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 would not have been removed from his position and Damore would not have been fired. Instead we could have had a conversation to win hearts and minds, but today it is all about getting scalps, witch hunts and over-reaction. What we are currently doing sends people underground which radicalizes them more.
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
And hey, great news, now we have every line written by every man, woman and child automatically captured and archived forever in an easy to search dossier.
Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview. But the writing remains forever, conveniently accessible.
> Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview. But the writing remains forever, conveniently accessible.
Not all writing is equal. There is a difference between let's say a tweet that was sent in during a flamewar versus a personal blog post that has been penned in the past and stayed published until today. The function of the latter is closer to a book, in that it explicitly aims to persist and communicate thoughts through time. If one changes, they could have taken the post down. If there was regret about the contents, one could have published an update/apology etc with the post.
And the post wasn't picked from a web archive; it had stayed up until it the pushback reached career threatening levels. Yet there is still no evidence or apology in any medium that the person has actually changed their viewpoint. All we have is other people apologizing on their behalf with speculative redemption.
The wise enough to not use their real name will survive. The culling of the real name begins.
This is the literal killing of the 'you have nothing to hide' meme that goes to show you have something to hide.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Unfortunately, as we've seen from the many instances where utterers of comments have suffered the consequences, Cardinal Richelieu's famous quote has turned out to be truer than it ought to be—especially so in this internet age where ancient dirt is seemingly dragged up from anywhere. (This quote also tells us much about Richelieu's devious mind and I'd suggest that with this one line of his that he's told us more about himself than most six lines of many others!)
One of the problems with the internet is being heard amongst the many voices so there's a tendency for people to use hyperbole and or exaggerate for the point of emphasis and yours truly is no exception (there are some comments of mine on the net that, in hindsight, I'd like to rephrase with more eloquence). :-) Expressing one's view is especially problematic with the net, as one has to be succinct and to the point if one's to be heard at all. Thus, more often than not, expediency wins out and only the raw message is heard sans nuances and without qualifications.
That said, whether any of those scenarios is relevant in instance seems moot but I will say that generalizations of that sort aren't helpful as they're both dangerous to oneself and unfair to those about whom one has made comment. One cannot generalize as a whole about a nation, society etc. as within any group of people one will find a remarkably diverse range of views and beliefs. I have many Jewish friends and acquaintances and I can only say that I do not know of a more diverse group of people. If I were to generalize at all then the only reasonable comment I could make would be that they're all remarkably interesting individuals but each in different ways.
The matter of whether some ancient and possibly intemperate remark is used against someone many years later is a troubling and vexed matter, especially so in this internet age. For starters, that person may have changed his or her mind in the intervening time. Then there's the issue of why someone has raised this matter after all that time not to mention the fact that once it's been raised and has gone viral across the net then the individual will have essentially no reasonable chance of ever defending himself or herself—whether his or her opinion is now right or wrong. Then there's the matter of Google protecting its corporate image so it's little wonder that he was dismissed (irrespective of his current beliefs or convictions). Unfortunately, that's the way things are.
There is no easy answer to this matter. Fear of speaking out stifles free speech and we're seeing more and more self-censorship on the net day by day and it's truly worrying. Moreover, if one speaks out or expresses an opinion on any controversial matter then woes betide the consequences.
In the days before the net and the sensational tabloid press there was a chance that a long-past dubious event from one's past may have gotten lost in the noise of old newspaper reports but the net has put a stop to that. Perhaps it's time to restate the age-old adage, which is to:
'Never discuss one's views on politics and religion as emotions run high and you'll surely make enemies.'
Yeah, I don't have a very strong opinion on Damore, but the two situations are clearly not the same. One was published 14 years ago and another was published in the same week where it blew up.
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 dominant power holder.
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 between Jews and Israelis.
> 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.
People are having a hard time distinguishing between the two because he had a hard time distinguishing between the two. Saying "If I was a {memberOf(someOrganization)}, I'd be concerned about how {adjective} I am," is calling out every member of that organization.
If he'd said "If I was an employee of Buy N Large, I'd be concerned about how much I love to destroy the environment for personal gain", that's a blanket accusation of all BNL employees being greedy anti-eco monsters.
If he'd said "if I was an exterminator, I'd be worried about how my complete and total lust for killing things is eventually going to accelerate into becoming a full fledged serial killer", that's a pretty clear indictment of all exterminators, regardless of who they actually are as individuals.
Saying "If I was a member of BLM, I'd be worried about how much I love torching businesses and assaulting bystanders" is a sweeping attack on all BLM activists, not just anyone who was looking for an excuse to loot and riot.
"If I was a dentist, I'd be worried about my insatiable bloodlust for hunting lions that were rescued and rehabilitated." I mean, come on.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."[1]
It's not "If I was an Israeli governing official" like you claim, it's "if I was a member of an ethnicity/religion." It's a little unfair of you to be so dismissive of people who interpret his words the way he wrote them.
There’s a post (“If I Were a Jew”) that accuses Jews in general of responding to the collective trauma of the Holocaust with “an insatiable appetite for war and killing” in pursuit of self defense rather than compassion for the oppressed. It’s naive, muddles Jewish identity with Israel, and assumes the worst about the motivations of Jews in general. Imagine how offensive it would be to make a similar argument about any other minority group that had experienced oppression in America or elsewhere.
From the post:
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.
