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.
Yup, I'm a little disturbed that people jump to defending him to a degree that borders on reinterpreting history.
Eg:
> Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding
Ok. Is there any evidence this specific person did? Did he apologize? Did his public writing change substantially since then?
It's not like this is an embarrassing photo taken during a party the guy had forgotten about. I have trouble imagining how someone could be hired as head of diversity for Google and forget that they published a screed about how jews should confront their appetite for war or whatever.
If the only information you have about this person is this, your first reaction should not be to find excuses to dismiss the information; or if it is, you should at least look for additional information, instead of speculating about how maybe the person totally changed their mind and is totally being treated unfairly.
The issue isn’t that this person didn’t make a mistake - we all agree on that. The issue is that in our culture, we don’t make room for a person to make mistakes and grow (often the only way to grow) by forgiving them and believing that they are a better person now and can contribute to society more effectively going forward.
I understand this is a tricky balance to maintain. But I sincerely believe the internet junta is unforgiving and judgemental beyond the point of any utility except making oneself feel better by “other-ising” people they don’t know, and claiming that they wouldn’t ever be like that person.
The reality is that we are all remarkably similar. We’ve just been in radically different circumstances and who knows how we would have behaved had we been in a similar situation?
I don’t mean to pick a battle with you. I understand where you are coming from. I would love to have a civil discussion with you. Have a wonderful day.
More details here
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w...
People do change and also understand when they do «downright stupid things», but we have to give them a chance to arrive at that point.
If the post is still online, like the videos and photos of Tom Petty's 1985 tour, that could also be interpreted as a sign of honesty, it's also possible that the author forgot that he wrote it.
I write a lot of things that I don't remember soon after.
It happens to code as well, sometimes I ask myself «who's the genius that wrote this beautiful code» and I'm shocked when I find out it was me years ago, but most of the times I regret writing it.
Some people spend hours writing a single tweet to get the message exactly right.
I mean, you sound like you think you have moral clarity to denounce someone as inhumane, and I guess this is how you lead in your conversational style.
I'm talking about a technologically interconnected world where other nations and parties never have to agree to forget anything.
Either we decide to excommunicate or suppress every nation and party that chooses to remember, or we decide what it means to coexist with those who remember. The humane way to do things is to decide how we should treat each other despite flaws, not stamp out every nation or peoples in the world that seeks to remember forever.
I'm talking about co-existence between nations with different policies, a world where the US may not agree to forget everything Germany asks of them.
> Just to remind you that your binary, i.e. inhumane, way of thinking is permanently documented here as well. I hope you regret this comment one day when the same binary approach is applied to you as well. People are expected to change today - and that's why people go in and out of jail. But in the liberal world view, everybody (except the oppressed) is evil! Even when the oppressed is a cold blooded killer, it's an excuses - they did it, because they are oppressed. And this is how the Commies executed tens of million of people - they were imperialists and enemies of Communism and there was no chance for them; they were sentences as permanently damaged goods and deserved only a bullet!
So you lead with your sense of moral and conversational clarity.
> then, by all morals and definitions, you're inhumane not giving a chance and not willing to reassess.
And so you follow with your sense of moral and conversational clarity.
and
> bad behavior
Nuff said!
You have left yourself zero room to discuss anything else, because you have spent your entire thread analyzing how someone is inhumane without even getting to know them, like an internet warrior or moral busybody. Every time you pick up the microphone that's the only thing you have to say.
That is what I mean by your sense of moral and conversational clarity.
As a late 70's child that got the internet when I was in my late teens it was unthinkable at that time to give anyone any personal info about you online. "Stranger Danger" and everyone online should be thought of as an axe murder was the dominant position
I am not sure when or why this shift happen to where it was common for people to not only post their full personal info but also post real time location information about where they are and what they are doing...
It is all baffling to me even today
* https://www.npr.org/2011/09/28/140879480/who-are-you-really-...
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.
14 years is a long time really, there are people who get the benefit of a doubt for murder after 14 years.
They tend not to get put in charge of anti-murder departments, though, like this person being made Head Of Diversity.
On the other hand the exception to that rule would be - I've known guys who were drug addicts, caught, go through rehabs, and become counselors and psychologists in the judicial system. Which is pretty close to the scenario under discussion.
on edit - ok only know two guys who did that, but they exist.
