Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo by etchalon on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @12:47AM (#14954431)

People seem to have an intuitive sense of punching up/down. There's an intuitive sense of abuse of power, and an allowance for people without power to use tactics which we'd abhor if those in power used.

The idea "well, no one can punch!" is rhetorically clean, but pragmatically problematic. There is a long history of people who had to punch up to break a ceiling that should never have existed.

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Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo by mc32 on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @12:50AM (#14954456)

The problem with punching up (a revolution, an insurrection, whathaveyou) is that it's indiscriminate. At its worst it's a collective group against an individual rather than indiv-vs-indiv or group-vs-group.

So, while it looks like punching up, having a group "punch up" at someone is actually punching down at an indiv.

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Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo by etchalon on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @12:54AM (#14954481)

Yep. That definitely happens. Individuals become totems of their group, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly.

But it's near impossible for a collective group of people to perfectly balance their outrage in just the right way, at precisely the right people, for exactly the right amount of time.

We just accept the tradeoff that progress is messy.

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Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo by etchalon on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @12:49AM (#14954450)

The weirdest thing is watching what happens when one group thinks they're punching up, and everyone else thinks they're punching down.

You see massive disconnects.

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