I don't get that Google said there was also some LGBT angle, but the article doesn't seem to mention those details.
Other comments ITT mention that he had some rather homophobic blog posts alongside the anti-Semitic ones.
Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#652Live 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 sti…
The comments about Jews read in context seems worse to me than those comments read in context.
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#653Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true. It is a vague and meaningless concept. It has never been defined except by referring to antiquated notions of “race” stemming primarily from 18th and 19th century ideas. In modern times, we’ve apparently added biological sex, sexual preference and a vague (and meaningless) concept of self-identity that can, apparently, cross all other definitions with impunity - even changing fluidly throughout the day. To…
The fact that categories are often fuzzy does not make them useless as a general heuristic for finding people who are more likely to share similar experiences with each other. Almost every kind of categorization system shares the problems you talk about: people can call themselves "programmers" for a variety of different reasons, even though they're working in wildly different environments and might be totally unsuit…
> Those categories are still be a useful heuristic for trying to find people who are more likely to share certain attributes or who have had certain life experiences.
In other words, prejudice is a "useful heuristic".
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#654Earlier quoted context omitted.
She also called her comments "deeply insensitive". How bent out of shape are you going to get over what a 17 year old says? "Sorry you're offended" is much closer to accurate. I'm nothing like 17 year old me and if you asked me to take present day responsibility for that person I would tell you to toss off. How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today?
> How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today? Not that much . For sure I made some mistakes, as I continue to do, but I'd stand by what I did at 17. I didn't (for example) write down plainly racist statements and then publish them on the internet. I didn't do anything comparable to that. What were y'all doing at 17?
> What were y'all doing at 17?
Mostly really awkward attempts at being sexually active. Surely some of it cancelable. Just like most other 17 year olds.
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Totally disagree. Even ignoring that diversity can be a goal in and of itself, and ignoring that a lack of diversity can be a useful metric for identifying other problems, there's also plenty of reason to believe that targeting diversity directly can yield performance improvements. If you're building a product for women, you should have some women on your team. If you're building a product for the general population,…
Yeah, we're talking past each other about two different things now. Classic.
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#656Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two. Further based on the other comment to this post he was quite an activist. Fighting for rights of the racially oppressed and in minority. He went against white people and Israel? He is not racist. He is just anti majority dom…
He specifically stated "if I were a Jew", not "if I were a Zionist". That makes it explicitly anti-semitism. You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist.
> You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist.
AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
That’s not to say that being able to distinguish between Jews, Zionists, Israelis, and the Israeli government isn’t basic threshold knowledge that should be expected of anyone publicly commenting on Israeli policy and how it should make anyone feel based on group association, but setting expectations of people’s knowledge based on their future jobs is a bit bonkers.
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#657Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s why I used the word “suggested”, which is exactly what he did, in a section prominently titled “Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech”.
He suggested that non-bias causes are possible contributing factors to the disparity, yes. Nowhere does he suggest they are the only causes, or that bias/discrimination do not exist.
Parsing his sentence for tiny nuances like that isn't very helpful IMHO, but I'll indulge you.
His exact words are "these differences may explain". He doesn't say "these differences may PARTLY explain". If I say that A may explain B, the reasonable implication is that A may fully explain B. So, yes, he does suggest that non-bias causes are the only causes.
Just to be clear: I don't think this makes any real difference. The reaction to his email would've been the same either way. But the fact remains that your interpretation of the quote isn't supported by the actual words he used.
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#658Earlier 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…
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 unabl…
Good point and thank you for the book recommendation.
My comment was not on why the term is being used today but merely the fact that I don't like it, because it solidifies the racist pseudosciences in our culture in a way. It just feels wrong to me to speak the lingo of an enemy.
At the same time, as you said the term is here for a reason, so simply changing or ignoring it won't change the underlying problem.
Thinking about it, it might even be a good thing that using, reading or hearing the term stings. It reminds us of how incredibly frustrating the problem is. It appears so simple and arbitrary, is insufferably harmful and it should not exist in the first place, but here we are still.
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#659I've lived in various ME countries, as well as Israel. I've tried to understand the core issue and frankly, failed. Both arguments about this historical conflict between Israel and the Palestinians seem as close to being morally equivalent as I could imagine. I have sympathies but I keep them to myself. I don't feel as though I have a right to take a particular side: I am not existentially threatened on a daily basis…
Thanks for summing up how I feel about this so succinctly. I have tried to understand the history and the issues between these two groups and there is honestly there is so much that each side can victim claim for and be pointed out as an aggressor on its really hard to make any judgement on a particular side being right or wrong. And with the history on this going back thousands of years and my admittedly complete lack of understanding of cultural context on both sides (and to be honest its so complex I am not sure anyone can understand this unless you have been living it) I just freely admit I am too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion- which is still quite problematic- despite having never been to the Middle East, I live in NYC and have lots of Jewish friends who claim that anything less than supporting Israel is anti-semitism.
But even when my wife, who knows I read news and books an order of magnitude more than her, asked me to kind of distill it down for her in whatever terms I understood it after the recent flare up, and I was just like I really can't... aside from there just being an inherent inability to share their ancient homelands.
Re: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two. Further based on the other comment to this post he was quite an activist. Fighting for rights of the racially oppressed and in minority. He went against white people and Israel? He is not racist. He is just anti majority dom…
The quote was: "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself" Yes, the sentiment is (possibly) anti-israel, not anti-semetic, but the wording itself implies that Jews have insatiable appetites for war. I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, but someone who is chief diversity officer at a major corporation should certainly be attuned to the difference…
Pretty sure he was not chief diversity officer 14 years ago but I agree it should have been "If I were an israeli...".