How do you know if the veteran you’re thanking on Memorial Day did not commit murder, rape, or other war crimes?
Or is it OK if done in uniform, with 21st Century weapons, or following orders?
Which crimes do you feel are beyond rehabilitation? I can only think of one area of crime where the majority of people would agree without hesitation.
People learn.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...
Maybe this person didn’t, and it is not appropriate to hold the head of diversity title.
But if they’re doing everything right, and do represent diverse workforce, then is “not having had anti-Semitic views 14 years ago” a job requirement?
What do the Jewish/POC colleagues have to say about the quality of their workplace?
I definitely wouldn't want to work at Google with this guy in management. Sorry, but I'm just not interested in having my "insatiable appetite for war" touted as an asset to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
Lots of weird comments in this thread.
In particular he bent over backwards to carefully spell out that he was not claiming women are worse at programming than men, perhaps because he knew the dangerous liars he was picking a fight with would also lie about his words - which they did, immediately, across the entire media and with vigor. Damore also tried to keep these views inside the company.
Now this guy made very explicitly offensive comments broadcast to the whole world on his blog, which claims that all Jewish people are the same, that by implication they are morally inferior to people whose hearts are not filled with war, and that they should feel guilt and shame about this.
No comparison, indeed.
Right, so in one case, the company clearly ought to have known he was an antisemite before hiring him as Chief of Diversity. In the other, the company was hiring for a technical role and didn't bother asking about his political or social views.
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.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself," (…)
"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 just became “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing” in the tweets.
I don't feel that position is anti-Semitic either, but I think it needs to be noted for the sake of intellectual honesty. He is critiquing a LOT of Jews here.
I'm all for charitability, but it feels like we're contorting ourselves--why would any tolerant person with a decent penchant for writing not keep a wider berth between their criticism of Israel and antisemitism? I understand that there are always going to be bad faith people who willfully misinterpret all criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but those people aside I've never found it particularly difficult to criticize Israel in a way which is unambiguously tolerant of and respectful toward Jews (and he seems like a better writer than I am).
https://mobile.twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1400065933...
I never understood that concept. The idea that Judaism is transmitted from lineage is itself only a belief of Judaism. If you don't believe in Judaism there is no reason to believe in this particular fiction. This specific feature is obviously a hack on the reproductivity of the meme. There is no Judaism gene, it's not transmittable, it's not an ethnicity.
No problem! It certainly doesn't make sense if one approaches it from a Western Christian mindset. I am not trying to imply that is how you are approaching it, rather I mention this because Judaism often gets compared to Christianity, but I think they are quite different.
It is better to think of Judaism as a tribe. Membership to this tribe is mainly given under two conditions: through matrilineal descent or through religious conversion. Some subgroups within the tribe have different membership conditions like recognizing patrilineal descent, others may not recognize conversions done by other subgroups.
And it's not really surprising that the target are Jews. In America this doesn't seem to be the case so much, but in Europe when the left engage in racism, it's always against their own countryfolk or Jews. Diversity programs, however they started, long ago became a left wing movement.
Frankly it's a lot more shocking when someone working in diversity does not turn out to be racist or sexist. Those are very rare people indeed. Oddly, I vaguely recalled the Google head of diversity making some sensible comments some years ago, but I don't recognize this name. It seems he's actually just "a" head of diversity, not "the" head.
[1]: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/racism-against-white-people-doe...
[2]: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthewclair/files/clair_d...
Such a cunning rhetorical device that it became indistinguishable. What utter dreck.
I understand the draw of believing in “reverse racism.” When I was in junior high, and was targeted for being a white boy, it made sense to me. And it felt unfair. But then I gained more perspective through a better understanding of sociology and history.
By the way, sociology is nonsense, surely everyone knows that by now. Their papers are usually pseudo scientific.
Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.
Think of it as the downside of the Enlightenment idea that governments acquire their legitimacy solely from the support of the governed. If the people of a nation do not approve of the actions of their government, they have both the right and the responsibility to change those actions.
Or, think of it as basic ethics: no one who eats meat can be more saintly than a butcher. Everyone who benefits from citizenship in a nation gets to share responsibility for the actions of the nation.
