661–670 of 1001 posts
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That was one of the most heinous, blatantly bigoted screeds I'd read in quite a long time. There isn't anything defensible about it.
It's definitely anti-semitic, but I regularly will see worse stuff even on here.
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> 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…
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He was angry. Feeling the injustice of what was happening in Lebanon at that time.
Original post, please don't read: Weird - I've been angry before, but it never made me racist. Updated post after getting dang-slapped: Is being angry an acceptable justification or mitigating factor for racism? Does anyone care, or should anyone care, whether a white person may just be angry when they are racist against a black person?
Also, we've had to ask you about this many times in the past. That's not good.
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> They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided. Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with. Over the 4 years…
> Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided. > Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with. I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone de…
If a fair and honest reading of his memo reveals that he had good intent, and the memo was scientifically accurate - and yet he was fired and publicly vilified for it, then isn't describing it as "tone deaf and insensitive" a form of victim-blaming?
It seems similar to pointing out that the victim of a sexual assault was dressed provocatively.
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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 tho…
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I'm trying to understand what he did that was so wrong? He (correctly imo) called out Israel for its violent tendencies. The only mistake he made that I can see is he conflated Israel with the Jewish people generally. But Israel has a massive propaganda campaign leading people to do exactly that (an attack on Israel the country is an attack on Jewish people in general). If that blogpost was the same, but said Israel,…
in a culture where all white people are guilty for slavery, this mindset makes sense to me
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 apartment you live in, and it's yours now by all rights, so you move in.
When you do, you discover to your delight that you water bill is zero dollars every month. What a nice bonus! Free water from the tap!
One day, when poking around the basement, you discover the secret to this mystery. Apparently one of your ancestors many years ago dug a secret tunnel over to the neighbor's house put a T on their water main, and ran a pipe back to your house. Your water isn't free. Your neighbors have been paying for it the whole time.
In fact, they have even known this and been trying to tell you. But, you know, you were so busy getting settled in and dealing with all the stuff in your own life that their discussion about "water equality" never really registered for you. It's not that you didn't care (you love equality), you just didn't think it had anything to do with you.
So what is your moral position today?
It is not one of guilt. You didn't put that sneaky pipe in. And while, yes, you certainly took some showers with free water, at the time you honestly didn't realize that anyone was paying for it. There was no malice on your part.
You could argue that since it's your neighbors who are suffering from the jacked up water bill, they should be the ones to pay to cut that pipe and remove it. After all, you didn't cause the problem, and you don't have any personal incentive to fix it. You aren't trying to steal their water, it's just the way your plumbing happens to be set up.
At the same time, your neighbors are actually poorer than you, in large part because they have been paying your water bill the whole time. It feels pretty selfish to expect them to foot the plumbing bill to get it fixed.
So I think that you bear a responsibility to fix the plumbing because you now own the house. And you have some moral obligation in the sense that those who are most able to do a thing bear some obligation to their community to do that thing. If we're all in this together, then we give back to society in the ways we best can. Since you can more easily afford to the fix the plumbing (all those months of free water let you save up some cash), you should be the one to do so.
Now, granted, there are certainly some progressives (of all races) who take the history of slavery in a guilt/shame direction. If you're white, you're just supposed to feel bad. We should all be walking around in hairshirts as a penance for the sins of our fathers. There is a real weird Catholic guilt vibe in some progressive circles today.
But I think for most, it's not that. And the most charitable interpretation of people saying that whites today bear responsibility for slavery is just what my example here says: we have some ownership over the institutions that benefited from slavery, and we have a greater capacity to amend that problem, thus responsibility to do that falls on our shoulders.
The most compassionate way to look at this is as an opportunity. What a great thing it is to be in a position to help address one of the most grievious injustices in the United States.
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 sti…
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You can acknowledge that there is a social construct called "race" that some people believe is useful for predicting things about individuals without subscribing to those beliefs yourself . E.g., some people argue that white people are unfit for certain roles because they haven't endured the sufferings of people of color which is clearly expressing a belief that (1) race is real and (2) race is useful for predicting…
What the U.S. calls "races" would simply be considered subcultures in the rest of the world. (Bordering on ethnicities, but not really - they're way too integrated within mainstream culture to be true ethnic subdivisions.) You can acknowledge subcultures without clinging to the absurd notion (that is, absurd to much of the civilized world) that "race" is a legitimate term at all, even for a socially and culturally-bo…
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When you’re making products for a diverse group of people, perhaps having a diverse team is required for competence.
That's clearly not the motivation behind it otherwise age and political diversity would be similarly prioritized.
There's a moral argument that comes into play with politics that doesn't for age or race. There's nothing even abstractly morally problematic about making your product appeal to women or old people or whomever. There may be reasons to avoid marketing or aligning your product to, say, people whose political views you disagree with.
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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,…
One of my parents used to work in the housing discrimination space. Those same types of arguments were used there. Instead of credentials, they’d advertise in targeted ways, like only advertising at law or medical schools, etc.
Recruiters use colleges as a legal discrimination technique to target specific class origins. Unless you win the college lottery and get into Harvard, it is not possible for a kid from an urban setting to get the gig at McKinsey that is the entry screener used to get certain gigs. It’s like the old British civil service.