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

#571

Post by jbjohns » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

chewmieser wrote: post #315

frockington1 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is why I stopped calling myself a progressive years ago. In my youth I thought progressive meant trying to continually better yourself and your community. Now the focus seems to be on cancelling any viewpoint that conflicts with yours. The new trend of digging further and further back in the past makes it even more counter to my previous beliefs of the word

I just don't understand this viewpoint as it completely ignores the history of humanity. "Cancel culture" has been used for many centuries to silence dissenters. Take a look at Galieleo as an example. He was excommunicated or "canceled" by religious organizations that held the primary means of power. He was even forced to recant his positions by these groups. How is this any different than today?

The scale. In the past you had to watch what you said about those who had the power to hurt you. Now you can have your life derailed by people you've never met and never will, who's only power is being popular in some community you may have never heard of (and may not even exist until years from now).

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

#572

Post by dbingham » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #485

germinalphrase wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

A racial construct has been used to shape every facet of our society and we can't make right those wrongs with out maintaining an awareness and understanding of that construct. We can't undo the historical (and current) harms of racism with out continuing to see race.

This is why the colorblind approach to solving racial issues failed. All it did was make us blind to the continuing harms of racism and there for unable to change those systems and solve those problems.

Kendi expands on it in great detail in his book "How to Be an Antiracist"

Here's a TED talk version of the explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCxbl5QgFZw

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

#573

Post by duxup » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

libria wrote: post #494

duxup wrote: post #293

>will be reassigned to a STEM research role Not fired, just reassigned. I'm ok with that as a policy. Presumably he isn't ok with those old statements and can move on. At the same time the folks who need to post some general statements about a whole group of people, religion, or whatever ... As far as I can remember I've never felt a reason to talk about a whole category of people and "insatiable appetite for war and…

> Not fired, just reassigned. I don't even get how that's gonna work. Inevitably, he'll work alongside/under/oversee Jewish colleagues. That'll be an awkward Hangouts meeting. "Oh hey there's the guy that thinks I'm violent, I wonder if he'll judge my work/team interaction impartially..."

I think there is some leeway in the sense that

"If you're going to work with other people, some of them will probably at some time possibly, or you might even know about, something bad they said that might apply to you."

At that point the question is how that gets worked out. If the other person has since apologized, and it was a long time ago, then I don't think it's too much to ask that other folks maintain a professional relationship / work with such people.

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

#574

Post by NoOneNew » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #456

decremental wrote: post #405

In a sane world there would be no such position as "head of diversity."

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…

"Diverse teams" does not mean having a proper ratio of white, Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay or ginger. It means having people who have complimentary skills for a task and everyone got to that point differently. A legal team made up of one person from Harvard, one from UCLA, one from Princeton and one from a no name school is a type of "diverse". It's even more if one person was an engineer first, one was JAG, another was an accountant or some other profession before getting into law. A legal team where everyone is from Harvard and that's all they know since they've done nothing else with their lives, but check off different minority boxes, and have a token redheaded stepchild ginger, is not diverse. It's pandering due to both being lazy and being useless.

Someone that diversifies teams actually has to know the team well, what they do, and identity their strengths and weaknesses. Then, they need to figure out what kind of person can bring the neccessary perspective or skillset to round out the team... but that takes work. It's easier to just say, "You dont have a ginger on your team, here you go. Diversity achieved!" This is why people hate "diversity heads". They're glorified checklists.

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

#575

Post by akiselev » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

MajorBee wrote: post #473

throwaway09223 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say yes, but can you explain how it is different? As far as I can tell it's the same as it was a century ago. The only change is the subject matter. Do you think you'd keep your job after saying something anti-Christian in the 1950s? Look at what happened to Sinead O'Connor in the early 90s after she spoke out against child abuse in the Catholic church. Maybe the biggest difference is that now we write when we co…

Not to mention if you uttered something even vaguely socialist/communist sounding a few decades ago, you would be fired from your All-American job, be socially ostracized, and have the FBI on your tail before you can say "Stalin is bad".

You didn't even have to utter anything. During McCarthyism (aka the second red scare), false allegations of communist sympathies was an easy way to eliminate competition for particularly immoral opportunists, especially in entertainment. The obvious weaponization was probably why the whole thing was eventually shut down by the courts.

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

#576

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

Dah00n wrote: post #97

One of the reasons I use HN is because of the No Political or Ideological fights rule (because I know I can't stop commenting from time to time even though I'd rather live a life without this crap). I wish rules were here to be enforced, not as guidelines hardly anyone follow.

HN doesn't prohibit ideological or political discussion. There's been plenty of that over the past five years. Over its entire lifetime.

What HN specifically requests is "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."

There's a difference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#577

Post by extra88 » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

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…

None of those excerpts are concerning on a personal blog. I assume his removal is based on something more substantive.

Maybe you're imagining the reaction if "black" and "white" were reversed in the writing. It would be very different because it's very different to be black rather than white in America.

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

#578

Post by tobesure » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

codyb wrote: post #517

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…

Hmm... I'm a white man who doesn't consider himself half as "woke" as the (I'm certain a bit exaggerated) descriptions of what happens on Twitter and none of that feels particularly offensive to me? "I dropped my black star into a sea of white and it hurt" -> "I see so many beautiful black stars, why don't more of them get this wonderful opportunity?" "A natural instinct to want the very best for people that look lik…

>White people kill Black people with impunity

>Hey lets take a look at why people may be feeling in some manner

>Perhaps it's time to focus our inquiry on white people who may have complex emotions regarding their changing position in society

All of these are painting white people with broad strokes. More importantly if you replaced "white" with any other minority it would be socially unacceptable. There's also a problem with the framing of the argument here - any criticism is premptively dismissed with accusations of "complex emotions" which is conflated with "white fragility" and eventually racism. The CRT inspired framing is basically whites as a demographic are wrong, must step back and allow us to force them to collectively atone for the sins of past whites, and anyone who criticisms this forced transfer of power is a racist. The grand irony here is that the entire premise is fundamentally racist and falsely justifies increasingly socially acceptable anti-white sentiment.

Either racism is socially acceptable, or it isn't. Normalizing this talk about problematic whiteness is only opening a can of worms, regressing progress toward race blindness, and the backlash will be severe. It's exactly the sort of perceived disenfranchisement that CRT accuses whites of doing, except it's being done intentionally and subversively here - hidden via intellectually dishonest rhetorical technique.

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

#579

Post by toeget » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:52 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…

One has to note that he also made homophobic comments (available at https://archive.is/dp0n7):

  If I were to pretend to be gay, that isn’t something that I can just wash off and tell those who know me and saw me, that I was just pretending, it was just an experiment. Sure you’re not a homosexual. Having had that thought, I realized that within my inner emotional core, not only do I not agree with homosexuality, I still despise it in a way that I would not want there to be any connection between my personal character and it.

Given that such comments resurfaced during the Pride Month, I'm surprised he hasn't been fired.

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

#580

Post by capableweb » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #513

libria wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not fired, just reassigned. I don't even get how that's gonna work. Inevitably, he'll work alongside/under/oversee Jewish colleagues. That'll be an awkward Hangouts meeting. "Oh hey there's the guy that thinks I'm violent, I wonder if he'll judge my work/team interaction impartially..."

It was a post from 14 years he's apologized for. I'm sure everyone has plenty of beliefs from 14 years ago that no longer fits their current beliefs.

But if Google thought he was now benign, wouldn't he just remain at the post? Moving him to a different department seems to indicate that Google think he did wrong, but not that much wrong as to fire him. I'm not sure how to reconcile that.