There’s definitely more than criticism of the Israeli government here (some dog-whistle and overt antisemitism, whether the author understood that at the time or not). But I agree with the commenter - people can change and grow up. I don’t know the full story so it’s hard to really say what’s justified and what’s an overreaction.
It seems that many people have difficulty making this crucial distinction. That's why after every Israeli military campaign there is a spike in anti-semitic incidents all over the world. We just need more education! You are free to hurl the most libelous, disgusting and vicious accusations at Jewish people. Just make sure you call them Israeli. Because that's acceptable.
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.
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.
What frustrates me the most about this, is that we clearly have diversity teams to help encourage more diversity and inclusion AND to change the minds of people who may have been historically opposed or perhaps subconsciously discriminative.
So the entire idea that this person should be removed based on a blog post 14 years ago is absurd. Are they saying therefore that people who historically demonstrated limited views on diversity are incapable of changing and advocating for change? Then why have the position in the first place.
In terms of getting people fired/removed/cancelled for remarks, yes absolutely. That may be a function of social media and the scale of communication in modern times, but either way the sensitivity of the vocal minority has definitely changed even in my relatively short life.
I think so, because the sheer amount of material many people have written is larger, the hunt for it is more intense, and the ability to form rapid mobs for two-minute hates is much greater. What will institutions do? https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs...
14 years is such a long time. I am not the same person I was a year ago. There is no excuse to what he did, but what if he is a different person altogether now.
I agree that the scalp collecting is horrible, but at the same time I am not sure a simple conversation can make prejudice go away that easily.
You're also right that we don't want to drive people "underground". But the head of diversity needs to have a perspective on diversity that is actually.. diverse and inclusive.
Arguing that there is equivalence between Damore's politically incorrect but truthful statements and antisemitism is "repugnant". They may have offended in equal amounts, judging by reactions. But if you find Damore distasteful then you've already been radicalized and your taste ruined.
A major reason why today's politicians are so bland and uninspiring is because they have been groomed to never say anything controversial or contentious. Trawling through adults adolescence photos and shaming/blaming them for some youthful indiscretion is another aspect of this societal disaster.
The anti war candidate Tulsi Gabbard in the recent US election is an example of someone relentlessly ridiculed and destroyed despite the absence of anything controversial in her background and is a dismal example of the way politics works today.
Now we have the pretentious corporate diversity industry insisting no one in their orbit has any opinions that might offend. Hopeless.
I don't understand your point. Are you suggesting 'political correctness' - a relatively new term and phenomenon largely enabled by the internet - was something installed by society and is a good thing, and that a vote to 'dismantle' it would be a bad thing?
> It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.
> Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.
Politicians say a lot of controversial and contentious things. Just that they are contentious for the different people. People that it is now OK to offend. Corporations offend a lot of people - when Coca Cola makes training that tells their employees to "try to be less white", I am sure there are plenty of folks who find it offensive. When on CRT training people are told that certain race is evil from birth, it surely is offensive to many people. It's just that they are OK with offending those people, because they think they have enough power now to ignore their opinion.
Only the purest of the pure can lead a diversity effort. And it doesn’t count unless you were pure from the beginning. Growing to overcome past problems is not sufficient.
>Growing to overcome past problems is not sufficient.
Their assumption is moreso that we cant grow to overcome past problems. So the only way to build themselves up is to tear others down.
Thats why the popular "anti-racism" philosophy is so antithetical to and ignorant of the lives and philosophies of many of the greatest civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and MLK.
It's worse than that, only the purest of the pure can be employed. Look at Apple's recent mob firing of Antonio García Martínez. Who made the mistake of writing a best selling and critically acclaimed book just 5 years ago. Featured as one of NPR's best books of the year, recommended by NYT, Washington Post, etc. But now it's suddenly a fireable offense.
“An irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.... A must-read.” New York Times
“Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book — which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read.” New York Times
“Reckless and rollicking... perceptive and funny and brave.... The resulting view of the Valley’s craziness, self-importance and greed isn’t pretty. But it’s one that most of us have never seen before and aren’t likely to forget.” Washington Post
“Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.”
“PMMess, as we’ll call her, was composed of alternating Bézier curves from top to bottom: convex, then concave, and then convex again, in a vertical undulation you couldn’t take your eyes off of. Unlike most women at Facebook (or in the Bay Area, really) she knew how to dress; forties-style, form-fitting dresses from neck to knee were her mainstay.”
“Out of nowhere British Trader informs me she is once again pregnant; the calendar math takes us right back to my move- out imbroglio in December, our last tryst after a breakup desert of nonintimacy. After a brief debate, British Trader confirms her desire to keep the child, whatever my thoughts on the matter. It occurred to me that perhaps this most recent experiment in fertility—and the first—had been planned on British Trader’s part, her back up against the menopause wall, a professional woman with every means at her disposal except a willing male partner—in which case I had been snookered into fatherhood via warm smiles and pliant thighs, the oldest tricks in the book.”
“To make an analogy, a capped note is like having to seduce five women one after the other, while an equity round is having to convince five women to do a sixsome with you. The latter is exponentially harder than the former.*
* The women analogy breaks down in that, unlike with women, the more investors you seduce into your moresome, the more likely others are to join. This is an expression of the lemming-like nature of tech investors, most of whom scarcely merit the title.”
if you hang around long enough, you can watch the woke eat the woke. what is "pure" changes, and some who have delighted in getting scalps in the past will have theirs taken by someone else once the goalposts change.
i'm thinking there is a decent chance trans-racialism will eventually become woke
The sadly-deceased Mark Fisher wrote a piece called "Exiting the Vampire Castle" about at least a portion of this problem.