Once the National Socialists had achieved power, in 1933, German Jews protested the actions of their government, leading to the Civil Service law and further restrictions on Jewish activities. (At this time, there were many German non-Jews who probably didn't like their government's activities but benefited a great deal from those activities.) By 1935-36, Jews in Germany had essentially no power, either to support or oppose the government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany...) Thus, those who could left.
Not bloodlust, but partial responsibility. 'Tis the nature of democracy.
The people in the voting booths in the USA can no more be blamed for the USA's warmongering than the Americans who stayed home, abstaining, or people in the next country over. The US military is going to do what the US military is going to do, and to believe anything else is to be either ignorant of history or hopelessly naive.
Not voting in an authoritarian military dictatorship masquerading as a democracy is not one such instance, unfortunately.
There is no sufficient loudness of "wake up, sheeple!" that will get the US military to stop waging war (the continuation of which is entirely contrary to the will of the US people). It is an autonomous organization, unaccountable to any branch of the US government, as evidenced over and over again by the lack of resistance to it in the USG, and the lack of consequences for its members when it breaks the law.
The CIA got busted lying to Congress about hacking into Congressional computers to delete evidence of the CIA's torture program. The torture program continues, and nobody is in jail.
Certainly not like turning off a light, but it's a clear fallacy that peoples actions (or inaction) don't change policy and practice.
Put it another way, if Americans aren't responsible for the actions of America, who is? What sort of answers to that don't undermine the entire concept of the country?
If however you are a functioning member of a society and do things to support it you are partially to blame for the things that society does. That amount of blame is not the same for everyone - and for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning - but you do have a share.
on edit: as an example we can say with some surety that the one white man in 1800s American that should not be charged with culpability for slavery would be John Brown (although he probably would not feel the same way) - there are undoubtedly others but we can point with some justification at John Brown and say that guy pretty much not to blame for any of that shit.
I'm certainly not recommending that people have to do these things either, just to being clear eyed about things - you can't benefit from your society's actions and then say you don't share any blame from what it does without some extreme dropping out of the system.
I mean, I can see where you're coming from. But at this point we are really at the fringes of culpability and it's more of an issue of semantics and definitions.
so yes, each of those 1.3 billion probably have an atom of culpability, so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning.
I'm a citizen of Denmark, I have some share of culpability in the wrongs my country does - I do a little to minimize those wrongs (when I see them) by voting against the perpetrators but that's about it - I support the country and it is partly my fault because I am too comfortable to do what would be required to completely absolve myself of any culpability because hey, I'm pretty okay (as most people throughout history have said)
Collective punishment refers to the punishment communities en masse for the actions of individuals, that may be being harbored by some members of that community.
Just because something is done in a collective manner does not absolve the members of that collective from the outcome.
Bernie Sanders is an American who was advocating against the Iraq War. He was clearly not culpable for it, and his causal role was to lower the probability that it would go ahead. This is an example of why it would then be wrong to blame "Americans" as a collective for the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders, a member of that collective, deserves either zero blame or negative blame (if that even exists).
To extend your example: Bernie Sanders as a citizen, and further a politician, acquires an amount of the collective responsibility for the countries actions in the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders as an activist has more than discharged that responsibility by actively countering it.
A citizen who has done nothing to mitigate or counter the actions is left only with the share of collective responsibility; however large or small that may be, it's real.
Are they expected to single-handedly (or collectively) organize and engage in a bloody civil war, thereby gaining culpability for that? Blaming people for the actions of their nation / elected officials is absurd. All a person can do is vote for the best candidate in front of them and vote at face value.
Representative democracy takes power away from people. If it were a direct democracy, then yes, I'd say sure, people bear responsibility. But it's not. It's a system designed to be manipulative and serve wealthy and powerful interests, and the only way to change it is either very, very slow, or very, very bloody.
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...
Also, notice how he writes that self-defense is an instinct. As in, he doesn't actually think self-defense is, prima facie, morally justifiable. He actually thinks you need to sit and ask yourself, "Am I the baddie, for existing?", if you are Jewish.
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.
AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
That’s not to say that being able to distinguish between Jews, Zionists, Israelis, and the Israeli government isn’t basic threshold knowledge that should be expected of anyone publicly commenting on Israeli policy and how it should make anyone feel based on group association, but setting expectations of people’s knowledge based on their future jobs is a bit bonkers.
