try to explain away Marx' reasons for that through his idea of the "vanguard party", and his party theory (democratic centralism), which are a large part of what enabled the authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks.
It became the dominant re-interpretation of Marxism after the Bolsheviks gained power, but it's still only one of dozens of ideologies that call themselves communist, and the only one that has been used as a basis for justifying any national regimes of parties calling themselves communist.
If someone wanted to ban specific interpretations of Leninism (because you'll find people picking and choosing from Lenin too - e.g. a lot of his analysis in Imperialism and in State and the Revolution is benign enough; State and the Revolution to a large extent makes the case against state power for example) that are explicitly agitating for violence or anti-democratic methods, then you'd find quite a few communists and socialists who'd be perfectly happy about that - no governments have murdered more communists than ones following Lenin or Leninist derived theories.
Lenin himself grabbed power in a coup (the "October revolution" was not a revolution in any reasonable sense - the Tsarist government had fallen months previously) after months of agitation for violent overthrow of the predominantly socialist/communist provisional government that was actually trying to run a democratic process.
The point is people you don't like will use the same words you do - we don't swear off democracy as a bad thing because the "Democratic" Peoples Republic of Korea uses the word to describe itself, or because pretty much every one of the states you refer to run by parties describing themselves as communist also made a big point of describing their states as democratic in their constitutions.
We recognize that their use does not represent our use of the word, and we look for better ways of classifying them.
(The argument "oh, but they're not really communist" here strikes me as about as meaningful/relevant as the argument that the Soviet Union wasn't really communist)
I belong well into the (anti authoritarian) left, and I agree with your last sentences, but the problem here is not that a lot of people see libertarian and anarchist socialist/communist ideologies as equally bad as Stalinism and Maoism - often because they don't know or accept the distinction -, and so sees blocking far right sites but not far left sites as taking a stand against the right, rather than a stand against totalitarian ideologies.
We're better served with a society where communications providers are not allowed to deny service based on their customers views for the simple reason that as long as we allow them to censor, chances are someone who is clueless about distinctions like the ones you make get to make those decisions,
Case in point: Several countries have legislation against spreading communist ideas or using communist symbols that are ill defined enough that they would just as equally hit someone promoting Stalinism as someone who would be first against the wall if Stalinists were to gain power, because they don't understand that the same name encompasses ideologies ranging from those that wants a totalitarian state to those who wants no state or authority. (In other places such laws have been struck down or revised exactly because of that ambiguity)
Are we? I agree that we get some polarization as collateral damage, but the alternative would be to have hateful and violent ideas be able to roam freely, hurt people, and be normalized. There has to a line.
To me, this could all be solved by HR releasing a document on what can and can not be discussed on company time and where the lines are. And if a document exists, enforce it on both sides.
Or you know, not talk about politics in the work place.
I honestly wish this was the law.
I was discussing space exploration (you’d think this would be a pretty safe topic) at work and suddenly it turned into how space exploration was ruining everything because then people thought they could escape global warming instead of doing something about it.
The conversation ended when I asked the guy how many kids he had he said none cuz global warming, I said that was too bad cuz I was teaching my kids to 4x4 and their superior 4x4ing genes would out breed his inferior genes that convinced him not to have kids and that my kids were going to 4x4 on mars once we had finished ruining this planet.
Guy basically had an aneurism right there on the spot, one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever witnessed at work. I figured it was too much of a troll to actually work but he went fully ballistic
Like, honestly honestly, or jokingly honestly? What if I say "I wish I were allowed to speak about politics at work" at work? That's political. Do I get a fine? How about "am I allowed to talk about this?" If it's a gray area and we start debating it, which one of us gets shipped to the gulag?
Who gets to decide what's politics? Isn't even that question political?
I wish my coworkers (and my fellow citizens for that matter) would be interested in politics just a little more, so they would realize what is happening around them, and know what they are talking about whenever they touch politics and legislature. My opinion is gradually becoming a minority view all over Europe, with people fleeing to either extreme.
The thing is: We were once "politically uneducated" here in Europe. It made the "third Reich" as a mass phenomenon possible, because a lot of people joined this movement blindly and with enthusiasm and did not realize where this train was heading until it was way too late (and they were completely delusional).
When the allies took over they tried to make sure we would be and stay politically educated, so this would never happen again (spoiler: it did not work). How ironic that America is spearheading the movement to normalize extreme views.
Watching a bunch of people get mad every single day does nothing to further my, or anyone else's, political education.
Assuming you think coercion is a bad idea, your only tool left is discussion and consensus-building about rules. In other words, politics.
(To be fair, I understand the underlying sentiment: I, too, would like to live in a world where my personal desires were somehow the law of the land in such a way that everybody else were also happy with them. But after some long thought (and some good literature) I think that really falls in the "be careful what you wish for" category.)
We already do. C.f. laws, courts.
Politics easily being a fuzzy term which can be adapted to fit a very wide range of ideas gives those few in power who set the rules the ability to silence whatever they wish.
It would better if there were more initiatives to improve intellectual discourse so people could like actually talk to one another.
The less we talk, the further apart we will grow
If you've ever been an online forum mod, or similar, you'll know that the larger the "board" gets, the more out of whack it gets. When a company, or forum, is small, and most people know each other, at least a bit, they tend to stay civil. Past some point, that goes out the window.
Not talking about politics is a good idea, but it's very hard to specify what is "politics" and what is not.
[0] If everyone involved has an implicit mutual respect for the other person, which seems unlikely.
That discussion is unlikely to go well if any of your co-workers are immigrants. You can't discuss "should you be in this country or should you and your family be deported" in front of someone dispassionately.
Edit: the last few times I've discussed "heavy handed immigration policy" at work it has been because co-workers have had to deal with the Home Office and I'm commiserating how difficult it is. One guy got tripped up by "the middle initial on your ID wasn't present in the name field of this form" (or vice versa).
> Gudeman further stated that at the suggestion of another Googler, he searched Gilani’s story of being profiled, and found “zero evidence for the claim that [Gilani] was targeted just for being a Muslim.” Gudeman posed more questions about the FBI’s motives for looking into Gilani such as the fact that Gilani had recently visited Pakistan, and that the FBI could have possibly found something interesting about Gilani’s trip or the region that he visited.
If you're going to have a rule about not discussing politics in order to uphold a productive workplace culture, it seems like a very good place to start is that your coworkers should not be able to say something with the subtext "Maybe the FBI had a reason to investigate you for being a terrorist."
But then, I'm a European, living in another European country, so the same racial sensitivity might not exist?
Aside from the feeds of a few dozen Twitter edgelords, the discussions you're imagining (or want us to imagine) do not exist and are a strawman argument.
I'm afraid demands for people to be deported are very common in UK immigration discussion, and very few people seem to be fussy over the legality of it.
EDIT: and what I mean by that is, you can discuss with a close coworker whatever you want, but people seem to want "open texted based communication" in a way that invites argument.
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/passion-...
> We share everything we can. We have a weekly all-hands meeting called TGIF, hosted by our founders, Larry and Sergey. In the first 30 minutes, we review news and product launches from the past week, demo upcoming products, and celebrate wins. But the second 30 minutes is the part that matters most: Q&A.
> Everything is up for question and debate, from the trivial (“Larry, now that you’re CEO will you start wearing a suit?” The answer was a definite ‘no’), to the ethical (“Is Google going in the right direction?”).
I assume it's been a net positive for them in the past, I wonder if this TGIF policy will get changed.
They should put up a big banner of the question the employees should be asking themselves about their work activities: "Is this good for the company?"
And I'm not being totally unserious.
The problem is that there is a small minority of people who don't/can't see things from other people's perspectives, so they either make blatantly offensive comments without realising it, or they get offended and their feelings hurt when no reasonable person would have taken a comment to be offensive.
Perhaps there could be a peer-based mediation panel within Google to make non-binding, non-public rulings on these cases without them going to HR (if both parties agree on the outcome). If these panels were make up of reasonable people (think wikipedia admins), then it might work quite well.
[0] - I realize the lawsuit would obviously want to make it look as bad as possible.
I'm not sure which is worse, that there are people at Google who (and I know the lawsuit is using extreme examples) have these extreme left-wing views who are in positions to force their views on a large unsuspecting populous, or Google for not fixing the problem.
Depends if diversity is considered "politics". There are lots of diversity measures inside all companies and to say don't discuss these is a bit weird. Perhaps only certain HR professionals can be "allowed" to discuss diversity initiatives?
There's a lot to be said about this approach (and I had a good conversation about this with someone I know who works at Google and leans conservative / Republican but not alt-right, and is unhappy that internal social media is tied to business-related communication - blocking someone who posts a lot of partisan political stuff apparently means that you can't communicate with them in an emergency, if they maintain one of your dependencies, which seems like a pretty bad design).
But I think there are two reasons it's not a completely simple solution.
The first is that Google, as the article says, encourages you to "bring your whole self to work." Heck, Google even encourages you to bring your dog to work. Google encourages you to stay for lunch and probably dinner. Google encourages you to form bands with your coworkers, go on hiking trips with your coworkers, etc. There's a lot of deliberate attempts at promoting social cohesion beyond just normal traditional professional relationships, and by all accounts, that's a lot of why Google is as successful as it is. Requiring "Don't talk politics at the workplace" involves not talking politics over meals, on weekend team trips, and so forth, which is unlikely to be enforceable and also seems like it would hurt the genuine social bonds these things are trying to promote.
