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

#741

Post by gedy » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

NoOneNew wrote: post #574

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…

"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,…

> "Diverse teams" does not mean having a proper ratio of white, Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay or ginger."

Oh that's certainly what some people mean.. Some people have a blind spot when you bring up the lack of older people or from poor backgrounds.

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

#742

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:13 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…

It's not clear that it was anti Semitic so much as anti Israel although that isn't the impression given by the headline.

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

#743

Post by ImprovedSilence » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

kevinh wrote: post #727

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…

A year later, California would vote to ban same-sex marriage. I won't hold their bigoted views against them, as long as they no longer hold them. If I didn't have that forgiveness, there would be half of the voting population of my state that I'd refuse to talk to.

^ the world needs more people with this mentality.

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

#744

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

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…

It wasn't a tweet they provided at least some of the surrounding context in the article.

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

#745

Post by rubyist5eva » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

"Diversity and Inclusion", and woke ideology writ-large has turned into a complete farce. I have zero respect for these people because their concern is a facade - it exists only to exert power over people that you disagree with. There is not a single person in existence that meets their ridiculous standards - they just haven't spotted you yet.

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

#746

Post by jfengel » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #497

raclage wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, because bias and prejudice wouldn't exist in such a world?

Well that would be too much to ask I think, those are natural mechanisms and typically not harmful. I think positions like these are needed because there are severe forms of discrimination, hate, exclusion based on ethnicity, gender and so on.

Arguably, they're more about the "typically not harmful" things than about the severe cases.

The severe cases are bad, but they're also obvious. Your ordinary management should be able to handle that. They often don't, and it helps to have a special level of appeal when the chain of management fails, but that's not the real reason for the job.

The real reason is that those "typically not harmful" cases are cumulatively harmful. They're bricks in the briefcase of every employee being discriminated against. They get all of the usual problems of life, plus a new set aimed at them. So they don't perform quite as well, and aren't the best when promotion time comes around. Then you end up with a whole chain of command who thinks that those "typically not harmful" cases aren't the reason everybody in authority looks like them -- and then do nothing about it.

Dealing with the explicit cases is easier, even though companies often fail at that, too. If they can't handle the easy cases, there's nobody looking out for the hard ones. And worse, people often say, "Look, we fired the blatantly racist guy, why are you still complaining that every single manager is white? It's just a coincidence, OK?"

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

#747

Post by fighterpilot » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #666

adamrezich wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a culture where all white people are guilty for slavery, this mindset makes sense to me

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.

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

#748

Post by chevill » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

googlryas wrote: post #665

chevill wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So the author claims X, and then it is asked "Is X true?" and that is now a loaded question? What is loaded about it?

The original statement "It is true that white people kill black people with impunity in the US" is problematic without contextualizing it.

If he means in a general sense (which he most likely didn't) then its obviously a false statement. If I as a white man in the US murdered a person of color, most likely I would be arrested and convicted.

If he means in the literal sense that in a country of 350 million people that its possible for a white person to kill a black person and get away with it, well then you could probably say that about any demographic vs any other demographic because its impossible to make sure that never ever happens in a population that size.

What I suspect he really meant is that there's a problem with American police getting away with it when they are involved in unjustified killings of black people. But he chose to word it in an exaggerated and inflammatory way for emphasis. Then you also have to take into account that we were presented with that one sentence out of a larger blog post so perhaps he added the context that would have made that sentence make sense.

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

#749

Post by HDMI_Cable » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #666

adamrezich wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a culture where all white people are guilty for slavery, this mindset makes sense to me

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 think the main issue isn’t that people don’t recognize that discrimination exists, they’re just annoyed at who it’s being targeted at and how it [not] working.

One main thing is that white people as a whole need to atone for slavery, even though the vast vast majority (poor southerners, northerners, immigrants from after the civil war) had nothing to do with it. And secondly, that race is used to only talk about the issues facing black people, not whites. Poor white people (in WV, the South, etc.) are just as poor as black people, yet get no help in things like university admissions or job placements.

And for Asians (inc. Indians), they (disclaimer: I am of Asian descent) also receive material disadvantages (I have zero chance of getting into an Ivy League, nor will I ever receive assistance programs for minorities) so that black people have a level playing field. Positive discrimination works, but not in its current form.

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

#750

Post by mcguire » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #533

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…

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…

""If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself,...""

He confuses Judaism with Israel.