Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

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.

Lots of weird comments in this thread.

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.

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.

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?

[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.

So much for democracy.

Their assumption is moreso that we cant grow to overcome past problems. So the only way to build themselves up is to tear others down.

Thats why the popular "anti-racism" philosophy is so antithetical to and ignorant of the lives and philosophies of many of the greatest civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and MLK.

“An irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.... A must-read.” New York Times

“Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book — which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read.” New York Times

“Reckless and rollicking... perceptive and funny and brave.... The resulting view of the Valley’s craziness, self-importance and greed isn’t pretty. But it’s one that most of us have never seen before and aren’t likely to forget.” Washington Post

i'm thinking there is a decent chance trans-racialism will eventually become woke

Quite possibly not much. As someone who has hundreds of blog posts under his belt from a similar time period, a lot of it is just about churning out posts. Start with a thesis, write five or more paragraphs with little planning, do a quick scan for errors, then hit publish. I suspect we're looking at someone who's having their career heavily affected by a quick piece they dashed off in 30 minutes or less a decade and a half ago without even thinking about it too much at the time.

My blog is no longer up and running, and maybe that's now a good thing.

This is the only line in the blog post that can be construed as antisemitic rather than a criticism of Israel. It would not be antisemitic if he had stated the opinion: "Israel has an insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of itself."

I used to be involved in the Palestine Liberation movement and we always complained about people conflating Jews with Israel. Just because someone criticizes Israel does not mean they are antisemitic. Those who support Israel use the conflation to further their cause. In this sentence, the author does it on his own and screwed himself.

"If I were a Jew" is meant to inform his "concern" not his "appetite".

The insatiable appetite for violent self-defense is obviously universal (he mentions Palestinian animus). What is unique to Jewish identity are the lessons of the Holocaust, which he thinks would make him more afraid of allowing instincts of self-defense to overwhelm sensitivity to the suffering of others. It's perfectly consonant with his previous paragraphs.

Right-wing media isolated the sentence from context and framed it as saying Jewish people have an insatiable appetite for violence. The phrasing was ambiguous enough to plausibly support that interpretation, and people saw what they were primed to detect. Helps that he chose not to publicly defend himself, and media generally don't like to scrutinize claims of bigotry/racism. Reminds me a bit of the Shirley Sherrod firing.

Alexi McCammond's tweets as a 17 year old were made in 2011. She had already publicly apologized for them in 2019.

James Gunn's old tweets were from 2011.

Josh Hader's social media posts were from 2012, while in high school.

Hartley Sawyer's tweets were from 2014.

Where is that line?

Also, solidarity for palestinians is pretty widespread among progressives and left-wings in general. I think a push to cancel him for this entry would more likely come from right-wing, pro-Israel groups if anything.

As an example, I went to our head of D&I with a complaint about HR violating human rights law in our jurisdiction. They said "oh that sucks" and I never spoke to them again. I could have gone to a tribunal and argued about it, but instead I ignored HR, and shortly after left the company because I kept having to fight them about what seemed like baseline "inclusion" stuff. The D&I staff were mostly busy making promotional materials about the few successful marginalized people at the organization, despite our terrible stats.

> I'm skeptical of roles with a "my job is to care about X" kind of definition.

Reframing it a bit (admittedly slightly off, but to get the point across):

"Who is the right person for a job all about caring about race?"

...I don't think anyone seeking that role should be hired for it.

Instead, you need to realize that the problem with X is that it's no individual's fault, but the cumulative effect of a lot of little things. Each of those little things is easily dismissed as irrelevant. The job of the X Officer is to care about all of those things at once.

That doesn't make their job easy. Simple changes rarely fix the problem -- if they could, you'd have already done them. They require large changes that often seem antiproductive, especially when you've defined "productive" in ways that you're convinced are objective but just happen to systematically be anti-X.

A common example: coding tests. "We don't exclude women. It's just that men happen to be more on both ends of bell curves, so it's just too bad that far more men pass this test than women. The test is objective, after all." Except that the test doesn't really test what you do for a living. So why insist on it? Is it because you're sexist, or just lazy? I'm tempted to call it the latter, but if it's pointed out by an "X Officer", they'll be accused of affirmative action, misanthropy, etc.

A diversity officer will lose more battles than they win, so it's hard to say what a job well done looks like. In a lot of ways they're doing their job well just by making people actually oppose them out loud. Their best victories look like things other people consider discriminatory against them, because the things that discriminate against them are intolerable while the things that discriminate against other people are just things that happen.