Essentially, you gain "cred" by publicly taking down a more powerful figure than yourself. It's the problem of diablerie in Vampire: The Masquerade in that, once accepted, you create a set of rewards and initiatives that foster a constant churn of figures eager to snipe at those above them, to drain them of their woke cred and get at least a little for yourself in an act called "critique." Of course, there's only so much blood/cred to go around so figures rise and fall as these very public lives are examined for any kind of transgression: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." Twitter and Tumblr are not exactly structured for careful, nuanced thought and so produce an endless stream of hot takes which, when gone cold, can be mined for evidence.
And so the revolutionaries are declared counter-revolutionaries and come to be the next layer of corpses in the mass graves they have dug, Khmer Rouge style.
I find the best solution is to simply never use a social media account attached to your real identity.
Innocent comments taken out of context or a general changing of accepted speech can turn a decade old bit of text into damning evidence of bigotry, racism, or any other ism.
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 increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired.
It's only in the last paragraph that the author goes to a different place and starts blaming Jews directly.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it as it doesn't make much sense to me.
> I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it as it doesn't make much sense to me.
Quite possibly not much. As someone who has hundreds of blog posts under his belt from a similar time period, a lot of it is just about churning out posts. Start with a thesis, write five or more paragraphs with little planning, do a quick scan for errors, then hit publish. I suspect we're looking at someone who's having their career heavily affected by a quick piece they dashed off in 30 minutes or less a decade and a half ago without even thinking about it too much at the time.
My blog is no longer up and running, and maybe that's now a good thing.
Now would someone coming from his ideology have the same reasoned approached to being young and dumb?
Or even well educated but ill-informed about some subjects.
Or part of an organization/group/etc that has some negative public positions or legacy but is not the uniform agreement among the entire group or evolved entirely over the years?
I personally see every election as choosing between lesser evils. Yet some groups see voting for any party as full agreement with everything the political party says and has done.
There is so much context and grey area that modern diversity or social justice groups are (or act?) completely ignorant of. So does it make it rational to put them to their own garbage public trials, or give them a pass like mature rational individuals - also to a certain degree filled with it's own grey areas?
After the bombs on Lebanon I was mainly angry at myself. I overheard the news during dinner - "Beirut has been bombed" - and kept eating. Somehow growing up I ended up in a mental state where bombs being dropped on Beirut was 'normal'. It bothered me to no end: it would have been a completely different reaction if I heard "Paris has been bombed".
I ended up taking up an international cooperation job in Beirut, worked there for about three years. I danced, drank, worked, ate, drove around and enjoyed time with people that to this date consider very close friends.
I wish this part would get more attention. People say and do stupid shit when they're highly emotional & vulnerable. Everybody has "wrong" feelings and thoughts now and then. You wouldn't be human if you didn't. Sometimes people vent those thoughts/feelings, and that can hurt other people's feelings. We should obviously deal with that and take responsibility for that, but then the other side needs to accept that apology so both can reconcile. Otherwise everybody stays hurt.
Thank you for sharing the full post. It indeed does have a different tone when taken as a whole. It's far too common for people to dig out half a sentence from hundreds of blog posts you've written over a decade ago, intentionally omitting everything else.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
This is the only line in the blog post that can be construed as antisemitic rather than a criticism of Israel. It would not be antisemitic if he had stated the opinion: "Israel has an insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of itself."
I used to be involved in the Palestine Liberation movement and we always complained about people conflating Jews with Israel. Just because someone criticizes Israel does not mean they are antisemitic. Those who support Israel use the conflation to further their cause. In this sentence, the author does it on his own and screwed himself.
Yep, and it's clearly echoing the second sentence of the piece, "the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired."
Perhaps it's a deliberate conflation of Jews and Israel, or perhaps it's thoughtless writing when trying to echo & rephrase the opening/title.
This is how I read it as well, although some are less charitable with how they interpret actions in the moment -- people mis speak all the time and are heavily criticized for it. As another commentor suggested, this was probably not a carefully thought through thesis but more of a thought piece put together in a short time frame and meant more as an expression than some hill to die on. My charitable reading is that the last section (and title) perhaps carry the piece too far away from nationalist Jew and into ethnic Jew which aren't quite the same. Perhaps if the Author had thought through their goal and audience more thoroughly they might have re-worded it. Hard to tell. I think it is otherwise a thought provoking piece.
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 <group>", or it isn't.
The reason it doesn't make sense is that I think everyone (even his defenders) are misreading the offending sentence.
"If I were a Jew" is meant to inform his "concern" not his "appetite".
The insatiable appetite for violent self-defense is obviously universal (he mentions Palestinian animus). What is unique to Jewish identity are the lessons of the Holocaust, which he thinks would make him more afraid of allowing instincts of self-defense to overwhelm sensitivity to the suffering of others. It's perfectly consonant with his previous paragraphs.
Right-wing media isolated the sentence from context and framed it as saying Jewish people have an insatiable appetite for violence. The phrasing was ambiguous enough to plausibly support that interpretation, and people saw what they were primed to detect. Helps that he chose not to publicly defend himself, and media generally don't like to scrutinize claims of bigotry/racism. Reminds me a bit of the Shirley Sherrod firing.
