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Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

businessinsider.com

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

#791

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

chadash wrote: post #633
nashashmi wrote: post #533

Earlier 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…

Exactly. I'm a Jew (by heritage, though not by belief). I oppose Israel's actions WRT Palestine and related issues. The Israeli government seems to have that "insatiable appetite for war", but that's a pretty small subset of all Jews. Even the entire Israeli population is a small subset of all Jews.

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

#792

Post by weasel_words »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #667
toeget wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You think it's homophobic for someone to write about their own struggle with internalized homophobia?

"I still despise it..." - you seriously did not understand that statement? And you took it to mean his own INTERNALIZED struggle?

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

#793

Post by throwaway2165 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #696
throwaway2162 wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later. He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post). Please update your post as you're spreading FUD. >AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of di…

> He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post). Neither of those is “global head of diversity”. > Please update your post as you're spreading FUD. No, I’m not and I see no need to update my post. If the upthread post were updated to refer to…

>Neither of those is “global head of diversity”.

Exactly, they're much higher positions with more scope and reach than "head of diversity" at a software company. Thanks for agreeing with me.

>I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot

Except the premise of your post was proven categorically false. He absolutely should have known the difference between "Jews" and "Zionists" if he was a diversity advisor to the Obama administration. QED.

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

#794

Post by munificent »

fighterpilot wrote: post #747
munificent wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from and it took me (a white person from the US) a long time to wrap my head around what most progressives talking about responsibility and the US's history of slavery were really trying to say. Let me try to explain with an analogy. Your grandfather dies. In his will, he leaves you his house, which has been in your family several generation. It's a nice place, better than the crappy apartme…

I reject this way of thinking because it groups second generation Irish immigrants with those who inherited wealth from the days of slavery. I get that you're trying to be charitable but there really isn't a valid defence for an ideology that tries to slap a label onto heterogeneous groups of people with nothing in common beyond their skin tone. It is a racist way of thinking and should be called out as such.

> I reject this way of thinking because it groups second generation Irish immigrants with those who inherited wealth from the days of slavery.

I understand that this is an extremely sensitive topic that can make it hard to reason about. People never feel good when accusations—false or not!—start flying. And once those kind of intense feelings get involved, it's hard to lower your defenses and try to read what people say charitably.

The point of my comment was entirely that it is not about guilt. None of us living today bear responsibility for historical slavery in the US, even those whose ancestors owned slaves. How can I be considered at fault for something that happened literally before I existed? How could I have caused that?

(Edit: I realize now that my analogy where the house is inherited obscures that. I think the analogy would work better if I said you won the house in a lottery.)

What we carry is not guilt from the past but responsibility for today. Because of that history of slavery, many institutions today still unfairly benefit white people. (In my analogy, the pipe continues to deliver water long after the person who unfairly plumbed it has died.) Because of those benefits, white people today have more power as a group generally than Black people do.

It is today's unearned benefits and the greater capacity to remedy them that places responsibility on white people in the US, not any bloodline that traces back to slaveowners.

We should fix racism today because it's wrong and because we can. We bear a moral obligation to people living today to give them the more just world they deserve.

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

#795

Post by grumple »

nojokes wrote: post #753
grumple wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a nation that doesn't have an appetite for war and killing?

Historically most (if not all?) of the nations had to have some appetite for war and killing - otherwise they would not have become nations.

So why did you call out Israel, the US, and Russia and not the others?

I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I'm just curious as to what makes them special. There are many other nations involved in larger-scale conflicts right now. There are many others that have been involved in more conflicts globally historically. Many that have and do oppress and murder on a regular basis. I will say the US and Russia do get involved too much in outside conflicts, but Israel's ongoing conflict is paralleled in many other nations right now.

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

#796

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

nashashmi wrote: post #548
lalaland1125 wrote: post #403

The main thing I find odd about that person's blog post ( https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau... ) is that it also doesn't really make any sense mechanically. The first five paragraphs are all comments on how it must be difficult for a progressive Jew to simultaneously support progressive values and Israel > If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasin…

I think he must have established by the end the Jews he is referring to are those who support Israeli aggression. Not all Jews.

Replace the word "Jews" with "men" and gauge the reaction of those in the modern diversity movement. Either it's ok to say "not all ", or it isn't.

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

#797

Post by globular-toast »

nwsm wrote: post #636
globular-toast wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's a bullshit job. I think the closest of Graeber's 5 categories [0] would be a "goon", ie. they are only there because other companies have one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

> they are only there because other companies have one This is not Graeber's description of "goon"

It kind of is. He talks more about things like corporate lawyers etc which fit the name "goon" more, but I think the more general point is people you have to employ because other companies employ them. What category would you put it under?

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

#798

Post by fwip »

noofen wrote: post #623
dragonwriter wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a culture where all white people are guilty for slavery, this mindset makes sense to me Not all white people are guilty of slavery, and virtually no one thinks that they are. Essentially all American white people continue to materially benefit from a long history of systematic racism in America [0], including slavery, state-mandated and state-tolerated post-slavery subjugation and segregation. Heck, many living…

> Essentially all American white people continue to materially benefit from a long history of systematic racism in America [0], including slavery, state-mandated and state-tolerated post-slavery subjugation and segregation. Heck, many living white Americans are direct beneficiaries of overt discrimination in public programs, not to mention systematic, coordinated private discrimination. I come from a family of poor f…

In America, it's better to be born white and poor than black and poor. Data from field after field backs this up - economics, healthcare, policing, housing, to name a few.

Further, I don't think you can exactly call losing the Civil War "making sacrifices for racial equality." If I've got my boot on somebody's neck, and I won't take it off until pushed off by force, my skinned knee isn't a sacrifice that I made so that my victim can get up.

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

#799

Post by nwsm »

globular-toast wrote: post #797
nwsm wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are only there because other companies have one This is not Graeber's description of "goon"

It kind of is. He talks more about things like corporate lawyers etc which fit the name "goon" more, but I think the more general point is people you have to employ because other companies employ them. What category would you put it under?

Box ticker. That is, if you indeed think Head of Diversity is a bullshit job. I don't have an educated opinion.

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

#800

Post by yownie »

Melchizedek wrote: post #689
nashashmi wrote: post #533

Earlier 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…

Jews and Israelis are obviously not the same thing (even though the connection between them is very strong) but the reason you are not allowed to criticise _Israel_ in the US is that _Jews_ have a great amount of power there (hugely disproportionate to their population size).

Is this statement a joke?
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