Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces • Hacker News Board

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#521

Post by tarsinge » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #386

koheripbal wrote: post #353

His bigotry goes beyond anti-semitism. Kamau Bobb's blog posts were almost exclusively about White and Jewish people, as a whole, and their mistreatment of Black Americans both historically and today. He even targets progressive white people for their more unspoken racism. There is a very obvious tone of distaste for white and Jewish people in his posts. Search for the word "white" or "Jew" in his blog [1] posts to s…

Do you believe the acknowledgement of race or racial difference to be intrinsically bigoted?

The confusion between skin color, race and culture seems to be one of the root cause for many problems in the US. Their history with minorities seems to have unfortunately unconsciously tied skin color and culture, ignoring the fact that it's the definition of racism. Not saying it's all rosy elsewhere, but at least it seems not that deeply ingrained and perpetuated.

So to candidly answer your question, yes there are of course physical differences between people, and correlations between people sharing a set of physical attributes, like skin color. Now if you attach culture and values to skin color, yes it's intrinsically bigoted, no matter the group. The corollary is that people with different skin color can have the same culture, and that criticizing a culture is not racist.

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#522

Post by whimsicalism » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

naivedevops wrote: post #509

dgb23 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My intuition from reading these quotes is that this person spent a lot of time thinking about socioeconomic differences in relation to race[0], so they see things through that lens. It can come off as hostile, but the more generous interpretation that they simply emphasize this theme. [0] I dislike the term "race" in these contexts. In biological terms there is only one human race currently alive as far as we know. E…

About [0], in Portuguese we have abolished the usage of the term "race" for human beings for exactly that reason. Now we exclusively use the term "ethnicity". Edit: What about the downvotes? Are people going crazy?

Which is why Brazil is such a beautiful post-racial utopia?

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#523

Post by jaywalk » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

jms55 wrote: post #390

sanity31415 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge Google has never challenge the accuracy of those claims, and such practices are commonplace in many tech companies in the name of "diversity".

Do you think purposely hiring X group is a bad practice? From what I understand, it's not enough to say "we'll hire X if they're better than Y". When you don't actually have any X at the moment, your company might not be very welcoming to X, and so they won't join. So you purposely go out of your way to hire extra X, to account for the lower acceptance rate. The common response is "that's not fair to Y, you should be…

Beyond your handwaving absurdity, is there any empirical evidence at all that lowering the quality bar for X ends up actually raising quality in the end? Because it sounds like a bunch of unicorn fairytale nonsense to me.

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#524

Post by chevill » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #481

germinalphrase wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe the acknowledgement of race or racial difference to be intrinsically bigoted?

Do you believe white people kill black people with impunity in America?

This is a question that's so loaded its disingenuous without context. You weren't asking me but here's what I think about it.

Do I think that police involved in bad shootings or another type of unjustified death have a really good chance of getting away with it? Of course.

Do I think that the scenario above of an unjustified police killing happens more to people of color? Probably, I haven't looked up the numbers though and I don't know where to find them.

Do I think the overwhelming majority of police killings are justified? Yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't a big deal when unjustified deaths go unpunished.

Do I think most white people in the US could get away with murdering a black person? No, and keep in mind this is closer to the question you actually asked than the question you wanted an answer to.

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#525

Post by jseliger » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

GrinningFool wrote: post #295

lgleason wrote: post #247

Live by the sword, die by the sword. That said, firing him, like they did with Damore would have been more consistent. Because everyone is under arbitration agreements that always benefit the company, vs the courts where you might have a shot at justice, they have no incentive to do that. As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy wou…

> but today it is all about getting scalps, You say "today" as if it's ever been any different. Has it?

I think so, because the sheer amount of material many people have written is larger, the hunt for it is more intense, and the ability to form rapid mobs for two-minute hates is much greater. What will institutions do? https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs...

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#526

Post by txsoftwaredev » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #38

I really wish we could seperate people's private and professional lives. This guy in his private life wrote some nasty blog posts. That shouldn't impact his professional life. Nor vice versa. This blog post isn't sufficiently against the law to end up with him in prison. Yet this is a case of extrajudicial punishment. Unless there is any evidence of him bringing that thinking into his work, he shouldn't be punished.

How private is it when you can easily read his thoughts online? If you want a private life then keep it private.

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#527

Post by AzzieElbab » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

lgleason wrote: post #247

Live by the sword, die by the sword. That said, firing him, like they did with Damore would have been more consistent. Because everyone is under arbitration agreements that always benefit the company, vs the courts where you might have a shot at justice, they have no incentive to do that. As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy wou…

His successor will be his carbon copy minus a few tweets. It is the ideology not the guy.

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#528

Post by koheripbal » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #488

oh_sigh wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe white people kill black people with impunity in America?

Less so today than they did before BLM highlighted the way they repeatedly did so. EDIT: I mean, two people actually think the recent spate of prosecutions of white law enforcement officers for unjustified killings of blacks is because in the last few years American law enforcement officers have just become violently racist in ways they previously weren't, and not a change in accountability resulting from public atte…

Do you honestly believe that you could have murdered a black coworker without criminal justice ramifications prior to BLM?

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#529

Post by ehsankia » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #437

howeyc wrote: post #76

Wow, 14 years ago. I hope the current progressive correct-thinkers realize the takes they make today have to hold up over a decade from now, otherwise the next wave is going to cancel them.

To be fair, we don't know who made the decision to reassign him. It might have been a HR decision in preemptive fear of bad press instead of an actual demand by any group. Also, solidarity for palestinians is pretty widespread among progressives and left-wings in general. I think a push to cancel him for this entry would more likely come from right-wing, pro-Israel groups if anything.

I think the point is that the blog post is not really a big issue if you're an average engineer, but as head of DEI it's not a great look, hence the re-assignment.

Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

#530

Post by honkycat » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #468

honkycat wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? I can think of plenty of reasons why google would want a head of diversity. - They may find diverse teams to perform better - or maybe highly qualified people prefer to work on diverse teams so it helps with recruitment - or their leadership value creating a more equitable society by giving people in under-represented groups the opportunity to work at google. If any of the above are true why should they not…

Companies are diverse as a side effect of hiring for competence. They aren't competent as a side effect of hiring with diversity as a goal. The statistically illiterate HR minions who preach the correlation between diversity and performance don't get this, because they aren't even educated enough to understand correlation/causation fallacy.

So are you claiming opportunity is equally distributed? I feel if you "hire for competence", you are going to end up with a highly concentrated group of wealthy people who went to the best schools.

Also, what is your metric for "competence"? You can train people to be computer programmers, but there are many other traits that are impossible to train. Like seeing the world from a perspective different than a middle aged white man, for one.