I hope the current progressive correct-thinkers realize the takes they make today have to hold up over a decade from now, otherwise the next wave is going to cancel them.
One of the most striking things when reading about the French Revolution is seeing some of the original key agitators for Revolution being eventually denounced as insufficiently revolutionary, and some of them even being killed for being considered counter-revolutionary.
The only line is to scrub everything you have ever written with your real name off the internet. Someone will get offended by your writing and, eventually, you will lose your job and be exiled.
To be fair, we don't know who made the decision to reassign him. It might have been a HR decision in preemptive fear of bad press instead of an actual demand by any group.
Also, solidarity for palestinians is pretty widespread among progressives and left-wings in general. I think a push to cancel him for this entry would more likely come from right-wing, pro-Israel groups if anything.
His old posts are more than just solidarity with Palestinians or criticism of the Israeli government (which obviously should never get anyone fired).
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others.
It’s really hard to read stuff like that and not feel attacked as a Jewish person. I know it’s an old post and people change, but I don’t want people walking away from this thread thinking someone lost their job for merely being critical of Israel. That just feeds the cycle of distrust and makes it harder to discuss.
I think the point is that the blog post is not really a big issue if you're an average engineer, but as head of DEI it's not a great look, hence the re-assignment.
He was not canceled by progressives. Equating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism is generally an anti-progressive stance in the US. This is progressive principles being morphed into a weapon to be used against progressives.
If progressive people create a weapon known as cancellation, then they absolutely deserve it when the same weapon is used against them. They created the new normal.
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.
Somewhat tangential, but who is the right kind of person for a diversity job? What does a job well done look like? Changes in hiring? Changes in company culture?
I'm skeptical of roles with a "my job is to care about X" kind of definition. That includes, for example, "customer advocate" and similar, especially someplace as complicated as google. I don't think they can have much success beyond the surface level.
EDIT: lets maintain a presumption of good faith. Assuming that you actually care about diversity...
The purpose of the role is to be able to show that you have a diversity officer. Whether or not that actually helps diversity, or helps at all--is secondary.
"Diversity and inclusion" as a separate function is mostly an exercise in giving the rest of the company cover. In my experience the people in these orgs have very little power to do anything, they just recieve the complaints, empathize, and then nothing happens.
As an example, I went to our head of D&I with a complaint about HR violating human rights law in our jurisdiction. They said "oh that sucks" and I never spoke to them again. I could have gone to a tribunal and argued about it, but instead I ignored HR, and shortly after left the company because I kept having to fight them about what seemed like baseline "inclusion" stuff. The D&I staff were mostly busy making promotional materials about the few successful marginalized people at the organization, despite our terrible stats.
Good point. But a serious company in which everyone is a nice person could still have D&I specialists like a training expert in charge of improving the masses or a statistician/manager in charge of monitoring and reports.
It starts with an acknowledgement that the company has a problem with X. That's actually incredibly hard, because there's nobody in the company willing to say "I'm anti-X". If they did, you'd just fire them and call it a job well done.
Instead, you need to realize that the problem with X is that it's no individual's fault, but the cumulative effect of a lot of little things. Each of those little things is easily dismissed as irrelevant. The job of the X Officer is to care about all of those things at once.
That doesn't make their job easy. Simple changes rarely fix the problem -- if they could, you'd have already done them. They require large changes that often seem antiproductive, especially when you've defined "productive" in ways that you're convinced are objective but just happen to systematically be anti-X.
A common example: coding tests. "We don't exclude women. It's just that men happen to be more on both ends of bell curves, so it's just too bad that far more men pass this test than women. The test is objective, after all." Except that the test doesn't really test what you do for a living. So why insist on it? Is it because you're sexist, or just lazy? I'm tempted to call it the latter, but if it's pointed out by an "X Officer", they'll be accused of affirmative action, misanthropy, etc.
A diversity officer will lose more battles than they win, so it's hard to say what a job well done looks like. In a lot of ways they're doing their job well just by making people actually oppose them out loud. Their best victories look like things other people consider discriminatory against them, because the things that discriminate against them are intolerable while the things that discriminate against other people are just things that happen.
The hope is that collectively they'll put enough people in enough positions of authority to be able to gradually diminish the constant throb of small injustices that collectively have brought about an overwhelming white maleness to all authority positions. Even a large company is only a tiny fraction of society, so it takes the full cumulative effect over decades to actually achieve genuine success.
I hope that answers your question. It's not an easy thing to describe, and it's easy to dismiss the problems they're trying to fix and not worth solving.
My question was more tactical than anything. Coding tests and hiring are a good example. Is a general purpose "diversity officer" likely to understand hiring, coding tests and such to improve on this?
An understanding of abstract issues, like bell curves and bias in testing generally is one thing. Getting into the nitty gritty, dealing with objections and finding alternatives is another. Don't you need someone that understands coding tests, coding, technical hiring and such to make a difference? A nondiscriminatory hiring method is objectively better, even if you don't care about diversity.
A person in authority, but removed from the actual task at hand seems like a recipe for box ticking, to me. I believe it could work for blatant, simple misogyny. For deeper issues like hiring process, don't we need subject experts?
Leaving workplace diversity aside, say the issue is application design. An application doesn't work well for people of different cultural or educational backgrounds? Don't we need someone with both an understanding of UIs and an understanding of those needs? I don't see how authority can lead someplace good. People who have never dealt with UIs have terrible ideas about how to improve them.