The second is that "politics" includes things like "Is it valid to be trans" or "Are certain races inferior to others." I'm not going to deny that this is "politics;" the generalized question of whether whole swaths of people are deserving of recognition under their claimed identity has been part of politics since basically the first empire captured its first nation. But it's unavoidable for a large company to pick an answer one way or another. A hypothetical Google running at the time of Cato the Elder, with Roman and Carthaginian employees, could not avoid the "political" question of whether Carthage should be destroyed and its residents sold into slavery.
Something that always rubs me the wrong way when reading about these issues is that people in (for now) mostly American spheres use both the word and the concept "race" so uncritically [1], with no reflection at all. Heck, if we consider the US Government, then "race" is an official property of humans (see e.g. bop.gov Inmate Locator, which literally has a drop-down labelled "race" with choices like "White" and "American Indian").
[1] It should go without saying that using a different word for the same concept means you're still using the same concept. It's essentially the same as the good-old-fashioned euphemism treadmill.
Majority of US companies have 'diversity advocates' among the ranks of non HR employees?
China has similarly dominant tech companies and I'm sure they do not share SV's political opinions.
You could just as easily say they were successful despite this or that aspect of their company culture.
My past job, I would have political discussion with coworkers but they were people I had formed extremely close and trusting bonds with. We may have disagreed at times but it came from a place of respect and knowing someone a little.
After the US presidential election, the lead execs of the office sent out emails about the results and commiserating with the staff (we had people call in sick, crying, etc.) but, despite the office being 99.9% on their side, lunch conversation later that day revolved around how most didn't think what they did was appropriate because, if there was that .1% that could feel alienated, why do so from on high?
In your opinion, did the google memo touch on similar topics? Many represented it as saying "women are inferior engineers to men", but a crux of the argument seems to be that many say this is not what the memo said.
Also, there are tangential topics that are often phrased similar to the above so as to make it seems like we're in a Carthaginian scenario when it isn't necessarily the case. For example, the main argument seemed to be about trans-people using certain bathrooms, that touched on the topic of "trans validity" (or dragged conversation into that), but was also also a separate, related argument about bathroom usage that precipitated that.
Those people are right. The full text of the memo is readily available. The author not only didn't say this, but repeated numerous times that this was explicitly not what he was trying to communicate. There is no reasonable, charitable way to interpret those who misrepresent him.
I think this brings up an important point. Some people insist on painting this as a "diversity champions vs blithering racists/sexists" issue, ignoring the numerous legitimate criticisms for the current approach to diversity.
The politics instantly put the memo squarely at one side of the current cultural / political wars. With the current binaries in American politics right now, such will never lead to sober discussion.
Note that it doesn't imply or conclude that a given female applicant is less qualified than a given male candidate nor that the pipeline of female applicants is less qualified in aggregate than the pipeline of male applicants (because there's no reason to assume that the pipeline has the same distribution as the overall population).
It merely suggests that (assuming pertinent biological causes) we shouldn't expect a fair process to result in parity of outcomes.
Whether or not there are pertinent biological causes is a question I leave to scientists, but I do want to note that (contrary to Damore's critics), science has established biological sex differences that may be pertinent, and lots of scientists have validated Damore's position (that biological differences may explain some of the gender distribution in tech). https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201711/the-truth-ab...
The latter, yes (in the sense that the question was relevant to the memo, not so much that the memo coherently attempted to address it), but it wasn't the memo I was referencing here here—it was other posts, either in internal social media or on external forums with clear links to employees.
Seems like you're overcomplicating the problem. Nearly all other companies seem to be doing just fine. Certainly not without incident, but by all appearances, companies aren't waging the sort of internal political wars that this article portrays.
As for the second reason, I think it comes down to professionalism. We can politicize anything if we try hard enough. But if our employer says "no politics, just get the work done", then both sides must adhere to whatever policies are provided, within the law. Don't like the bathroom rules or workplace guidance? Work somewhere else.
That's certainly an incredibly common view, so I'm not going to say that it's wrong or irrational.
But I'm reminded of the bathroom subplot in Hidden Figures - all the restrooms in one building were for white people, and so the one black woman working in the building, who was extraordinarily technically competent, needed to go on extended break to another building every time she needed to use the restroom. "Don't like the bathroom rules, work someplace else" was absolutely the prevailing culture at the time, which had hefty rules about "professionalism" and not "politicizing" things. But it had a serious negative impact on the business, and the right thing to do (which a manager eventually did) was to change the bathroom rules.
The choice to adopt "professionalism," and to bring in no politics and leave the political decisions to whatever existing culture is in place, is a political choice of its own. There are a lot of arguments in favor of that choice, yes. But it remains a political choice.
Except that if your whole self is not within the established pc, liberal standard, you'll be fired.
Note that the debates at Google are not about "is Trump an idiot?". They are about political issues affecting decisions made by Google. In these debates, not bringing up politics is equivalent to continuing the status quo.
That's not avoiding politics, it is simply accepting the politics underlying the status quo. It may sometimes appear to be "neutral" because people have grown accustomed to it, but it isn't.
> at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you [...] a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face [...] You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.
TL;DR - Yeah I mean, violence against you is totally justified because of what you said -- but if there is violence, it's your fault.
Nothing in Damore's memo justifies violence as a response. Zunger just stops short of advocating a violent response. I don't think he's someone I'd ever want to work for, or pay heed to.
1 - https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
Your summary is misleading. He didn't "justify" violence. Saying that jaywalking is risky is not an ethical statement about cars.
If I'm assaulted in the workplace for a political viewpoint I anonymously posted, the fault is with the assaultee. Not with the assaulted. However, Zunger flips the blame.
Didn't you see this coming? You should have known opposing the majority viewpoint would be met with violence. For workplace safety, I have to fire you.
Ironically, he seems to blame tolerance on this. It seems the man doesn't understand what the word means.
Edit: > Saying that jaywalking is risky is not an ethical statement about cars
See my response above to joshuamorton.
Yonger is quite correct in that intentionally or not, for better or worse, Damore created a situation in which it would be very difficult to put him on a team anywhere. While work place violence is rarely the answer, and I sincerely doubt anyone at google would raise themselves to that level the fact of the matter is that even the risk of that puts Google in an impossible situation.
> See my response above to joshuamorton.
I didn't understand the connection between that response and my assertion.
Zunger's blog post is extremely obnoxious. Not only does Zunger write something like "everything you say is wrong, but I won't explain any specific way you're wrong, or link to any such explanation" he then goes on to explain engineering to a senior engineer, and grossly misrepresents Damore. In addition he clearly does assign fault to Damore for people wanting to punch him.
He says people may want to be violent against you because of what you said. He makes no claims about the justification of that violence. He makes a statement of fact, not of judgement.
In a vacuum, yes. Saying certain things may incite a violent response. But we're not in a vacuum. Let's look at three scenarios, and ask the following questions: Is violence expected? Is violence understandable? Is violence justified?
A - While drunk at a bar, a man repeatedly says derogatory things about another man's wife. A fight breaks out between the two of them.
B - While at a KKK rally, a young black man calmly discussing afrocentrism is jumped and beaten by a mob.
C - While at an LGBT rally, an old white man hostilely quoting Leviticus is jumped and beaten by a mob.
In the first scenario, this is targeted harassment. We should anticipate a violent outbreak. If you were to poll a diverse group of people, most people would say the violence was understandable, but not justified. This scenario bears the least similarity to our situation -- although I will make one comment. This is the only scenario where violence could be justified. If the provocateur becomes violent (or makes threats), a violent response MAY be expected, understandable, and justified.
In the second and third scenario, violence is an expected result. While some people within these groups may feel the violence was understandable, the real question lies with the groups organizers. I suspect that the LGBT group would denounce violence, even though the man had bad intentions. (I wouldn't expect as much from the KKK.)
To relate this to Google, Zunger is a leader. He excuses the violent response of the employees, and blames Damore for inciting the violence. (This is an INCREDIBLY poor position to take.) While it's fair to question whether Damore was the provocateur from example C, or the debater from example B, it's unfair to blame him for a violent response.
As soon as you say the word "justified" or "understandable", you're not responding to Zunger, you're responding to a strawperson. There is no excusing, justification, or blame in the article. There are statements of fact.
You're conflating causality and blame. Zunger only discusses the former, and there is a huge difference between them. You're transforming his statements on causality into ones on blame when they clearly aren't. Damore wrote a thing. That thing hurt people. Cause, effect. No blame. Hawaiian government employee pressed button. A million people were alerted of an impending missile by accident. Cause, effect. No blame. (To be clear, with Hawaii, the blame, imo, falls onto the design of the system, and not the guy who happened to misclick).
In another post you claim that Zunger uses the phrase "it's your fault" (an assignment of blame), But the word "fault" doesn't appear in the essay. Zunger specifically says that Damore's action "has caused a significant harm" to his colleagues. But that, too, is a statement of causality, and is not assigning blame. (I think this is telling by the way: to justify, to yourself, your disagreement with Zunger, you managed to invent things the essay didn't actually say, without even realizing it!)
To be very clear on this, I think that violence is potentially expected in all three cases you mentioned, and justified in none of them. The exact argument Zunger is making works in the reverse, by the way. "You came out as trans to the office, all of whom are staunchly on the religious right and as a result now refuse to work with you. This is...problematic for your employer, and makes you decidedly less valuable from the perspective of your employer. This is problematic.". Am I blaming the trans individual? I certainly don't think so.
Zunger's argument is almost entirely a utilitarian one: You have made yourself less valuable to the organization, and either we get rid of you, or we get rid of a lot of other people. The choice is, unfortunately for you, obvious. And that's the case irrespective of who is "at fault".
