Google Employee Writes Memo About ‘The Burden of Being Black at Google’

Re:Google Employee Writes Memo About ‘The Burden of Being Bl... by rayiner on Friday August 16, 2019 @11:21AM (#20716066)

That is a very weird example for the article to lead with. He's talking about the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. What kind of "debate" can a primarily white and asian group of people have about those events? The whole fun of nerd debates is taking dueling positions on low-stakes issues--something that would be way out of line with respect to those issues.

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Re:Google Employee Writes Memo About ‘The Burden of Being Bl... by southphillyman on Friday August 16, 2019 @11:35AM (#20716211)

>my teammates always had something to say about everything. But when it came to the violent policing of black bodies, they were silent

Debate is probably the wrong term, seems he was just looking for an acknowledgement of the problem. After one of those police shooting incidents I came into work and all of my coworkers, all white and asian, were talking about how bad the incident was. People at work come together and talk about major traumatic news stories all the time. A consistent absence of that when it relates to a specific topic might seem....strange.

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Re:Google Employee Writes Memo About ‘The Burden of Being Bl... by danShumway on Friday August 16, 2019 @12:02PM (#20716517)

Honestly, it sounds like even acknowledgement was not the problem. Their coworkers did speak up -- to criticize the protesters and claim they weren't accomplishing anything.

If I were in this person's position, silence would make me feel a little weird. My coworkers actively deriding the protest that I'm about to go join would make me feel a lot more weird.

I don't think people are lying when they say that tech employees have their own biases and blind spots, and it doesn't necessarily surprise me to learn that race is one of them.

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