>I hope that answers your question. It's not an easy thing to describe, and it's easy to dismiss the problems they're trying to fix and not worth solving.
I appreciate you wading in. Most of the other comments have been quite depressing. I think what we need is more presumption of good will, and to try and carry less baggage from previous experience. People can be wrong but not bad people. They can come around. There are multiple routes to getting where we want to go. That's not to say no one is ill willed.
Lastly, I think not seeing a solution often leads to not seeing the problem... even though it's logically backwards. I also think that a deep awareness of problems leads to seeing solutions. I don't think you can use authority alone and force people to find solutions to problems they don't care about, or believe in. The problem they'll actually try to solve is "how do I me this person leave me alone."
Can you explain what this mythic “throb of injustice” is that keeps the white man in power?
What I experience today is:
* government policy that is openly racist against white and asian men (affirmative action)
* Racist “diversity” campaigns today that are veils for “we want less white men but can’t straight up say that.”
* Hate from people of color, since the narrative is my “white male privilege” is the only reason for any success in my life. Every other major contributor to it is sidelined.
I have also still not found someone able to explain why white male leadership is a problem when it well reflects the entry workforce 40 years ago. Current diversity metrics for new grads will feed up management chains in 40 years and so on.
These are tangible policies and sentiment I can point to that directly and overtly discriminate against me because of my identity. Your comment tries to paint a rosy picture of doing so. There is no thought to my economic background, how hard I’ve worked, etc. Just you’re a white privileged man so you deserve less opportunity for leadership positions.
It seems incredibly and overtly racist to me, but I’m open to changing my mind.
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 killing“ or "increasing insensitivity to the suffering [of] others".
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..."
"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.
He is black, and there is a double-standard -- but don't dare call that racist. It's all absurd, but it's actually good to see examples of "you become the thing you hate". Hate is a horrible, corrosive emotion. We see it a _lot_ these days -- people who become emotionally entangled and lost in their activism against racism (the mob encourages this mindset, as in that state, critical thinking is turned off). They then become hateful and racist themselves.
These incidents can hopefully (but doubtfully) cause some reflection about "why the hell do we even have 'diversity officers' in a software company? Maybe we're getting results opposite of what we sought. After all, we created the role with the silly title just to virtue-signal, in the first place."
I think you're spreading FUD. People get reassigned instead of fired pretty regularly in response to PR. Please cite sources instead of making conjecture that this was due to race. At least leftists come with sources to back up their claims of racial discrimination, however flimsy the evidence is, it actually exists.
Notice a pattern here? I wasn't talking about cops and teachers who have unions with political clout. Cops have done a hell of a lot worse then go on racist rants just to be reassigned. It's not apples to apples.
But just to be over the top obnoxiously clear. I'm talking about the private sector.
Readit News
As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy would not have been removed from his position and Damore would not have been fired. Instead we could have had a conversation to win hearts and minds, but today it is all about getting scalps, witch hunts and over-reaction. What we are currently doing sends people underground which radicalizes them more.
And hey, great news, now we have every line written by every man, woman and child automatically captured and archived forever in an easy to search dossier.
Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview. But the writing remains forever, conveniently accessible.
Not all writing is equal. There is a difference between let's say a tweet that was sent in during a flamewar versus a personal blog post that has been penned in the past and stayed published until today. The function of the latter is closer to a book, in that it explicitly aims to persist and communicate thoughts through time. If one changes, they could have taken the post down. If there was regret about the contents, one could have published an update/apology etc with the post.
And the post wasn't picked from a web archive; it had stayed up until it the pushback reached career threatening levels. Yet there is still no evidence or apology in any medium that the person has actually changed their viewpoint. All we have is other people apologizing on their behalf with speculative redemption.
Unfortunately, as we've seen from the many instances where utterers of comments have suffered the consequences, Cardinal Richelieu's famous quote has turned out to be truer than it ought to be—especially so in this internet age where ancient dirt is seemingly dragged up from anywhere. (This quote also tells us much about Richelieu's devious mind and I'd suggest that with this one line of his that he's told us more about himself than most six lines of many others!)
One of the problems with the internet is being heard amongst the many voices so there's a tendency for people to use hyperbole and or exaggerate for the point of emphasis and yours truly is no exception (there are some comments of mine on the net that, in hindsight, I'd like to rephrase with more eloquence). :-) Expressing one's view is especially problematic with the net, as one has to be succinct and to the point if one's to be heard at all. Thus, more often than not, expediency wins out and only the raw message is heard sans nuances and without qualifications.
That said, whether any of those scenarios is relevant in instance seems moot but I will say that generalizations of that sort aren't helpful as they're both dangerous to oneself and unfair to those about whom one has made comment. One cannot generalize as a whole about a nation, society etc. as within any group of people one will find a remarkably diverse range of views and beliefs. I have many Jewish friends and acquaintances and I can only say that I do not know of a more diverse group of people. If I were to generalize at all then the only reasonable comment I could make would be that they're all remarkably interesting individuals but each in different ways.
The matter of whether some ancient and possibly intemperate remark is used against someone many years later is a troubling and vexed matter, especially so in this internet age. For starters, that person may have changed his or her mind in the intervening time. Then there's the issue of why someone has raised this matter after all that time not to mention the fact that once it's been raised and has gone viral across the net then the individual will have essentially no reasonable chance of ever defending himself or herself—whether his or her opinion is now right or wrong. Then there's the matter of Google protecting its corporate image so it's little wonder that he was dismissed (irrespective of his current beliefs or convictions). Unfortunately, that's the way things are.