A famous Indian political leader quoted Newton's third law "Every action has a reaction" in regards to an incident which further lead to unprecedented violence. All leader did was to quote a scientific law but he was widely criticized in media, it also lead to death of many more people.
I have no problem with what he says including veiled violence threats. It is his political positioning not some ethical advice.
That's one thing about the number of folks who've publicly stated positions I find abhorrent: I've got a list of folks I won't work with in the future, because I don't wish to support them.
I don't know if that's a good thing, though. It doesn't seem wise for society to fracture into different polarised groups refusing to do business with one another. Seems like a recipe for recreating Lebanon's mess.
Why can't we go back to the rule of not bringing politics and religion into the office?
I agree but hard to do when your company pays political lobbyist.
Acceptance comes through dialogue, and mutual understanding.
Sadly, there's a lot of "open minded people" who are pretty close minded to openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't their own, let alone be able to look in the mirror.
It can be easier (and lazier) to trivialize, dismiss, degrade the viewpoints of others, or be a crybully, rather than have a sincere look at yourself in a conversation.
Add into the mix reasonable themes of fragility, privilege that one group has been raised with (not entirely their choosing but a responsibility to work on), and in another experience at the expense of others, another group having an unfair go for a number of fair reasons.
The reality is bias exists. The best candidate does not win if the decision makers are not of the best and of the most open temperament.
I read somewhere that some of this may be a majority having the experience of a minority for once - and maybe that can help drive a better conversation and mutual understanding.
One thing is for sure, being quiet won't work, and freedom of speech without being thoughtful with your words won't help either.
Do you have any actual empirical evidence or research for this? This reads like window-dressing for thought-police. "You don't accept our views? Sounds like you need more dialogue (re-education)."
In a business setting at least, tolerance allows individuals with different beliefs and motivations to work toward shared goals.
Sorry another person's reality can be effortlessly maligned as window dressing to you. Happy to chat offline and you can report back here - email is in my profile. Happy to do a hangout too.
A reality is it's easy to marginalize and dehumanize those you haven't had to sit down, face to face and have an interaction with and have to consider that they might actually hold you to task as much as you are holding them to task.
Getting along with others doesn't only involve logic and the mind.
Interpersonal skills are not purely logical, they require a balanced ability to use one's emotions with intelligence and maturity.
In business settings, teams that practice deep horizontal loyalty generally outperform teams that borderline tolerate each other but would prefer not to. Similar effects happen on sports teams that have proverbial Cinderella runs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_reconciliation_commi...
http://horizontalloyalty.com/#/title
In any case, I'm guessing I misread your original intent.
You don't have to talk about politics to be political at work.
Normally I’d say “they’re ALL idiots for talking about this at the workplace, and ALL deserve to be fired,” but when your employer is making you attend discussions on this topic... well, it’s fair game, isn’t it?
That used to be common sense. You don't talk politics or religion at work. It's even in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
But that's from the 1960's, and SV is compelled to re-invent anything older than 2002.
I'm not saying that talking 'politics' at work is wise thing to do, but in the US at least, all people have the explicit right to do so. There have been a fair few SCOTUS cases on this one.
[0] https://www.americanbar.org/publications/insights_on_law_and...
...or, perhaps, it is getting rather contentious, but some as-yet-unknown policy will mitigate these issues, either through honest / open conversation or, conversely, through reasoned limitations on what can and cannot be talked about at the workplace.
...or, perhaps, the benefits of pursuing diversity initiatives continue to be larger than these drawbacks, and in the medium-to-long term they expect this sort of nonsense to die out. (This scenario would imply that their leadership is, in fact, very strong, as it requires a level head to stay the course in the middle of a political / media firestorm when you know that's the right thing to do.)
Which of these is true? All? None? I have no idea without further data, but I'd just as soon not prognosticate utter ruin based on sensationalist news articles.
> Engineer Colin McMillen says the tactics have unnerved diversity advocates and chilled internal discussion. “Now it’s like basically anything you say about yourself may end up getting leaked to score political points in a lawsuit,” he says. “I have to be very careful about choosing my words because of the low-grade threat of doxing. But let’s face it, I’m not visibly queer or trans or non-white and a lot of these people are keying off their own white supremacy.”
I don't understand this mentality at all. Rules requiring civility don't only apply towards white men, and I have never heard of anyone within Google being a white supremacist. Do many of these people think that anyone not pro-affirmative action is a sign of their white supremacist thoughts or something?
> Rules requiring civility don't only apply towards white men
Welcome to the cutting edge of contemporary social justice culture, significant portions of which seem to want to invert and reorganize racial/gender power structures to put themselves at the top, rather than working to actually wash them away.
If this is your opinion, just downvote it - don't comment about it.
Also there's a big difference between "dox" in the sense of "identify a name" and "dox" in the sense of "post lots of personal documents / records about," which is what Kiwi Farms does.
He was also doxed in the regular sense by left wing trolls (which do exist). In one example he was stalked, harassed, and had his photo taken and released from a rather private event.
"Both sides did it" isn't a defense (both sides can be wrong), and it's definitely not a defense if one side is doing it to a much larger and more organized scale than the other, and the other side is generally trying to do the right thing and happens to have some outside trolls who are being misguidedly sympathetic to the cause.
I mean... I do see you have to take this with the usual American-sized boulder of salt, but I honestly wonder how someone thought this was a good idea. I.e. this goal is obviously neither achievable, nor would it be actually a good thing; it doesn't make sense as a slogan.
Silicon Valley creates a perfect maelstrom of isolation and loneliness. You have thousands of new people move there every year to find work, and moving tears off a huge chunk of your social network. Even if you manage to keep in touch with some people, you lose the entire portion related to "casually hanging out with your friends and talking about your day". Meanwhile, Silicon Valley is a figurative desert of office parks and suburbs, making it difficult to do anything but work.
Companies like Google (and many before, and many after) solved this problem by creating campuses where their employees could eat, hang out, exercise, play games, and socialize. Their otherwise isolated employees formed new social networks, were happier, more productive, and less likely to leave. It solved many problems, but it also created the other problems that stem from "our employees' work and social lives are too entangled".
I think this statement goes a long way towards helping Damore. That a senior engineer can say something like this openly and not see how it could cause concern and accusations of double standards is telling. I am not advocating for or against Damore but statements like these are not helpful. Saying Bigots should be fired but when you specify race and gender, you are encouraging feelings of persecution and animosity.
I personally don't believe that a workplace is the right location for either Altman or Damore's statements. However, if a culture of allowing this sort of talk is created, you cannot arbitrarily decide that one side is right or wrong without inviting a lawsuit.
Google is currently learning that people need clearly defined rules and if you allow people to say and act how they want in a professional environment, confrontations and trouble are inevitable.
Wow. How can employees believe that this type of language is acceptable in the work place? Is this common in other tech companies on their internal communication channels (like slack)?
Edit: I guess I'm assuming the bigot is behaving as a bigot, and I think that's a safe assumption.
Race agnostically, it is an obvious statement and should be part of company guidelines : "bigotry will get you fired". Simple.
Similarly, how can anyone believe that saying something like "violent black men should be fired" is okay? Just address violence in the workplace race agnostically in your company guidelines and don't tolerate it.
Is this really complicated?
In that lens, the statement makes sense if you feel that white men get away with bigotry more than their non white male counterparts. In other words, the subtext is "fire all the bigoted white men too".
Like I said, I'm not sure if I endorse that view it not. It makes more sense in the context of lifting up than putting down, but I can at least see it.
IIRC, there's bit social justice ideology that essentially says that only white people can be bigots. I believe the typical formulation is "racism = power + prejudice." "Power" in this context is a function of your race and other identities, for instance white people axiomatically have "power" but black people don't. This assignment of "power" doesn't change based on context, so if your boss is black and you are white, you're still the one with "power." Therefore, by this "logic," a black person can't be racist because he lacks "power." An identical procedure is applied men an women with sexism.
There is another related social justice idea that you should "never punch down, always punch up." In this context "up" are those with "power" (again, assigned by fixed formula based on race, etc.). The act of "punching up," by the people who think this way, has connotations of "fighting for good," and "punching down" with "oppression."
Combining these ideas, "white men" are the most "powerful" and therefore can and should be "punched" in the name of social justice. This is one source of the gratuitous negative references to "white men," and associated hostility to them, that you see in social justice circles.
IMHO, these are pretty screwed up ideas, and they're a recipe for polarization (and bullying) and not progress. Unfortunately people do believe them and think this way.
Worse, "racism" is defined cyclically. If you ask "Who has power?", the answer is "whites/men because they aren't victims of racism/sexism".
This means no matter how much actual power non-whites get, they'll never be guilty of "racism", and racism is effectively defined as a sin of which only whites can be guilty.
> If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted white men.
I would put the above statement at about the same level as
> If you want to increase productivity at Google fire all the lazy black people.
I assume you would agree that the 2nd statement is not appropriate. If so, can you explain why the 1st is acceptable and the 2nd is not?
One of the typical examples of a micro aggression is the unnecessary inclusion of a description "I went to the women doctor today," "That was a very fine dressed black man," "That old cashier was really slow."
In the same way I see the inclusion of race in both sentences promoting discrimination based on race. I would go so far as to say that the inclusion of race in both statements makes the statement racist (in the sense that racism is the discrimination of a person or persons based on their race).
[0] a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions. source: https://www.google.com/search?q=bigot
Highlighting race and gender when making such a statement is completely unnecessary, e.g. imagine the outcry if someone had said "If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted black women".