The hope is that collectively they'll put enough people in enough positions of authority to be able to gradually diminish the constant throb of small injustices that collectively have brought about an overwhelming white maleness to all authority positions. Even a large company is only a tiny fraction of society, so it takes the full cumulative effect over decades to actually achieve genuine success.

I hope that answers your question. It's not an easy thing to describe, and it's easy to dismiss the problems they're trying to fix and not worth solving.

I don't even get how that's gonna work. Inevitably, he'll work alongside/under/oversee Jewish colleagues. That'll be an awkward Hangouts meeting. "Oh hey there's the guy that thinks I'm violent, I wonder if he'll judge my work/team interaction impartially..."

These incidents can hopefully (but doubtfully) cause some reflection about "why the hell do we even have 'diversity officers' in a software company? Maybe we're getting results opposite of what we sought. After all, we created the role with the silly title just to virtue-signal, in the first place."

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2018/12/20/orlando-officer...

https://www.wtxl.com/news/local-news/assistant-principal-at-...

https://www.wgvunews.org/post/black-detroit-police-officer-r...

https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Waco-ISD-hires-teacher-who...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/16/sheriffs-chief-of-sta...

Also we didn't see the entire context..

Yes it's very strange isn't it, I wonder what the reason could be

But it's not a rhetorical strategy just used by Zionists and the far right. Zionists, as you say, wish to conflate Jews with Israel, so that any criticism of the latter will appear to be an attack on the former. Anti-Semites wish to conflate Israel with all Jews so that criticism of the former can be made to be an attack on the latter.

It's a mess.

But let's not pretend that the connection between Israel and US Jews is simply a prejudice. Here's an article from the Times of Israel quoting a recent Pew research:

"More than 80% of American Jews said caring about Israel was an important or essential part of what being Jewish means to them." [1]

If this is how important is Israel to American Jews identity ("important or essential part of what being Jewish means to them") then it makes sense to ask them, as a group, how do they reconcile this identity with the violent actions of Israel.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-gaza-conflict-escalates-her...

> 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. This reconciliation would be particularly difficult now, in November, 79 years after Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass. The anniversary of this dreadfully monumental day in my history would bring me pause. It would force me to reflect on the legacy of extraordinary human suffering. I might wonder how the vicious eruption of cruelty in the mid-twentieth century has influenced the shape of my identity as a Jewish person and our collective identity as Jewish people.

He is imagining a dichotomy; commitment to Israel and to humanist values. "If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented." This does not sound like anti-Semitism to me.

I... can't help but think that, had he been a member of a different demographic, he would have just plain been fired.

What HN specifically requests is "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."

There's a difference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The DMCA is political, and is the basis in which most orgs allow public comment. Copyright is political. Patents are political. Cryptocurrency is explicitly political WRT being against governments. Most startups are political, in the way many break laws that the incumbents have to follow.

The people who "dont want to involve with politics" are primarily the ones whose needs are met, and don't care about others' needs. I would claim it's for selfish reasons.

Only if he said "Western Europeans + Russia". The rest of us didn't colonize anyone.

For many other positions I would agree with you, but not a position like this.

Who else has he helped discriminate against based on their ethnicity or views?

What if I believe in my public private life that Russia should rise up and destroy the west for its decadence and weakness - should it affect my job in the CIA?

But this is just straight up criticism of Jews, based on the actions of Israel. He's saying that Jews in general should atone for their inherent bloodlust.

That's not "harsh", he's picked a bad thing that some members of a group did and tried to apply it to all members of that group. In other cases we would say that's sexist or racist, and here it's anti-semitic.

For me, the lesson to learn from this is that to never apply for a job in the US or for a job for a large US company. That's easy for me to say, though, since I'm working as a philosopher in academia and these are not wanted or needed in corporations anyway.

You do seem to live in extremely polite and enlightened world where just a transfer is ruining career. Out in real world today one would have their ass out of job instead of mild reprimand for such blog post.

Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided.

Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with.

Over the 4 years since the controversy I've asked countless Damore critics to point to the specific part of his memo that was tone-deaf, insensitive, or bigoted. I'm still waiting for an answer.

[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

I can only imagine Bobb was quite apologetic and a lot more aware of how terrible his conflations are there than he was in 2007. That's also 14 years of time to have solid evidence that he no longer holds such myopic views.