There is no easy answer to this matter. Fear of speaking out stifles free speech and we're seeing more and more self-censorship on the net day by day and it's truly worrying. Moreover, if one speaks out or expresses an opinion on any controversial matter then woes betide the consequences.
In the days before the net and the sensational tabloid press there was a chance that a long-past dubious event from one's past may have gotten lost in the noise of old newspaper reports but the net has put a stop to that. Perhaps it's time to restate the age-old adage, which is to:
'Never discuss one's views on politics and religion as emotions run high and you'll surely make enemies.'
Perhaps but i don't feel they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Lots of weird comments in this thread.
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 dominant power holder.
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 between Jews and Israelis.
People are having a hard time distinguishing between the two because he had a hard time distinguishing between the two. Saying "If I was a {memberOf(someOrganization)}, I'd be concerned about how {adjective} I am," is calling out every member of that organization.
If he'd said "If I was an employee of Buy N Large, I'd be concerned about how much I love to destroy the environment for personal gain", that's a blanket accusation of all BNL employees being greedy anti-eco monsters.
If he'd said "if I was an exterminator, I'd be worried about how my complete and total lust for killing things is eventually going to accelerate into becoming a full fledged serial killer", that's a pretty clear indictment of all exterminators, regardless of who they actually are as individuals.
Saying "If I was a member of BLM, I'd be worried about how much I love torching businesses and assaulting bystanders" is a sweeping attack on all BLM activists, not just anyone who was looking for an excuse to loot and riot.
"If I was a dentist, I'd be worried about my insatiable bloodlust for hunting lions that were rescued and rehabilitated." I mean, come on.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."[1]
It's not "If I was an Israeli governing official" like you claim, it's "if I was a member of an ethnicity/religion." It's a little unfair of you to be so dismissive of people who interpret his words the way he wrote them.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...
He confuses Judaism with Israel.
From the post:
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.
There’s definitely more than criticism of the Israeli government here (some dog-whistle and overt antisemitism, whether the author understood that at the time or not). But I agree with the commenter - people can change and grow up. I don’t know the full story so it’s hard to really say what’s justified and what’s an overreaction.
You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist.
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He wasn't fired, just reassigned.
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but overall the existence of this blog is mystifying.
Most people interested in diversity thrive on creating drama and conflict. Embarking on witch hunts. Arbitrating blame.
What comes around goes around.
So the entire idea that this person should be removed based on a blog post 14 years ago is absurd. Are they saying therefore that people who historically demonstrated limited views on diversity are incapable of changing and advocating for change? Then why have the position in the first place.
You say "today" as if it's ever been any different. Has it?
[1] https://www.vox.com/technology/2019/2/22/18236172/mandatory-...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeenmabud/2019/02/26/worker-o...
You're also right that we don't want to drive people "underground". But the head of diversity needs to have a perspective on diversity that is actually.. diverse and inclusive.
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We need to send clear message to the world that we don't stand with such people.
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The anti war candidate Tulsi Gabbard in the recent US election is an example of someone relentlessly ridiculed and destroyed despite the absence of anything controversial in her background and is a dismal example of the way politics works today.
Now we have the pretentious corporate diversity industry insisting no one in their orbit has any opinions that might offend. Hopeless.
So much for democracy.
Ending "political correctness" might be unpopular in principle, but I doubt any specific proposal for how to dismantle it would be popular.
How would you even do that? You can't force people to not be offended by something.
> It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.
> Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Their assumption is moreso that we cant grow to overcome past problems. So the only way to build themselves up is to tear others down.
Thats why the popular "anti-racism" philosophy is so antithetical to and ignorant of the lives and philosophies of many of the greatest civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and MLK.
Who are they? The people who believe racism exists?
“An irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.... A must-read.” New York Times
“Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book — which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read.” New York Times
“Reckless and rollicking... perceptive and funny and brave.... The resulting view of the Valley’s craziness, self-importance and greed isn’t pretty. But it’s one that most of us have never seen before and aren’t likely to forget.” Washington Post
“PMMess, as we’ll call her, was composed of alternating Bézier curves from top to bottom: convex, then concave, and then convex again, in a vertical undulation you couldn’t take your eyes off of. Unlike most women at Facebook (or in the Bay Area, really) she knew how to dress; forties-style, form-fitting dresses from neck to knee were her mainstay.”
“Out of nowhere British Trader informs me she is once again pregnant; the calendar math takes us right back to my move- out imbroglio in December, our last tryst after a breakup desert of nonintimacy. After a brief debate, British Trader confirms her desire to keep the child, whatever my thoughts on the matter. It occurred to me that perhaps this most recent experiment in fertility—and the first—had been planned on British Trader’s part, her back up against the menopause wall, a professional woman with every means at her disposal except a willing male partner—in which case I had been snookered into fatherhood via warm smiles and pliant thighs, the oldest tricks in the book.”
“To make an analogy, a capped note is like having to seduce five women one after the other, while an equity round is having to convince five women to do a sixsome with you. The latter is exponentially harder than the former.*
* The women analogy breaks down in that, unlike with women, the more investors you seduce into your moresome, the more likely others are to join. This is an expression of the lemming-like nature of tech investors, most of whom scarcely merit the title.”