It really can't.
That said I don't think there was a need to call out white men specifically in the sentence.
This is Alon Altman's (@epsalon) current Twitter bio. How would you read the original intent?
If both statement seems fine fine to you than okay.
>Damore didn't say women are inferior
>> Quotes Damore "I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." >> See he clearly called them inferior.
>>> No he didn't he just said they were different.
Two people see the same sentence and draw very different conclusions. We can either adopt a norm of honoring what the writer intended or a norm of honoring what the reader observed. I think a lot of people who are most vocally pro-diversity use the later norm when determining if something is or isn't ????ist. If this is the norm I think it should be universally the norm. Thus if we are being charitable to the writer I agree with you that the interpretation should be "We should fire all of the bigots (who happen to be white men)" and not "We should fire all the white men (who are bigots)."
This is a really hard principle to apply consistently which is why I tried to highlight the same kind of statement that was racist instead of sexist. In hopes that people could understand why white men might take offense to the original comment.
Hope the explanation helps.
Absolutely.
> We can either adopt a norm of honoring what the writer intended or a norm of honoring what the reader observed. I think a lot of people who are most vocally pro-diversity use the later norm when determining if something is or isn't ????ist. If this is the norm I think it should be universally the norm.
Gods, I hope this does not become the norm. "Everything can mean anything!"
As a conservative it kind of feels like that is the case. The second named party in the Google suit got fired for an interpretation of his comments he didn't mean.
However, the following concerns apply
1) I as a (non-bigoted) white man do not trust the good faith of the person speaking (in context, at Google)
2) I have seen analogous comments about eg. black people be auto-interpreted as bad faith when context made it clear that it was not bad-faith.
3) The inclusion of "white" and "man" in that statement are unnecessary, so them being included in spite of that is a signal of bad faith.
I would like to work in a place where everyone is intelligent and good-faith enough to interpret this sentence in its reasonable sense. But the reality is that such a place doesn't exist. At best I can get a place where statements against white men as a group get this treatment, but statements against other groups will always be interpreted as bad-faith, regardless of context.
I would like for all ambiguous statements like this to be interpreted on the same standard, but as long as they will not be, the next best step is to err on the side of caution and have a blanket ban of things like this
This statement implies to me that you think white bigotry != bigotry. This is one of those statements that make me think "no rational caring individual could believe that" because it sounds racist against white people to begin with. Yet I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Can you explain your mindset? Hopefully also how this mindset does not lead to treating people of different races differently or a justification for why it is okay to treat them different?
Starting with the assumption that all people should be treated equally than all bigotry is morally objectionable and we should treat all bigotry as such. The only issue that comes in is that since white people have the power and numbers white bigotry happens more than other bigotry and thus we by chance we object to it more.
I don't see any way that this allows bigotry against whites to get a pass, it just gets called out less because it happens less.
Am I missing something? I feel like I am because I still don't feel like I grok your responses.
Yes.
> Starting with the assumption that all people should be treated equally than all bigotry is morally objectionable and we should treat all bigotry as such.
Good assumption. I agree.
> The only issue that comes in is that since white people have the power and numbers white bigotry happens more than other bigotry and thus we by chance we object to it more.
I don't really understand this part, but I'll add that not only does it happen more, it is more damaging. A white bigot can get shit done.
> I don't see any way that this allows bigotry against whites to get a pass, it just gets called out less because it happens less.
I don't think it does allow bigotry against whites. I'm not worried much about bigotry against whites. Maybe I will be after white bigotry is reigned in a bit, but for now eyes on the ball.
> Am I missing something? I feel like I am because I still don't feel like I grok your responses.
I don't really know whether we disagree about something, everything, or nothing.
Ahh, this I think is where I find issue. You say that you think all people should be treated equally and I see the statement I quoted as clashing with that ideal. Specifically saying "I'm not worried much about bigotry against whites." I am trying to be charitable but as a white person I would get roasted if I said "I'm not worried much about bigotry against blacks."
This mismatch is what causes me to make me question your commitment to the ideal that all people should be treated equally. Because to me, if you really were committed to ending bigotry and promoting inclusion and diversity you would be equally enraged by bigotry by whites and bigotry against whites. Yet, that isn't the case.
This puts me in a really hard spot because I want to believe you mean well but now I have to decide, are you lieing about your commitment to equality or do you have a valid reason to disregard bigotry against whites? I have yet to see a good argument for disregarding bigotry against whites so I am stuck with you are lieing. But I don't think you are...
>Because harassment against men is a sideshow, a minor issue. It is a joke to elevate it to same problem level as harassment by men. Now, to your point, any SPECIFIC incident may be treated equally and should be, but taken on the whole, it's ridiculous to treat them equally and to expect people to use language that treats them equally.
It seems like doublespeak, bigotry against whites cannot be both treated equally individually but not treated equally on a whole. That might work in the ideal but it will for sure not work in practice because you will end up creating resentment among whites who have been mistreated and are told "Your problems are not as important." This resentment will fester and end up radicalizing some and on a whole result in a net increase of racists.
It also causes a problem when in the future you have accomplished what you are aiming for, say in 2050 there is no longer any bigotry by whites. Yet, there will still be bigotry against whites. Does it the become a major issue? Will we then elevate it to the same importance as the current issue?
Do you see where I am coming from? How I can see this attitude is not the right one to take if the end goal is equality for all? You don't have to agree with me, I just want to know if you see what I am seeing.
But we diverge here: my view is putting a bunch of energy into bigotry on whites takes away from the energy needed fight bigotry by whites. It muddles the issue to always have to add, "some black people are bigots too". But, as you alluded, I think that's temporary. I also don't go so far as to say bigotry on whites is ok right now. The original quote didn't say that, and I wouldn't endorse that.
Then why all the resistance to addressing it? If it's such a small problem, it should be a simple and harmless thing to tackle it along with all the other kinds of bigotry. Carefully policing what kinds of bigotry are to be addressed or not sends the implicit message that some kinds of bigotry are OK. It also makes the overall anti-bigotry project harder because it turns what could be a universal moral appeal into a targeted condemnation that elicits defensiveness and justified accusations of hypocrisy.
What about a black person calling a North African one "sand nigger"? Or saying Mexicans are lazy?
If we propose a raceless society, why are we mentioning a race? That's the weird part.
It's not an unclear sentence.
And you're probably quite sane.
However, in normal discourse context is not generally understood to be that of a logical proof. Things are implied and inferred by what's included or excluded from what's said.
So, for example suppose I were to say simply "white male high-performing employees should be promoted". Logically this doesn't contradict the statement "all high-performing employees should be promoted". But I didn't say that. I made a much more qualified statement regarding white males. Why did I qualify it so. It's natural to ask such a question. I would expect people to think I'm implying something about non-white non-males. Again - It's natural, and in fact part of normal discourse, to infer things from what people chose to include and omit from their statements (please let me know if you disagree with this).
Similarly, original statement was about white male bigots specifically, not just all bigots. It's natural, outside the context of a logical proof, to infer some meaning from that.
Not only that, but they said as much after the fact. I believe them. Why don't more here believe them?
They would have to be a complete idiot radical for those quoted interpretations to be what they meant.
It doesn't say anything about firing other bigots. If you assumed it did, you inserted that meaning.
Fortunately, this comment made them stop (or move to a private channel, who knows). But the fact that they were making these comments for a week was rather shocking to me. Nobody involved seemed to think there was anything wrong with saying that you would, quote, "beat in the face of the nearest Trump voter" in a work chat room with ~1000 members
(I note that Linus seems to manage at least one "people who do X should be fired"-equivalent email every week)
Fired for poor programming practices. The two situations are in no way comparable.
> If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted white men.
I would put the above statement at about the same as
> If you want to increase productivity at Google fire all the lazy black people.
I will let the reader decide if the two statements should be treated the same by HR.
That is, the first statement does not require the assumption that all, or even many, white men are bigoted in order to make sense, and the mention of race and gender is directly relevant. (It would also be true that firing white men at random would accomplish the same goal; the meme author is trying to say, why don't we fire the bigoted subset of this group, because we want to fire bigots anyway.)
I think it's a defensible position to believe that the statement isn't acceptable anyway - but I don't think the two statements are analogous by any means.
If someone in my choir kept going on about how the basses are too loud no matter what they objectively do, I would tell them to cut it out, and I would hope that the choir director would get rid of them if they persisted; it's pretty demotivating to be told that you're doing something wrong no matter what you do. But if we actually have a problem with auditioning too many basses and it's hurting the sound of the choir, and some of them are just not good at singing quietly, getting rid of them is the right thing to do (unless this is a school choir or something where participation is a more important goal than sounding good).
There's a distinction between saying unflattering things about people who do unflattering things (like submit broken or low quality code) and making hostile statements about people who simply have some physical attribute.
There was a similar small bruhaha in the Rust community severals weeks ago. They hired a community manager who has leanings (nothing wrong with that), but had made tweets like "kill all men".
Believe no actual ill will was intended, but you could see why it may trigger people. In the thread announcing this person's new role, a few people brought up issues like this (that wasn't an isolated sentiment, it was a pattern of behavior) and the mods for a while simply deleted any criticism, then they made a hard rule that nobody could talk about it (because that was related to personal issues). This rule was in the interest of preventing harassment (which yeah, legit reason), but it was completely tone deaf. You can't appoint a community manager who has made pointed statements about people in your community and then shut down discussion in the interest of tolerance.
Check out the thread, it looks like a warzone. It turned me off Rust a little bit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_a...