He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post).
Please update your post as you're spreading FUD.
>AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
He's been a DEI grifter for over a decade, including when he originally wrote his anti-semitic post.
Neither of those is “global head of diversity”.
> Please update your post as you're spreading FUD.
No, I’m not and I see no need to update my post. If the upthread post were updated to refer to his actual position at the time of the post, I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot, but given that it seems (like your post defending it) to be from a single-use throwaway account, I don't expect that to happen.
Exactly, they're much higher positions with more scope and reach than "head of diversity" at a software company. Thanks for agreeing with me.
>I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot
Except the premise of your post was proven categorically false. He absolutely should have known the difference between "Jews" and "Zionists" if he was a diversity advisor to the Obama administration. QED.
I don't agree that that’s necessarily evident from the titles alone, and reviewing the actual positions themselves is difficult, e.g., the one he was described upthread as being in at the time of the memo could not have even existed at that time, since it was in 2007 and the position was described as being in an Administration that didn't take office until 2009.
The flow of time seems problematic for the throwaway accounts in this subthread.
> Except the premise of your post was proven categorically false.
The premise of my post was that the post it responded to described an expectation of knowledge based on a specific position he held only much after the time of writing the piece. Which has not been proven false since it was and remains true.
(That the author of that post might have been able to refer to a different position that did not have that problem is a side issue.)
Obama was in Office 2007?
He was working on the STEM initiatives for Georgia Tech at the time of his writing.
He wasn't fired, just reassigned.
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.
but overall the existence of this blog is mystifying.
> More importantly, it helped me identify the boundary between my intellect and my emotions. Like most white people who are questioned, I am quick to say, “I don’t have problems with homosexuals, one of my best friends is a lesbian.” For me that is sincerely true. I have managed, however, to reconcile the differences of my mind and my heart to maintain what I think is and hope will continue to be a close personal friendship. Indeed, it is through the lasting nature of that friendship that my emotional core is changing. I changed my mind a long time ago.
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?
Do you think you'd keep your job after saying something anti-Christian in the 1950s? Look at what happened to Sinead O'Connor in the early 90s after she spoke out against child abuse in the Catholic church.
Maybe the biggest difference is that now we write when we communicate with peers, so there's evidence of our speech. I'm not convinced the mechanism behind cancel culture itself is new at all.
I don't think this is an apt comparison at all.
1. Sinead O'Connor is a celebrity, celebrities have always had more scrutiny. It doesn't seem comparable to the random employees getting fired / random HS students losing their college offers that are happening today.
2. She did not just speak out against child abuse, she held up a photo of the pope on national TV while singing "evil", and then tore it up. This was obviously an act intended to be very public and very controversial.
3. What actually happened to her other than some angry editorials? Were her performances canceled by venues?
I'm not familiar with the case of celebrities or Sinead O'Connor specifically, but no celebrity in my lifetime before the advent of this new wave of cancel culture has been completely cancelled the way they are today (even Michael Jackson, who had serious allegations of child molestation, had an O2 concert scheduled shortly before his death).
Even for the average person, if you lost your job due to anti-mob comments in the 50s that didn't bar you from ever finding a job again (which is the case for some today), and this is without even touching on the way some people have had their entire twitter history crawled and pulled apart from a time when they were generally very different people.
As I said, this is probably a function of social media in the modern era more than anything else.
But they have, this is the very nature of the infamous Hollywood blacklist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
Have you ever read "Time of the Toad" by Trumbo?
I think people would be blacklisted in exactly the same way in the 50s; this is all fairly well documented in relevant writings from the period.
I think we're in agreement that social media and specifically giving people access to publishing has changed the duration and discoverability of the speech.
I'd definitely be interested to see comparisons that are more like-for-like though, if they exist. I'm not familiar with "Time of the Toad", although from a brief look it seems to also deal with Cold War era issues? Again, this isn't a like-for-like comparison.
I realize that you didn't mean this statement the way I am reading it, but I'm having a hard time not reading this as a reference to the time when the minority was less vocal and knew its place.
[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.
We need to send clear message to the world that we don't stand with such people.
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.