—Antonio Garcia Martinez
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Fiction_Bes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Nonfiction_...
i'm thinking there is a decent chance trans-racialism will eventually become woke
Essentially, you gain "cred" by publicly taking down a more powerful figure than yourself. It's the problem of diablerie in Vampire: The Masquerade in that, once accepted, you create a set of rewards and initiatives that foster a constant churn of figures eager to snipe at those above them, to drain them of their woke cred and get at least a little for yourself in an act called "critique." Of course, there's only so much blood/cred to go around so figures rise and fall as these very public lives are examined for any kind of transgression: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." Twitter and Tumblr are not exactly structured for careful, nuanced thought and so produce an endless stream of hot takes which, when gone cold, can be mined for evidence.
And so the revolutionaries are declared counter-revolutionaries and come to be the next layer of corpses in the mass graves they have dug, Khmer Rouge style.
EDIT misread "racialism" as "radicalism"
https://www.obama.org/diversity/
Innocent comments taken out of context or a general changing of accepted speech can turn a decade old bit of text into damning evidence of bigotry, racism, or any other ism.
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 increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired.
It's only in the last paragraph that the author goes to a different place and starts blaming Jews directly.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it as it doesn't make much sense to me.
Quite possibly not much. As someone who has hundreds of blog posts under his belt from a similar time period, a lot of it is just about churning out posts. Start with a thesis, write five or more paragraphs with little planning, do a quick scan for errors, then hit publish. I suspect we're looking at someone who's having their career heavily affected by a quick piece they dashed off in 30 minutes or less a decade and a half ago without even thinking about it too much at the time.
My blog is no longer up and running, and maybe that's now a good thing.
Or even well educated but ill-informed about some subjects.
Or part of an organization/group/etc that has some negative public positions or legacy but is not the uniform agreement among the entire group or evolved entirely over the years?
I personally see every election as choosing between lesser evils. Yet some groups see voting for any party as full agreement with everything the political party says and has done.
There is so much context and grey area that modern diversity or social justice groups are (or act?) completely ignorant of. So does it make it rational to put them to their own garbage public trials, or give them a pass like mature rational individuals - also to a certain degree filled with it's own grey areas?
Instead they can just troll you over some random wikipedia edit war you were in 13 years ago... you can take your blog offline but not Wikipedia. :-/
I ended up taking up an international cooperation job in Beirut, worked there for about three years. I danced, drank, worked, ate, drove around and enjoyed time with people that to this date consider very close friends.
I guess I just suck at blogging.
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This is the only line in the blog post that can be construed as antisemitic rather than a criticism of Israel. It would not be antisemitic if he had stated the opinion: "Israel has an insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of itself."
I used to be involved in the Palestine Liberation movement and we always complained about people conflating Jews with Israel. Just because someone criticizes Israel does not mean they are antisemitic. Those who support Israel use the conflation to further their cause. In this sentence, the author does it on his own and screwed himself.
Perhaps it's a deliberate conflation of Jews and Israel, or perhaps it's thoughtless writing when trying to echo & rephrase the opening/title.
"I used the wrong word once in a deleted personal blog post from 14 years ago."
"If I were a Jew" is meant to inform his "concern" not his "appetite".
The insatiable appetite for violent self-defense is obviously universal (he mentions Palestinian animus). What is unique to Jewish identity are the lessons of the Holocaust, which he thinks would make him more afraid of allowing instincts of self-defense to overwhelm sensitivity to the suffering of others. It's perfectly consonant with his previous paragraphs.
Right-wing media isolated the sentence from context and framed it as saying Jewish people have an insatiable appetite for violence. The phrasing was ambiguous enough to plausibly support that interpretation, and people saw what they were primed to detect. Helps that he chose not to publicly defend himself, and media generally don't like to scrutinize claims of bigotry/racism. Reminds me a bit of the Shirley Sherrod firing.
I hope the current progressive correct-thinkers realize the takes they make today have to hold up over a decade from now, otherwise the next wave is going to cancel them.
Alexi McCammond's tweets as a 17 year old were made in 2011. She had already publicly apologized for them in 2019.
James Gunn's old tweets were from 2011.
Josh Hader's social media posts were from 2012, while in high school.
Hartley Sawyer's tweets were from 2014.
Where is that line?
The only line is to scrub everything you have ever written with your real name off the internet. Someone will get offended by your writing and, eventually, you will lose your job and be exiled.
Also, solidarity for palestinians is pretty widespread among progressives and left-wings in general. I think a push to cancel him for this entry would more likely come from right-wing, pro-Israel groups if anything.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others.
It’s really hard to read stuff like that and not feel attacked as a Jewish person. I know it’s an old post and people change, but I don’t want people walking away from this thread thinking someone lost their job for merely being critical of Israel. That just feeds the cycle of distrust and makes it harder to discuss.
It's hard to feel any sympathy when that chicken comes home to roost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon
So yeah, doesn't really seem like a case of progressives eating-their-own
How is this any different than today?
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I'm skeptical of roles with a "my job is to care about X" kind of definition. That includes, for example, "customer advocate" and similar, especially someplace as complicated as google. I don't think they can have much success beyond the surface level.
EDIT: lets maintain a presumption of good faith. Assuming that you actually care about diversity...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
Or even hurts.