I wish we could talk about these things openly, the way we are handling these discussions only isolates us.
But if the individual stands by those same public comments calling for violence against a particular race or ethnicity then cause for concern is justified. By silencing that concern they are not doing themselves or anyone else a favor.
But if you are objective about it you would probably come to the conclusion that conservative political viewpoints or support will hurt you in the SF area, but even radical liberal viewpoints will not.
The prop was, by any measure, mainstream at the time. It may have been on the wrong side of history, but remember that even Obama expressed a lack of support for gay marriage in the past.
Any political issue seems like the most important thing in the world if you look closely enough and lose perspective. Let's move on. Any political position even close to the mainstream should not cost you your job unless you are a politician. But political stuff, for the most part, should not take over the workplace either.
Here, here! Many people seem to need to learn how be able to create some distance between themselves and their ideas, so they can put those ideas away when its appropriate and interact with others on different levels.
Even those viewpoints radical to the level of inciting violence.
When someone peacefully, nonviolently supports the wrong cause, it should be appreciated. It's the very fact that places like the US can settle political debates and get on with life without resorting to violence which makes the USA such a great place to live. There's a reason why the ability to transfer power and make policy peacefully is measured in development indexes.
If you want to gauge the justice of a side, then look for their benevolence and intellectual honesty. If you want to speak truth to power, then look to the side that's hounding people out of their jobs and trying to intimidate their enemies into silence. Nelson Mandela called his commissions, "Truth and Reconciliation" commissions, not "let's look back and see who was on the wrong side and dismantle their lives" commissions.
If I wrote "Kill all x" people would call me out for the absolute horror that statement implies.
It doesn't matter if you perceive the party to be in a position of power or not.
> "Kill all Americans."
> "Kill all Google employees."
> "Kill all politicians."
Each of these statements is profoundly evil- If you make something akin to this genuinely, then you are worthy of criticism for making them. Unless you retract them, which she has not.
The CoC complaint is amazing and has me really worried about Rust and I wonder where the adults are. Usually Meta Language people are meritocracy driven so I'm surprised to see a feminist infiltration. GoLang I could understand...
https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_v...
> no actual ill will was intended
Pick one.
That's why the standard for orientation discrimination doesn't apply to straight people. It's why the standard for race discrimination doesn't apply to white people. And it's why the standard for sex discrimination doesn't apply to cis men. The history is just very different.
Last I heard, it was best to treat people equally.
Not at all! I'm saying that the history of women in the US is different than the history of men in the US, and that the experience of women in the US is different than the history of men in the US. For example, women are far, far more likely to be physically assaulted by a man than a man is by a woman. And we're not just talking about a dozen or so cases: violence against women is epidemic in the US (and most of the world).
So rather than using "ancestors", we can use "people currently alive". And rather than "superficial characteristics like skin color and sex" we can use "ascribed statuses" like race and sex.
Or we can leave sex out of it. Let's say there was a group of men who have, for centuries, been victimized by the rest of men. They've been abducted, sold, tortured, murdered, humiliated and exploited for centuries. That's the story of Black men (and women, of course) in America.
We can't make some simple rules about "fairness" and leave it at that. We have to understand the history of people, the history of our culture, and the current ways our culture oppresses people before we can even begin to talk about fairness. If we want to be fair towards Black people we have to take into account the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, and institutional racism. If we want to be fair towards women we have to take into account chattel, disenfranchisement, sexism, and rape culture.
Not doing this is essentially breaking someone's leg before a sprint, and when they lose and they say "Wow, that was super unfair!" we say "Wow you had the same rules! What are you upset about? That whole leg breaking thing happened a _long time ago_"
Your excuse is "history."
I know of some other groups who have engaged in that sort of ideology. One is the KKK. The other is the Nazis. Also, the Soviets all throughout the USSR, particularly in Ukraine.
Not doing this is essentially breaking someone's leg before a sprint, and when they lose and they say "Wow, that was super unfair!" we say "Wow you had the same rules! What are you upset about? That whole leg breaking thing happened a _long time ago_"
You are super ignorant of history, because you are buying into a far-left propaganda version of history used to justify inter-group conflict. If slavery is leg breaking, then also note that Koreans have been doing it to Koreans, Europeans have been doing it to Europeans, Africans have been doing it to fellow Africans. If there has been a lot of leg breaking going on, the solution is to stop the leg breaking, not engage in recriminations about it.
Since when have recriminations been the solution to peace in history?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w0X71d9Z08
No I'm not using skin color (can we just say race?) and sex, and I don't think you can just dismiss history as an excuse. For example, there are a lot of people in Africa who look like Black people, but when they come to the US they haven't labored under the same kind of racism that Blacks have, so their history and culture are different, and they don't have the same disadvantages (they still have many). However, if they have kids here that difference pretty much goes away for them.
> I know of some other groups who have engaged in that sort of ideology. One is the KKK. The other is the Nazis. Also, the Soviets all throughout the USSR, particularly in Ukraine.
I earnestly hope you're not comparing me to the KKK, Nazis, and the Soviets, so let's proceed as though you aren't.
> You are super ignorant of history, because you are buying into a far-left propaganda version of history used to justify inter-group conflict.
I really don't know what this means. Slavery in the US was horrible and its effects reverberate today. We're continuing to have a national debate about how to view the Confederacy (which I personally think is ridiculous -- it was a monstrous pro-slavery rebellion resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans) and historic Americans who were also slave owners. Slavery, along with Jim Crow and segregation, really did happen and institutional racism persists to this day.
Also maybe be a little nicer.
> Koreans have been doing it to Koreans
Nobi made up around 10% of the Korean population and wasn't based on race. Black slaves in the US made up about 50% of the population in the South and... are Black. There was no Korean Jim Crow and no Korean segregation, probably both because of WW2 and because, again, slavery in Korea wasn't racial.
> Europeans have been doing it to Europeans
The most recent example of this is Barbary slavery, but again there are significant differences: slavery wasn't inherited and it wasn't race-based. Also no Jim Crow or segregation.
> Africans have been doing it to fellow Africans.
I'm guessing this list is your argument that slavery shouldn't be an excuse today, but Wikipedia has a whole section on effects in Slavery in Africa [1]. It's also in many ways intertwined with the Atlantic slave trade. Africa is a big place so this topic is just too big, but suffice it to say this too was super bad and continues to cause problems today.
> If there has been a lot of leg breaking going on, the solution is to stop the leg breaking, not engage in recriminations about it. Since when have recriminations been the solution to peace in history?
I don't know what you mean by "recriminations" here. If anyone's making recriminations ("an accusation in response to one from someone else") it's the people saying "What are you upset about?" -- their accusation came second...?
Maybe what you mean is "bringing the whole slavery/segregation thing up all the time". But like it or not, we can't escape the actions of people we have no relation to, because those actions had long-lasting effects we continue to deal with. We don't get to disclaim responsibility for the current state of our society, because it's our society now.
I agree we should stop leg breaking -- or really what I mean here is we should address our racist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic culture. Something like 30% of the US is cis, straight, white, and male. That means 70% of the US deals with some form of discrimination constantly, every day, all the time. This discrimination has significant effects on health, crime, the economy, really everything for all of us. Men face discrimination as well: look at the prison population f...
https://www.removeddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announceme...
https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_v...
Personally, I have no problem with people saying things like this, especially in their personal lives. I like banter. But part of banter is that both sides are allowed to play. If someone can express extreme ideas like "kill all men" I should be able to make equally extreme jokes, but in different ideological directions.
What bothers me is not the language, but the unfairness. I can understand not permitting banter at work or in organizations. It makes some people uncomfortable. But what I can't understand is just allowing banter of some ideological bent.
I can. The point of "[only] allowing banter of [a particular] ideological bent" is to enforce conformity to that ideology. When that happens fairness isn't a priority.
> What bothers me is not the language, but the unfairness.
Me too.
I would support a blanket ban on all things like that _in the workplace_.
"Kill all men" though... I'm sure the guys on her team would get a fair shake, right?
Please start thinking more deeply about these issues and please do some research. Racism, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, and homophobia are all far more complicated than a few language rules.
That's the constructive thing to do, if you're interested.
edit --
Hey I wrote a little screenplay to demonstrate how a conversation like this might go, in order to placate some of the totally earnest replies below:
A: kill all men
B: huh, A, what's that about?
A: Peter Thiel blames the 19th Amendment for the collapse of our society; the patriarchy is everywhere
B: <googles patriarchy, suddenly starts buying Shirley Chisholm gear>
All of which is to say that if you ask, "huh, A, what's that about?" instead of, "you genocidal maniac feminism is the worst and you're the worst" you can have a discussion.
Edit: To respond to your edit, I'm saying through the initial phrasing of the statement, a good portion of people will be alienated and likely not get to the point where they ask "huh, what's that about?". I don't know if that's intentional or not but given how pervasive these problems are framed, I would think attracting as large of an audience as possible would be beneficial.
> in order to placate some of the totally earnest replies below
This is not conducive to any productive discussion. I've responded with questions because I'm curious about the intent and goals behind these tactics. If you don't think I'm being earnest then why bother responding?
There are plenty of people out there teaching us about feminism. Trolling Twitter to find straw men to burn is not constructive. It's not every woman's responsibility to teach us about feminism. They get to be angry and frustrated; they don't have to be perfect ambassadors at all times.
> I'm curious about the intent and goals behind these tactics.
These aren't tactics. These are just people fed up with the patriarchy.
> If you don't think I'm being earnest then why bother responding?
