> "If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted white men" — this can be read as all the white men at Google are bigots.
It really can't.
It really can't.
However, the following concerns apply
1) I as a (non-bigoted) white man do not trust the good faith of the person speaking (in context, at Google)
2) I have seen analogous comments about eg. black people be auto-interpreted as bad faith when context made it clear that it was not bad-faith.
3) The inclusion of "white" and "man" in that statement are unnecessary, so them being included in spite of that is a signal of bad faith.
I would like to work in a place where everyone is intelligent and good-faith enough to interpret this sentence in its reasonable sense. But the reality is that such a place doesn't exist. At best I can get a place where statements against white men as a group get this treatment, but statements against other groups will always be interpreted as bad-faith, regardless of context.
I would like for all ambiguous statements like this to be interpreted on the same standard, but as long as they will not be, the next best step is to err on the side of caution and have a blanket ban of things like this
That said I don't think there was a need to call out white men specifically in the sentence.
This is Alon Altman's (@epsalon) current Twitter bio. How would you read the original intent?
If both statement seems fine fine to you than okay.
>Damore didn't say women are inferior
>> Quotes Damore "I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." >> See he clearly called them inferior.
>>> No he didn't he just said they were different.
Two people see the same sentence and draw very different conclusions. We can either adopt a norm of honoring what the writer intended or a norm of honoring what the reader observed. I think a lot of people who are most vocally pro-diversity use the later norm when determining if something is or isn't ????ist. If this is the norm I think it should be universally the norm. Thus if we are being charitable to the writer I agree with you that the interpretation should be "We should fire all of the bigots (who happen to be white men)" and not "We should fire all the white men (who are bigots)."
This is a really hard principle to apply consistently which is why I tried to highlight the same kind of statement that was racist instead of sexist. In hopes that people could understand why white men might take offense to the original comment.
Hope the explanation helps.
Absolutely.
> We can either adopt a norm of honoring what the writer intended or a norm of honoring what the reader observed. I think a lot of people who are most vocally pro-diversity use the later norm when determining if something is or isn't ????ist. If this is the norm I think it should be universally the norm.
Gods, I hope this does not become the norm. "Everything can mean anything!"
As a conservative it kind of feels like that is the case. The second named party in the Google suit got fired for an interpretation of his comments he didn't mean.