As an example, I went to our head of D&I with a complaint about HR violating human rights law in our jurisdiction. They said "oh that sucks" and I never spoke to them again. I could have gone to a tribunal and argued about it, but instead I ignored HR, and shortly after left the company because I kept having to fight them about what seemed like baseline "inclusion" stuff. The D&I staff were mostly busy making promotional materials about the few successful marginalized people at the organization, despite our terrible stats.
> I'm skeptical of roles with a "my job is to care about X" kind of definition.
Reframing it a bit (admittedly slightly off, but to get the point across):
"Who is the right person for a job all about caring about race?"
...I don't think anyone seeking that role should be hired for it.
Instead, you need to realize that the problem with X is that it's no individual's fault, but the cumulative effect of a lot of little things. Each of those little things is easily dismissed as irrelevant. The job of the X Officer is to care about all of those things at once.
That doesn't make their job easy. Simple changes rarely fix the problem -- if they could, you'd have already done them. They require large changes that often seem antiproductive, especially when you've defined "productive" in ways that you're convinced are objective but just happen to systematically be anti-X.
A common example: coding tests. "We don't exclude women. It's just that men happen to be more on both ends of bell curves, so it's just too bad that far more men pass this test than women. The test is objective, after all." Except that the test doesn't really test what you do for a living. So why insist on it? Is it because you're sexist, or just lazy? I'm tempted to call it the latter, but if it's pointed out by an "X Officer", they'll be accused of affirmative action, misanthropy, etc.
A diversity officer will lose more battles than they win, so it's hard to say what a job well done looks like. In a lot of ways they're doing their job well just by making people actually oppose them out loud. Their best victories look like things other people consider discriminatory against them, because the things that discriminate against them are intolerable while the things that discriminate against other people are just things that happen.
The hope is that collectively they'll put enough people in enough positions of authority to be able to gradually diminish the constant throb of small injustices that collectively have brought about an overwhelming white maleness to all authority positions. Even a large company is only a tiny fraction of society, so it takes the full cumulative effect over decades to actually achieve genuine success.
I hope that answers your question. It's not an easy thing to describe, and it's easy to dismiss the problems they're trying to fix and not worth solving.
My question was more tactical than anything. Coding tests and hiring are a good example. Is a general purpose "diversity officer" likely to understand hiring, coding tests and such to improve on this?
An understanding of abstract issues, like bell curves and bias in testing generally is one thing. Getting into the nitty gritty, dealing with objections and finding alternatives is another. Don't you need someone that understands coding tests, coding, technical hiring and such to make a difference? A nondiscriminatory hiring method is objectively better, even if you don't care about diversity.
A person in authority, but removed from the actual task at hand seems like a recipe for box ticking, to me. I believe it could work for blatant, simple misogyny. For deeper issues like hiring process, don't we need subject experts?
Leaving workplace diversity aside, say the issue is application design. An application doesn't work well for people of different cultural or educational backgrounds? Don't we need someone with both an understanding of UIs and an understanding of those needs? I don't see how authority can lead someplace good. People who have never dealt with UIs have terrible ideas about how to improve them.
>I hope that answers your question. It's not an easy thing to describe, and it's easy to dismiss the problems they're trying to fix and not worth solving.
I appreciate you wading in. Most of the other comments have been quite depressing. I think what we need is more presumption of good will, and to try and carry less baggage from previous experience. People can be wrong but not bad people. They can come around. There are multiple routes to getting where we want to go. That's not to say no one is ill willed.
Lastly, I think not seeing a solution often leads to not seeing the problem... even though it's logically backwards. I also think that a deep awareness of problems leads to seeing solutions. I don't think you can use authority alone and force people to find solutions to problems they don't care about, or believe in. The problem they'll actually try to solve is "how do I me this person leave me alone."
Can you explain what this mythic “throb of injustice” is that keeps the white man in power?
What I experience today is:
* government policy that is openly racist against white and asian men (affirmative action)
* Racist “diversity” campaigns today that are veils for “we want less white men but can’t straight up say that.”
* Hate from people of color, since the narrative is my “white male privilege” is the only reason for any success in my life. Every other major contributor to it is sidelined.
I have also still not found someone able to explain why white male leadership is a problem when it well reflects the entry workforce 40 years ago. Current diversity metrics for new grads will feed up management chains in 40 years and so on.
These are tangible policies and sentiment I can point to that directly and overtly discriminate against me because of my identity. Your comment tries to paint a rosy picture of doing so. There is no thought to my economic background, how hard I’ve worked, etc. Just you’re a white privileged man so you deserve less opportunity for leadership positions.
It seems incredibly and overtly racist to me, but I’m open to changing my mind.
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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 killing“ or "increasing insensitivity to the suffering [of] others".
I don't get it.
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..."
"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.
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These incidents can hopefully (but doubtfully) cause some reflection about "why the hell do we even have 'diversity officers' in a software company? Maybe we're getting results opposite of what we sought. After all, we created the role with the silly title just to virtue-signal, in the first place."
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2018/12/20/orlando-officer...
https://www.wtxl.com/news/local-news/assistant-principal-at-...
https://www.wgvunews.org/post/black-detroit-police-officer-r...
https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Waco-ISD-hires-teacher-who...
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/16/sheriffs-chief-of-sta...
But just to be over the top obnoxiously clear. I'm talking about the private sector.
Also we didn't see the entire context..
I think, you shouldn't. Unless you're a head of diversity. Then you must be.
The original post is at https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau... , including the final paragraph, which begins
>If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Yes it's very strange isn't it, I wonder what the reason could be
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