Mostly because I find it hard to believe anyone's actually worried about male genocide, and false outrage is like the #1 tactic in discussions like this. You can see it in other responses like "well well well, who's SEXIST now?!"
>There are plenty of people out there teaching us about feminism. Trolling Twitter to find straw men to burn is not constructive. It's not every woman's responsibility to teach us about feminism. They get to be angry and frustrated; they don't have to be perfect ambassadors at all times.
I was not referencing Twitter, I was quoting what was in your post. I did not say anyone was responsible for teaching anyone about feminism or how they should function as ambassadors. I do not feel like I need to be educated on this matter and do not care about how ambassadors conduct themselves. However, if you put yourself out there as an ambassador, it's natural that people scrutinize things you say a bit closer than others. When people are able to say that you represent something or are a spokesperson for a cause, they are going to attach your words to it. This ties into the next quote.
> These aren't tactics. These are just people fed up with the patriarchy.
Tactics, messaging, whatever you want to call it, I'm just trying to understand the intent. If people are fed up and this is just venting, then sure, do you I guess? I personally just think it hurts the cause more than it helps it and am wondering if that's a concern or if there's something else going on.
>Mostly because I find it hard to believe anyone's actually worried about male genocide, and false outrage is like the #1 tactic in discussions like this. You can see it in other responses like "well well well, who's SEXIST now?!"
I have not expressed any concern about male genocide. I have been upfront about asking about the intended efficacy behind the type of language used in this. That's all. Assuming ill intent when it's presented upfront is a really good way to lose people who might have been otherwise agreeable to a cause.
It's not. It's meant signal membership in a group and piss other people off (and show you don't care you did it).
> In fact, I’d say there’s nothing constructive about saying that even if you know the context.
The "context" is just an attempt to delegitimize the people who find the statement objectionable.
You seem to infer immunity on the part of those you deem oppressed from having their statement being taken at face value but don't extend this same courtesy to those you deem oppressors.
You believe that someone should read "kill all men" and respond in a curious manner, because you think you are in the right, regardless of whether they are a parent of small male children. We exist in a nation of free speech but if you say something, it is not the responsibility of the listener to do the research to figure out if there is some deeper meaning to what you are saying. Even if there is a deeper meaning, calling for the eradication of a gender or race is not going to initiate the productive conversation between the speaker and those being targeted that you think it is. I have young boys and once someone says to me "kill all men" anything else they say is pretty much meaningless. There are better way to initiate a free exchange of ideas.
Many would not extend this courtesy of looking for deeper meaning to those whose view points you are trying to change. Would you be happy to initiate a calm thoughtful conversation with someone who tweets out that "Women are ruining this great nation" or would you call for their firing and censorship?
Individuals have different ideas on life and that's ok but the workplace is not the right place to discuss controversial topics unless the freedom of expression is extended to all view points, and there has to be an understanding that feelings may be hurt on both sides.
Finally, words have specific meaning, especially the written word. Words also carry consequences. If someone says "Kill all men", I will believe that what they mean is "kill all men".
What do you think someone means when they say "I'm gonna kill the person who wrote this"? Do you call the cops?
> You seem to infer immunity on the part of those you deem oppressed from having their statement being taken at face value but don't extend this same courtesy to those you deem oppressors.
There's a long history of men oppressing women. There is no history of women oppressing men. So when someone says "kill all men" they can't be referencing a history of oppression. On the other hand when someone says "biologically, women are worse engineers than men", they're referencing a school of thought that has denied women basic human rights and still has modern adherents.
My point is we're not on the verge of a male genocide (it feels ridiculous to even type this). We are always on the verge of taking away freedoms from women and people of color. So I think we need a more nuanced rule than "face value", or whatever.
> Would you be happy to initiate a calm thoughtful conversation with someone who tweets out that "Women are ruining this great nation" or would you call for their firing and censorship?
Censorship? Nah. Firing? If they have an important position then certainly. The same way I would advocate that if they said "Slavery was a good idea" or "Nazism has a lot going for it". We know slavery is wrong. We know Nazism and fascism are wrong. We know misogyny and sexism are wrong. Protesting the patriarchy or being angry about it isn't the same thing.
I'd also be willing to have a conversation with them though, so "both" is the answer to your question I think.
> Individuals have different ideas on life and that's ok but the workplace is not the right place to discuss controversial topics unless the freedom of expression is extended to all view points, and there has to be an understanding that feelings may be hurt on both sides.
Global warming is "controversial" despite being obviously the truth, but we can't move forward on addressing it because we continue to pay lip service to people who just don't believe in it. The same is true of feminism, economics, the criminal justice system, gay rights, immigration, and so many other things. I do care what people think and I want to treat them with respect and consideration, but that doesn't trump our right to things like equal pay, clean air and water, due process, etc.
Or to put it another way, at some point I don't care what bigots think and I don't think they should dictate policy. I don't have to agree to listen to the KKK at work if I want to be able to say that women deserve equal pay. That's nonsense.
Do you honestly believe this? Do you think that tomorrow, most people will wake up and decide women shouldn't be allowed to vote? Is that an active thing that you fear?
Would a policy like that ever pass? Again, Indiana's doesn't have the "office" stuff but it's pretty close. Would it prevent all women from voting? No. But you don't need to do that really, you just need to pull their turnout down. Same thing with gerrymandering, voter intimidation, etc. You just need to give yourself an solid advantage. And putting Vote Centers in secure offices where the majority of people are male, and then cutting precincts where the makeup is balanced, increases voting access for men and decreases it for everyone else (well OK, middle class and higher men, but you get my point).
Or if limiting voting access is too abstract, look at equal pay. Look at women's health clinics being forced to shut down because they provide abortion services (a crucial component of women's health). Look at women not being allowed in active combat until very, very recently (military promotions are hard to get w/o active combat -- wonder why only 7% of the US' generals are women...).
So no, I don't think we'll repeal the 19th Amendment tomorrow. I think people who are racists, anti-feminists, homophobes, etc. have other tools they use that are actually pretty effective.
Like requiring them to register on some list making them volunteer for war before they can vote?
But you're right, gender roles harm everyone. You can look at the effects of our idea of "masculinity" on male health, they're pretty devastating. One of the main goals of feminism is to eradicate gender roles so people are free to live how they like without laboring under some ancient, outdated ideas on how they should act based on their sex -- which they had no part in choosing.
That might be your intent, but that is not how it is interpreted. It sounds bigoted, thus, that language should be avoided if the speaker cares about stopping bigotry.
2. What if the speaker cares about expressing frustration about bigotry? Do they have to get your sign off on how to express it?
3. It's a little wicked to oppress people for centuries, and then tell them they have to choose between expressing anger about it or participating in a constructive dialogue about ending it -- especially when a lot of us don't even recognize the problem.
I am accounting for the fact that people of different backgrounds interpret statements differently.
>What if the speaker cares about expressing frustration about bigotry?
It is simple to express frustration about bigotry without using bigoted language.
>Do they have to get your sign off on how to express it?
They can do whatever they like, but if they act like a bigot, don't be surprised when they get labeled as one.
>they have to choose between expressing anger about it or participating in a constructive dialogue about ending it
Stop putting words in my mouth so that you can defend bigotry.
They are free to express their anger any way they wish. However, if they way they choose is to be a bigot, then they will be called a bigot.
In short, it's the social justice idea that:
1) people with the correct identities (LGBT, POC, women, etc) should be able to express themselves as rudely, angrily, or abusively as they like; and that
2) people with other, disfavored, identities (such as white men) cannot object to that rude, angry, or abusive manner of expression. If they do, it's an objectionable form of "oppression." Instead they must take the incivility, be supportive of it, and desperately and submissively search for some kind of positive meaning in the nasty statements. You see this all of the twisting around "kill all men."
However, IMHO, all of that is really just a tactic pushed by a bunch of assholes who want to be jerks to others and get away with it.
> 1) people with the correct identities (LGBT, POC, women, etc) should be able to express themselves as rudely, angrily, or abusively as they like;
It's not about correct or disfavored identities. It's about people who have been oppressed by society. If I chopped off 20% of your paycheck, you'd probably be angry about it. If I then were like, "whoa, there's no need to be angry", that's super dismissive. You can't do something bad to someone, and then come down on them for reacting angrily.
It's also not "as they like". It's really only specifically about social issues.
> Instead they must take the incivility, be supportive of it, and desperately and submissively search for some kind of positive meaning in the nasty statements.
Basically none of this is right. "submissively"? Really just understand that our culture makes things harder for people who aren't cis straight white men, and don't give them grief when they get frustrated about it.
There is no correlating behavior here. If feminists win out, women will pay the same for health care as men do, we'll have as many women working in STEM as we have men, women will be paid the same money for the same work. You can't equate that with sexism. You can't say that if we want to advocate for equal rights for women in the workplace that we have to tolerate people advocating against equal rights for women in the workplace. It's deeply and clearly wrong. It's like if I want to say "vaccines don't cause autism" we have to give equal air time to people who think they do. No, we don't. They're wrong.
That's why these things aren't the same. I would guess you'll probably just say (again), "people who say 'kill all men' are expressing hate against men, that's misandry and it's bigoted", but please at least consider what I've written now to... idk 8 people in this thread. The worst thing that happens is you come to the conclusion I'm just spending a lot of time ineffectively trolling and burning my karma. But I'm hoping you'll start to consider that the issue is much more complicated.
Words matter.
Bigotry isn't just words, but words matter. A lot. Instead of dumping a ton of words defending bigotry, maybe just use a few well chosen ones to denounce it.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/16/us/hate-crime...
