There's been a decreased tolerance for... well, intolerance.
He didn't repeatedly claim women were inferior engineers (but I understand why people will believe it). Nor was it in my opinion intolerant but it was championed by those who are (there's a difference). It was some other unhelpful stereotype based on gender differences.
The key take away is that generalising based on group Identity should not be done.
His rant was basically just of a list of stock arguments from the scientific racism era.
After he got fired his fans started a fundraiser on a white supremacy website.
His arguments were stock white supremacy and the people who adopted him as a hero were stock white supremacists. This isn't hard to figure out.
But honestly it's better if you don't know, you're better adjusted to living in this world by remaining ignorant. Just keep reading Vox.
While other people may have used his memo to justify sexist beliefs about the capability of female engineers, attributing those words to the original author is at best intellectually dishonest if not outright dishonest.
I will add that many people who only read articles paraphrasing and quoting it, did seem to react unfavorably, likely taking the opinion the article wished to portray.
Damore's links weren't the problem. The unsupported conclusions he drew from the research and the policies that he proposed were the problem.
I think it's more accurate to say his rant was a list from the era of a generation ago which might be the same as the scientific racism era? I don't know.
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So it seems that "white supremacy" is a catchall term for anything that argues a biological basis for group differences. Thank you for the links and for not just being aghast that I didn't know this. :]
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/James_Damore#Sex_and_drugs_and...
RationalWiki has a very opinionated take on things, but that article is very well-sourced (75 linked sources!) so you can read right up.
Now, it could fairly be said that his pro-KKK arguments were more "glib humor" than endorsement and I'd agree. I would also say it's part of the pattern of negative workplace behavior that got him terminated.
In a larger sense, its these "oh, [group A] isn't performing as well as [group B]... must be biological differences" arguments that often form the faux-scientific basis for discrimination. Read any racist literature, and you will find a lot of "science" claiming that [insert racial group] here is biologically inferior. And, yes, that includes much Nazi propaganda.... justifications used by American slave-owners, etc.
Hell, those titles being cool without their association to the KKK is why the KKK used those titles.
So it seems that "white supremacy" is a catchall
term for anything that argues a biological basis
for group differences.
No, not quite.
It's just that their history is inextricably linked.
We can all agree that there is certainly much valid research to be done here. For example, why is sickle-cell anemia so much more prevalent in African-Americans? What biological adaptations allow some populations (Nepalese, etc) to thrive at high altitudes? Nobody finds that sort of thing objectionable.
However, things get ugly fast when we start talking about the study of why one group is best suited for one task or another, or which group is superior in general.
There is a long and sordid history of biological arguments in favor of the superiority of certain groups of people, typically white European males. It should not surprise you to learn that these arguments come from white European males.
Not all studies of "group differences" have anything to do with white supremacy, but every white supremacy movement that has ever existed has claimed a biological basis for their views.
We sort of fought a world war over this (among other reasons) and a lot of people died. These sorts of arguments have also been used to justify slave ownership (a rather large war was fought over this as well) and the oppression of women.
Wikipedia is a reasonable place to start
https://web.archive.org/web/20170808155320/https://www.wesea...
Wayback link to front page of the site at the time:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170808121314/https://www.wesea...
Characterizations of the site: https://www.splcenter.org/splc-lists-wesearchr-white-nationa...
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/24/wesearchr-charles-johnson-al...
Alt right is a branding of "white nationalism":
Who? Please provide quotes to support your case if you’re thinking of the most famous example because I don’t recall any such argument. It was all about interests, not capacities.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170809220001/https://diversity...
Note that I still think there are some questionable things in the memo, but the way people demonize it shows that they can't read controversial texts or didn't read it and just relied on second hand information from those who can't read controversial texts.
0: (posted here regularly) https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/