Simple explanation is Google's Democrat-leaning leadership are more aligned with Bobb than Damore (in the US, the left are generally anti-Israel while the right support it, and the left are pro-affirmative-action while the right oppose it).

Nope, they're being very consistent if you use the correct ideological goggles, change Bobb's color palette and first name a little and we would have another Damore-like shitshow.

Hopefully nobody will hold me accountable to all the slashdot comments I wrote 10-15 years ago. Taken out of context, I've probably made fantastically horrific statements too.

I’m pretty sure if he were another person talking the same way about other people he’d have gotten fired unceremoniously.

And I doubt they have recalibrated how they deal with controversial opinions.

Bobb wrote something which he has since recanted, 10 years ago, outside of Google's official channels?

However part of the problem is that zionists within the state of Israel work really hard to blur this distinction.

You can see for example arguments being made in that sense in this debate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1VTt_THL4A

Or the French parliament deciding that anti-Zionism is antisemitism: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/french-parliamen...

Even within Israel there are of course fringe groups (e.g. Naturei Karta) and such, but unfortunately, the reality is that while it wouldn't suit most Jews for Judaism to be conflated with Zionism, it suits most zionists, so they try to further that notion.

Edit: To be clear I'm addressing the Judaism x Zionism aspect of this comment thread, not the blog post in the topic post.

Sadly the moment you call out Israel's human rights violations and ethnic cleansing you get automatically branded as antisemitic on all major social media and by most mainstream outlets too.

That said, it's still a dumb thing to be cancelled over. Everyone has been an asshole to someone else at some point in our lives. Why do people feel the need to socially shame people publicly for an offense over a decade ago?

Search for the word "white" or "Jew" in his blog [1] posts to see for yourself.

[1] http://kamaubobb.blogspot.com/

Since Google supports "cancel culture", Kamau Bobb needs to be fired.

> The cost of elite education for our children is extraordinary. I dropped my beautiful black star into a sea of white children and it hurt.

> among the increasing number of white women holding leadership roles in the academy and in the public and private sector, they surely see younger versions of themselves in the next generation of white girls. It is a natural instinct to want the very best for them.

> In a nation with a history such as ours, that imagery is connected to a much longer and darker legacy – a legacy where white men have abused black women and girls with impunity.

> I do not need to be convinced that diversity and excellence are intimately interwoven. But what of my White counterparts? I really do not know how White people learn about Black or Hispanic people in ways that are honest

> Perhaps it is time to focus the inquiry on our White counterparts. They may well feel marginalized by the shortage of academic inquiry into the complexity of their changing American citizenship alongside people of color. Their sense of self-efficacy may be undermined by their pending loss of majority status.

> I was learning about the resilient spirit of black people in America in the context of white American barbarism.

> It is still true that white people kill black people in America with impunity.

...and he's been accused of racism before: http://kamaubobb.blogspot.com/2011/08/accused-of-being-racis...

It goes on and on...

Most russians have nothing to do with putin's regime and it's hackers. Those hackers' nationality may not even be russian. Yet, "russian hackers".

There are scientists deeply upset with state of official science, indians disagreeing with what fellow indians do, and so on.

Theoretically, I guess, but it's really strange how the one tiny country in the whole world that has a Jewish-dominated society is so often a target for complete destruction.

Many of the same countries that have all but eliminated their own Jewish populations somehow find Israel's very existence to be unpalatable, going after them in the UN, in their state-sponsored media, and through military/terroristic acts.

So, sure. You could be critical of Israel but not be antisemitic. But as a matter of probability, a lot of people who criticize Israel are also antisemitic.

>Plenty of Jewish people that live both inside and outside of Israel are critical of the state.

Is this not exactly what this thought experiment of an article is talking about? Trying to put themselves on the shoes of a Jewish person who is critical of Israels politics

Being jewish does not mean you are a zionist. Being a zionist does not mean you are jewish (many evangelicals in the US's "south" are staunch zionists).

You can want the palestinians to have basic human rights and still be pro-Israeli state.

BTW, I don't think most people who use the term Zionism in a negative context actually understand what it means. It's just the desire of Jews to live in its historic homeland - Israel, in a peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.

[1] https://unwatch.org/updated-chart-of-all-unhrc-condemnations...

That way you can’t criticize Israel without being labeled and anti-Jewish semite. Nothing he posted was offensive. Israel is an apartheid state

Filled with a nation of people persecuted for millenia, who have been victims of racism forever, who yet become massively successful, and don't act like victims.