[2]: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm
[3]: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race....
[4]: https://ncadv.org/statistics
I'm really tired of having to explain to people that claim to have studied this exact thing why it's not as simple as white people vs everyone else. When you boil it down like that you don't get solutions.
Isn't it though? Look at the race numbers for prison, school quality, poverty, profession, representation in media, etc. Even when you control for everything else (especially socioeconomic status; people love to argue that being poor and white is just as hard but hey, racism is still something that poor Black people have to deal with that poor white people don't) race is a huge, dominating factor.
Even if this is actually true! Even if it is actually true that "kill all men" expands into this reasonable position. Because I have no access to what goes on inside someone else's head. All I have access to is what I see.
And when I, a man, see a person with management authority over me, wearing a pin that says 'kill all men', I get scared. This is not appropriate for a workplace, no moreso than any white supremacist garbage is.
Sure, because when someone says "put your money where your mouth is" you eat your wallet. When someone says "keep your chin up" you walk around looking at the sky.
If you ever, in your entire life, encounter someone who believes all men should be killed, do you really think you're gonna notice their "Kill All Men" pin before they get you?
All this nonsense about "I believe those words" is bananas to me. Get out of here.
If someone thinks "kill all X" is okay, depending on the value of X, then there's something really weird going on! What if X is any of these? Women, Black people, Jews, Lesbians, Asians, Gay people, Republicans, or Rich People? Back in the good old days, "prejudice" meant judging people on their surface characteristics as opposed to on their merits, and such a statement would have been seen as highly suspect. Now, it's seen as the kind of stuff "Social Justice Advocates" say? People who are "community managers" have such a distorted sense of fairness that they can't parse what they're doing?
I guess even supposedly intelligent tech people believe this "X-ism == Prejudice + Power" crap? Sorry, but racism is judging people by only their race, and sexism is judging people only by their sex. The direction of the arrow does not matter. Anyone who believes something like that hasn't learned skeptical thought, and anyone who promulgates that is supporting a supremacist position of one group dominating another.
Power is contextual. This is clearly true, as demonstrated by history. Anyone who promulgates "X-ism == Prejudice + Power" as if Power is a global, unchanging vector is either dishonest, disconnected from reality, or ignorant of history.
This can also cause strife between well meaning people who wouldn't otherwise be at each others throats. Like you have someone complaining about bad <X> people, an <X> person gets triggered and lashes out, the original complainer now believes the triggered person is a bad <X> person.
I think a sizable portion of the diversity arguments are brouhaha caused by people who don't speak specifically and clearly.
I'm not always good at it myself. But when "say what you mean, and mean what you say" isn't at least someones goal for their choice of phrasing, then they're probably just going to make things worse.
Also, people don't have an obligation to instantly re-cast everything they hear into the best possible argument for a poorly made point. You can make a good point poorly. We should stop blaming the reader for not bending over backwards to take it the way the writer wanted. Or, maybe, at least stop calling them autistic.
Does anyone else think that "goading them into" is basically transferring responsibility to others for saying stupid, inappropriate things at work?
If the HR department doesn't operate that way, or the company guidelines suggest that some statements demand reprimand regardless of context, then I would suggest the issue would be surrounding the way the HR department operates rather than the people making complaints to HR.
Conservative Americans openly advocate for white supremacists but somehow want to escape the label of 'racist'. Since the trouble is having discussions openly, the first step would be to first fully embrace our own positions. It would be far more helpful for the discussion if all these 'what about white men?' types just get the courage of their convictions.
And one thing we certainly don't need is more people expressing the "courage of their convictions" with remarks like "kill all men" or "acts of courage" like the shootings at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park.
Not all conservatives are advocating this, not all of those who do want to escape that label, and not all of those who are both talk about what about white men.
If you are all of those things, you are an extreme minority, one that I doubt is present in this discussion.
Trump is like the figurehead for a culture war where the deeply religious, those who describe themselves as having traditional values and racists, all of whom have felt under siege (rightly or wrongly) and have come out of the woodwork.
How anyone who works at Google can feel oppressed is honestly beyond me. In my own experience, the company bends over backward to accommodate you, as a general rule.
I'm actually perplexed by the argument from some that things like Damore's memo are an issue of freedom of speech. It is not. More importantly, defenders seem oblivious to the fact that implicitly questioning whether your coworkers deserve to be there inevitably creates a hostile work environment and that's really the problem.
The low point to me is how some (reference in the article) feel justified in leaking conversations and personal details of their coworkers to the likes of Breitbart. That is truly disgusting behaviour as far as I'm concerned.
If you're a white male conservative Google engineer who feels oppressed and leaks such details, maybe the best thing for you to do is question your belief system that's so warped that you've managed to convince yourself that that's OK. Because it isn't.
Opinions are a spectrum, but we are constantly blasted with the extremist opinions on both sides. Social media has only amplified these issues. Extremists generate many responses from both sides and thus a lot of eyes end up on these opinions. Talk to your neighbor. Regardless of their political affiliation, they're probably a pretty decent human being (obviously there are outliers). Just try to remember the person you're talking to is a human being and their opinion is probably more nuanced than you give them credit for.
which is understandable, since defenders don't hold this view. Which parts of the memo are you referring to.
> feel justified in leaking conversations
AFAIK the memo itself was a result of a leak, which sets the tone..
> It is not.
> Because it isn't.
Do you have any comments on the specific things in Damore's lawsuit?
I'm not going to dissect the entire memo and get into a back-and-forth about the exact comments but one example is illustrative:
> - A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates
The implication being that it's easier for "diversity" candidates to get hired. This implicitly devalues any such coworkers you have because you've just said they were held to a lower standard.
If you can't see how that might create a hostile work environment then I'm afraid I can't help you.
> AFAIK the memo itself was a result of a leak, which sets the tone.
So that justifies opening up your colleagues to very public harassment and open attacks by leaking not only what they said but their personal information? Because the memo leak set the "tone"?
I sure hope you're not saying that. And if you aren't, what are you saying, exactly?
Everyone knows, the definition of “making something diverse” is “removing white men from a group and replacing them with anyone not white and male.”
If I were to post anything remotely resembling disagreement , it would end my professional career. I would be called racist, sexist, transphobic, you name it. So I keep my mouth shut. I’m not the only one.
If I were to reveal that these statements make me deeply uncomfortable, I would be accused of “white fragility.”
Trump isn’t the problem. Any sort is disagreement has been effectively banned and silenced by use of the exact same coercive tactics that are now being turned back on these far Left Google employees.
Liz Fong Jones for example, who would openly disparage white men on Twitter on a regular basis - Still has a job!
Despite all of the harassment, administratively, if you disparate white people due to their race, age and gender (old white men), you are still employed. Maybe you get a mean tweet now and then but your job is intact.
Think about that. If I were to post any of the following: Women don’t work as hard as men and have different priorities due to their biology, All gender bathrooms are stupid and don’t make sense etc - I would get fired.
If me saying those things is wrong and fireable, so is their left wing equivalent.
It’s time for these large corporations to realize that allowing the minorities to disparage the majority isn’t the solution or acceptable either.
Look at what has happened.
And let's be completely honest, Damore's memo was mischaracterized in the wider media; at no point did he say that women made worse engineers than men, and at no point were his suggestions regarding improving Google's diversity efforts (which is something he spent time and thought on) even glanced at by his detractors. I'd challenge anyone who thinks I'm misinterpreting the memo to prove me wrong; I would welcome being corrected as right now the coverage of Damore makes me feel like the only sane person in the crazy house.
You're not the only person to have mentioned that the memo leaked. So what? That's basically the "well, they started it!" argument. Or even "two wrongs make a right".
Knowingly opening up colleagues to a barrage of hate is a vile act. There is no justification for it. Condemn the leak of the memo if you want but it is unrelated.
> If you're a white male conservative Google engineer who feels oppressed and leaks such details, maybe the best thing for you to do is question your belief system that's so warped that you've managed to convince yourself that that's OK. Because it isn't.
Here you are implying that white male conservative Google engineers who leak such details should question their warped belief system, yet you're excusing others who presumably aren't white male conservatives who have done exactly the same thing.
- Neo-nazis committing violence in Charlottesville with a president who almost refused to condemn them and tempered any hollow condemnation with claims of their being very fine people on both sides;
- The Chief of Staff peddling the quite racist view that the Civil War was a "failure to compromise", implicitly blaming Northern aggression;
- Defense of civil war statues and monuments. Personally I have mixed feelings about this one because you can't erase history no matter how ugly. But that wasn't the point. The point was a rallying cry to the descendants of former slave owners who seem unable to get over the fact that they can't own slaves anymore;
- Puerto Rico basically being abandoned post-Marla. Compare that to the response after the Houston flooding. On its own this may simply be incompetence. It fits a pattern of behaviour however.
More examples:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...
The existence of racist acts prior to Trump becoming president is beside the point. The issue is the quantity and nature of events after (compared to before) and how such purveyors of hate and intolerance have been emboldened by the white nationalist-in-chief.
> We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.
This addressed the extreme-right/neo-nazi violence, as well as the increasing violence perpetrated by extreme-left/antifa agitators (which you conveniently ignored). I would hope my president would condemn all political violence equally.
The media took his statement and ran with it, arguing that it somehow supported extreme-right violence. Alt-right people believed them and became emboldened. If the media had focused on the actual political violence and emphasized that all such acts should be condemned, maybe the agitators would have crawled back to their basements.
When people think of mainstream American conservative views, do they mean like those on the Texas GOP platform? People should go take a look. Or on Reddit's /r/conservative?
https://www.texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/PERM-PLA...
What do people here think about the fact that for the past 2 decades, the only issues worthy of national Christian consensus have been sexual issues? And now there's this transgender business? For example, do people remember the push for a Constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage? Was that used to rally the base?
So that applies to both sides? Or just the white males?
I also know for a fact there are conservatives at work who are uncomfortable too because they don’t have the majority view, and that’s not okay. You should never feel uncomfortable at work just because you’re in some kind of minority. One real easy way to avoid that is just not talk about politics at work or outside work with your coworkers.
And that’s not to say companies can’t make political decisions. Company policy for letting trans people use the restroom that matches their gender identity is fine because it’s not people arguing about Trump during lunch, it’s an official company policy. I just want my coworkers to stop getting into arguments about things that then make it really awkward to work with them.
> just want my coworkers to stop getting into arguments about things that then make it really awkward to work with them.
Things like who is allowed in the women's restroom, perhaps?
(b) there are tons of "Greyglers"
Something like this has happened to me. I will say this, the alt-right are excellently adopting the tactics of the SJWs in taking offense at everything. Horseshoe theory at work?
The diversity numbers from 2014 show Google is 70% male and 61% white. Also isn't Google's interview feedback demo blind?
>Blind interviews have nothing to do with this
Seems like hiring is decided by merit. Any diversity recruiting program seems like it's about outreach to identify underrepresented candidates but the bar is the same once those candidates are interviewed.
Well, I guess there's a line between an activity specifically designed to include minorities and an activity specifically designed to exclude the majority. The first one is not discriminatory towards the majority - the second one obviously is. I am fairly certain there is a difference between the two, no?
Going back to my example - if you specifically only offer parental time off to one gender, you are specifically excluding the other one. That's discriminatory, even if that other gender is in majority.
If you run a black history month, you are not specifically excluding white or asian or any other history - you are just focusing on the black history month for now.
> Some employees see similarities between some of the behavior inside Google and alt-right manuals for fighting advocates for social justice, such as one written by Beale that instructs readers to “Document their every word and action,” “Undermine them, sabotage them, and discredit them,” and “Make the rubble bounce” on your way out the door.
> Beale says they’re right. “I know that there are a number of people there who have read [the guide], I know that they’re using it,” Beale told WIRED. He claims to have had contacts inside the company for years and dozens of followers. He says he doesn’t know if Damore has read his guide, but is following the playbook. Damore says he has not read the manual.
This is a science fiction author, someone outside tech, who admits that he has contacts inside Google following a playbook for sabotaging people with political views opposed to his own. This is an outsider attempting to get Google to prioritize politics over technical merit - and he seems to be succeeding.
He's been a video game developer for decades. Is that considered to be "outside tech" now?
> a playbook for sabotaging people with political views opposed to his own
How is that any different from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals?
Isn't it the opposite - he hasn't been a video game developer for decades? I think the last project he was involved with was The War in Heaven in 1999, which I can only find negative reviews about, both in terms of storyline and technical quality.
And even if he were still involved, I think an indie video game studio is still in a relevant sense outside the tech industry - I don't believe he's e.g. interviewing at Google or any other tech company. I take voice lessons and sing at churches and so forth, but I'm certainly an outsider to the music industry, even though I can sing pretty well. If I were trying to push my politics on the music industry, that would be pretty different from someone who has a recording contract doing the same.
> How is that any different from Saul Alinky's Rules for Radicals?
As far as I know, nobody is saying "I'm following Alinsky's playbook to disrupt this tech company I don't work at." (There might be conspiracy theories that people are doing that, but that's rather different from someone outright saying as much, which is what we have here.)
I do agree that if someone were doing that, it would be equally worth criticizing.
No, his primary source of income is still and continues to be video game development. He simply shifted to the European market when he moved there.
> As far as I know, nobody is saying "I'm following Alinsky's playbook to disrupt this tech company I don't work at."
You must not be looking too awfully hard, then. There have been hundreds of instances of people trying to get other people fired at companies they don't work for. Most (if not all of them) have read that book. In fact, there were entire countries that were overthrown in the 70s where that book was used as a manual.
I find it particularly suspect the way he tries to align Damore with his interests and politics.
"He says he doesn’t know if Damore has read his guide, but is following the playbook."
This looks to me like Beale is trying to make everyone view Damore as a member of the alt-right. It makes the left see them as a growing organized group that's waging war.
It's the same tactic that terrorist groups use when they take credit for attacks that they in reality had nothing to do with. It makes them seem bigger and scarier if people think they're organizing all these attacks around the globe.
It's a good concern - but Beale's concrete and measurable involvement with the Hugos and with Gamergate makes me inclined to believe he's not at a loss for followers or in need of magnifying his own influence.
To be clear, I don't think Damore is a member of the alt-right, nor do I think that Damore planned to disrupt anything at Google. (The best explanation to me is that he was earnest about the points in the memo, had a little bit of the why-can't-I-answer-this-from-first-principles tendency that is incredibly prevalent in tech, and got coopted by alt-right folks, yes.) I believe there are lots of other people at Google doing this, though, on purpose.
It's hard to make people not to talk about main event of the year, happening in their country, in real-time, and probably such ban is counterproductive.
Thinking about it a bit more, the underlying problem here is not politics per se, but exteremely polarized society. Not sure this is something fixable with HR directives.
In Western Europe the amount of kvetching is ten times lower on average, meaning people really care about elections 4 weeks before and 4 weeks after and then move on with their lives, as opposed to US, where political fighting is never stops.
My pet theory (which may cause downvotes here) is that US democracy seriously differs from Western Europe. In Western European countries you have different parties with their different pet issues, but you don't have different ideologies.
In US, there are two different ideologies, having different views on everything -- gender, religion, race, well, any topic you can pick, actually. What we observe is these two ideologies maturing, crystallizing and diverging from each other.
I often wonder how it will play out, in a long run. ;)
That's a really good insight. On many issues, I look at the viewpoints of those I disagree with and wonder how a sane person can think what they think; no doubt they look at me and wonder the same.
> I often wonder how it will play out, in a long run. ;)
Poorly, I suspect.
And getting back to Damore memo -- from what I know about large european IT companies (and I do know something), if such memo was published on some intranet in, say, Netherlands or Denmark, you will end up with some flamewar (not even guaranteed) and maybe locked thread, thats it. Nobody would be fired, and it's absolutely impossible to imagine such case resulting in nation-wide news story. Zero chance. Nobody will really pay attention, because why.
But when you have two opposing ideologies, even a symbolic victory matters. So even if the reason is just some words some random dude typed on some private intranet (lol), outrage on national scale ensues. Soldiers from both ideologies armies are recruited, downvotes fired, and we have something NYT and Wired writing articles about. Just because of some post on some corporate portal.
Good thing that this is still contained to online flamewars. Still.
No, the difference was that we didn't have modern social media amplifying and echoing and re-broadcasting all the noise; so political arguments burned themselves without a wide conflagration
I appreciate that the alt-right's response is a valid piece of the story, but it would be nice if they at least acknowledged the presence of the significant middle ground.
@mods: How about getting some stats on which accounts actively downvote the most reasonable posts here?
Maybe you shouldn’t be surprised to find people fighting back at you.
This is the toxic diversity-advocates in Google effectively getting the same treatment they have been giving others, their own methods used against them.
In other words: cry me a river.
Edit: wording.
I find opposing such hypocracy perfectly reasonable, but I can tell from the voting that the HN consensus is that they would rather leave this giant elephant untouched. In which case, you reap what saw.
Fittingly for this debate, the word "libertarian" was first used by the anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacques in attacking the anarchist Proudhon for his misogynistic views [1]. But unlike the "diversity-advocates" you complain about, Dejacques argues for diversity as a consequence of liberty, and argues for liberty as essential to the humanity of all.
Applying power over others to force diversity is the antithesis of this, and there is a major schism over this on the left just as there is between authoritarian and anti-authoritarian ideologies on the right too.
[1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joseph-dejacque-on-t...
Why does everyone has to be an activist? On either side.
This is all counter productive, and I think that trying to create chaos and damage your employer is the most disturbing part.
- heh, and here I was thinking discussions of science were about deciding degree of correctness. I’d better attend the political re-education camp before math class, to avoid making any “politically naive” or “dangerous” statements...
Killing the privileged people will only create a newer class of "privileged". It's like a never-ending cycle of martial artists killing another martial artist, and his son coming back for revenge and killing the aforementioned killer martial artist, and so on. (Sorry I should have used "her", and "daughter" instead of "him" and "son")
Why does Google have an internal list for political discussions and stuff?
Are Google employees allowed to post their stuff on their publicly viewable personal blogs, HN, etc., while at Google?
What happens if someone posts a link on the Google internal lists to their publicly viewable blog entry and requests publicly viewable comments on it? Would they get in trouble?
Google is big and kind of not really busy with building products anymore. Anytime a company starts losing its busy-ness, its focus, you see "politics" come to the forefront. Once HR and Legal run the show, stick a fork in it.
GE and Six Sigma was the same shit, different angle. Products and their success rule, everything else is distractions and blockers.
Note how Amazon is kept focused and on track. Note how Apple is able to do this, but only after SJ came back and turned it into a busy product place again.
Facebook has Sandberg and others coming to the forefront, Twitter had all kind of drama - jury still out on those. Uber ditto.
Understaffed/lean teams working on winning, running for their lives - and drama is less likely. Breeds camaraderie and cuts the crap. Hard work is the best equalizer.
Bored people look for trouble, distraction.