Yes, I understand it's a ridiculously annoying example that counters every woke left ideal. Can't blame the woke for being anti semitic.

"I dropped my black star into a sea of white and it hurt" -> "I see so many beautiful black stars, why don't more of them get this wonderful opportunity?"

"A natural instinct to want the very best for people that look like them" -> Isn't the author displaying this own natural instinct in the very previous excerpt you chose about the sea of white? I'm hard pressed to say I'd find it inconceivable that humans empathize more strongly with people who are closer in appearance to them.

"a much longer and darker legacy where whites have abused black girls and women with impunity" -> I mean, yea... that's definitely back there for sure.

"Perhaps it's time to focus our inquiry on white people who may have complex emotions regarding their changing position in society" - race is a complex issue and maybe we should examine it from a few more angles? Sure, that seems fine?

"White people kill Black people with impunity" -> Chauvin's conviction was almost certainly the exception in cases of police homicide is my understanding, especially when the victim is Black and the police officer is white (or in many other instances of white on Black violence).

I don't get the sense this person's painting all white people with broad strokes really? Maybe just thinking critically about a system which traditionally has undermined certain segments of our population and may finally be in some position to come to grips with that.

In some sense he appears to be saying "Hey lets take a look at why people may be feeling in some manner" and not "Wow, I can't believe people would feel that way, those <insert name calling here>".

It's also possible that it's hard to offend me and I give people the benefit of the doubt a lot.

Maybe you're imagining the reaction if "black" and "white" were reversed in the writing. It would be very different because it's very different to be black rather than white in America.

And, the ones who are always preaching "inclusive" the most tend to be the most bigoted.

Hardly. In fact only being transferred instead of fired from a cushy job shows one just has to be on right side of social justice movement to be shielded from past transgressions.

Which puts the whole situation as the old joke said "what is mixed feeling - seeing your mother in law drive off the cliff in your new Ferrari"

Another thing if we go more nuanced is that this "don't fire people for stupid shit" is something of a detente. I view it as pragmatism, not unbendable moral conviction. So if you have broken it, you are no longer protected by it. And let's be honest - chances of a person in this position not having a lot of outrage in his public social accounts is quite slim.

If that blogpost was the same, but said Israel, instead of the Jewish people; would there be any issue with it today?

I really don't know much about the Jewish faith or how it interplays with Israel, so I'm just trying to understand where all the anger is coming from. I feel like Israel is acting in bad faith on public forums too, which makes everything more complicated for somebody unfamiliar with it all.

EDIT: Reading more comments I think I get the gist of the controversy, he insinuated all Jewish people should feel guilt for the actions of Israel? I agree that's wrong, but I understand how somebody could come by that belief. Israel themselves have fostered the narrative that Israel represents the Jewish people by constantly conflating an attack on Israel as an attack on the Jewish people.

His points are presented without hyperboles, and while they certainly do not paint Israels state politics in a good light, how is this anti semitism (which in wikipedia is defined as "hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews")?

Antisemitism is of course as inexcusable as any other form of racism, but criticism of a country's or groups political views and policies is not hate nor discrimination.

In my opinion his removal is an overreaction, but with how polarizing this subject I don't see how it could have gone any other way.

If that post were criteria for firing around half or more of the American population could also be fired if they had made the mistake of recording their opinions online or in written form before 10 years ago.

Palestinians and Israelis are not on the Palestinian or Israeli side because they are convinced by the arguments of Edward Said or Ehad Haam. Its because they are Palestinian and Israeli. That's what war is, for the most part. They (we.. I am Israeli) are not going to read the others' literature and adopt their position. Ideologies, philosophies, political takes and such came about to make sense of the reality that exists, not the other way around.

If you talked politics with locals, I assume you encountered a great variety of views.

Honestly, I appreciate your honest bewilderment. It is quite disturbing to me when tourists and foreigners take extreme, unyielding, anti-comromise positions... including (especially) pro Israeli ones. I am quite certain that many Israelis, Palestinians & Jordanians feel the same way. I cannot speak for other arab countries, as I have never been.

But even when my wife, who knows I read news and books an order of magnitude more than her, asked me to kind of distill it down for her in whatever terms I understood it after the recent flare up, and I was just like I really can't... aside from there just being an inherent inability to share their ancient homelands.

which side, forgotten by the world, receives almost four billion dollars a year in military aid from the global imperial hegemon?

it’s not that hard

It's quite straight forward. Up until WWI, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in Palestine, which it and other areas of Arabia and North Africa were under Ottoman rule. During WWI, Sykes–Picot divided up the Muslim lands into arbitrary borders to make them easier to occupy. Syria was occupied by the French, Libya by the Italians, etc. Palestine was under British rule. Post WWII, the Zionists convinced Britain to give them Palestine, so they moved in and formed an illegal government, which ironically applied similar tactics the Nazis applied to the Jews in WWII (ethnic cleansing, killing discriminately, etc.). The conflict continues to this day until the Palestinians get back their rightful land.n

Edit: changed WWII to WWI.

I have no idea about the reasons why that Googler published a blog, maybe he's just self-obsessed idiot who doesn't give 3 fucks about other people's perspective, like one would think reading the reactions here.

But I don't see an issue in putting out random thoughts on a small personal blog with a comment section.

It’s next door to hamas which stones to death gays.

Yeah it has a strong military to ensure it the security of its citizens.

Just for fun? Or does Israel face real security concerns?

Also "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."

How is that anything except Anti-Semitic?

This part near the end is the one I find really hard to interpret in a non antisemitic way because it bears the implicit assumption that a Jewish person (whether Israeli or not, whether zionist or not) would be compelled to feel in a certain way because the Israeli violence he describes is unleashed to defend himself as a Jewish person.

That closing argument could have turned the whole point of view upside down simply by explaining from his (or an imaginary Jewish person's) point of view why the society in Israel dictates what he should feel, and how right winged populism in Israel often adopts the antisemitic opinion that Jewish diaspora cannot truly integrate into their countries and therefore must make Israel part of their Jewish identity.

That could have been a legitimate critic that I too share as a Jewish man who live in Israel.

What strikes me even more is that Google were not aware of this post or did not based their decision upon it when offering him this role. Having gone through a full on site cycle recently with a FAANG company (which I didn't pass), I submitted a GDPR request to receive all the data that has been collected as part of the interview process. Most of it they won't really share but one thing that they did share was a file with a list of pretty much all my twitter activity that went through a 3rd party review, and that's just for a simple L5/L6 role.

The whole post is about how to reconcile the adversity of neighbors and philosophy about them, and integrate into a world that doesn't have the toxic relationships after growing up in a toxic environment

It is a vague and meaningless concept. It has never been defined except by referring to antiquated notions of “race” stemming primarily from 18th and 19th century ideas.

In modern times, we’ve apparently added biological sex, sexual preference and a vague (and meaningless) concept of self-identity that can, apparently, cross all other definitions with impunity - even changing fluidly throughout the day.

To appoint people as “head” of this mess of ideas point to deeper issues in the organization.

- They may find diverse teams to perform better

- or maybe highly qualified people prefer to work on diverse teams so it helps with recruitment

- or their leadership value creating a more equitable society by giving people in under-represented groups the opportunity to work at google.

If any of the above are true why should they not have someone in charge of diversifying their workforce?

Your entire comment is a contradiction.

In my opinion, the 1619 Project is a racist and decisive project and has no place at Google, and Kamau Bobb was a public supporter of that.

So if Google is going to support "cancel culture", then Kamau Bobb should have no place at Google, or any major tech company, whatsoever.

Google does this because someone in the corp didn't like what this guy said, and canned them. People do that because they have beliefs. In the U.S. firing people, protesting, and overall underhanded methods are also a Hallmark of "the right" whenever someone does something they don't agree with. Or have we forgotten that the overwhelming majority of day to day business isn't conducted on Twitter?

[0] Or are we forgetting when people lost their minds about "happy holidays" and starbucks' cup design change? Or Colin Kaepernick? Etc. I don't see how anyone can say it's related to one political party in one country.

Your library of work is on you. Reviewing it, and adding contemporary commentary where needed is again, up to you. If you don't, people assume you still believe it.

This wasn't some woke slip of syntax, he was very literally holding all Jews accountable for Israel's actions. It's a deeply anti-Semitic set of comments. Even without his position, he should have known better.

“If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself”

First sentence from your link, seems like maybe you are just trying to be controversial.

> Nick Cannon apologizes for anti-Semitic remarks after firing

While I agree in principle I hope this is part of a new trend rather than an exemption for this case because his content is so much more offensive than anything Teen Vogue editor Alex McCammond ever said.

I'll take hostile work environment for 1000, Alex.

Thing is, I wouldn't want to work with this person at my company period.