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Comment by lgleason | Hacker News Reader

Live by the sword, die by the sword. That said, firing him, like they did with Damore would have been more consistent. Because everyone is under arbitration agreements that always benefit the company, vs the courts where you might have a shot at justice, they have no incentive to do that.

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.

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“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

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.

This is why anonymity is so important on the internet.

... and/or privacy. In this case, it's was a once-public post, but the same issue applies to messages sent in confidence.

More like a proper social response to bad behavior. We can't keep hiding from the truth, especially when we live in an interconnected world where other people don't have to agree to forget.

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!

> 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!

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.

Yes, if you sentence people as bad, because they've done something bad 15 years ago, and are binary in your judgements (people are they "good" or "bad" in certain aspects and can't transition between these two options), then, by all morals and definitions, you're inhumane not giving a chance and not willing to reassess. Everybody deserves a second chance, everybody has the right to have been wrong, and you should not judge and sentence with a bullet, but talk and see if they are the same person they presented themselves as decades ago.

Where do you find any indication of permanent moral judgment except in your own speech, where you so persistently talk about it? Aren't you the one talking about judging people in binary ways? Perhaps you are speaking from your own heart?

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.

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.

> proper social response

and

> bad behavior

Nuff said!

The proper social response I'm talking about is graciousness and proportionality in a world where the US need not forget what Germany asks of them. I think that's the obvious moral response. What do you do when Germany chooses to remember? Rather than building a great firewall around Germany, my instincts are clear. The right way forward is to accept our humanity in its complexity.

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.

When you read what he was saying, he meant "Israelis", not "Jews" in General as there are Jews everywhere in the world, but he was talking about Israel's actions.

>Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding

Perhaps but i don't feel they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

>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.

> 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.

well probably they tend not to get that because once you've done time in the U.S you're screwed whether it was for stealing a candy bar, dealing drugs, or murder.

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.

But never police or doctors who can prescribe drugs.

well sure, in America.

You'll be surprised to know how many doctors and police officers around the World made use of drugs, went through rehab and still do a decent job...

I wouldn't touch a murderer with a 10 foot pole.

Take a look at the Fishmongers Hall heroes. The narwhal tusk was only a 5 foot pole, but the convicted killers put themselves in harms way to protect the public.

How about a veteran?

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?

There exist former KKK members. Former neonazis. Former Trump supporters.

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?

>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.

I don't think you, or anyone else, should have any say in that, quite frankly. Let their current words and behavior speak for itself.

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.

The wise enough to not use their real name will survive. The culling of the real name begins. This is the literal killing of the 'you have nothing to hide' meme that goes to show you have something to hide.

I am still baffled by the use of Real Names online..

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

Facebook and other social networks (Google+ for example) played a huge role in this* by enforcing real name policies. It's more profitable to advertise to users when you know who they are, where they live, how they shop, what they eat, etc, and not just their screen name.

* https://www.npr.org/2011/09/28/140879480/who-are-you-really-...

Past twenty years, using your own name is authoritative and great for marketers to verify and validate you. With the rise of social media, no longer do you have to know basic html, or hosting.. or be in the community of random IRC people not trusting one another.

I use my real name precisely _because_ everything I say is being recorded. It's a guard against the foolish belief that any "anonymity" is real and can be relied on.

> 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.

Coincidentally I was talking about that time that Tom Petty toured in the 80s using the confederate flag and then many years later he apologized for doing it, no more than an hour ago with a friend of mine

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.

You're inventing an arbitrary difference where none exists. Twitter is literally a microblogging platform. There is no legal or moral difference between a Tweet versus a post on a different blogging platform such as Medium.

The "micro" part does a lot of heavy lifting here. The difference is in effort made per post.

Why does the effort matter? Is there some specific threshold of time spent writing a post for us to take it seriously?

Some people spend hours writing a single tweet to get the message exactly right.

> 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.

My friend, it is not about _this_ person specifically, but an attitude to everybody. Maybe this person did not change, maybe they did. But we need to assume good faith when we can, else we do nothing but divide people even further. Imagine yourself in a situation where you’ve probably done something stupid, realise that it is stupid and wish to be forgiven. Wouldn’t you like that someone asks you first “have you understood your mistake?” rather than assume you are the same person because they haven’t found evidence to the contrary (guilty till proven innocent).

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.

I think you are coming at this with the judgment that his statements are malicious as opposed to honest reflections of how he perceives the world. I was educated at a Hebrew Day School and I found his consideration of “self-righteous impunity” of Israel state violence to be thought provoking, given the traditions dogmatic belief in its elected grace. Yet such opinions are muffled because? Oh that’s right, the majority of people cannot handle deep thought and get scared weighing ideas which are not the consensus. This Nietzsche called the “herd morality”; to censor is practically totalitarian and inimical to the American Founding Republic which savors self-independence which breeds liberty of conscience to promote the conscience liberty in others. It’s a shame people are not educated in this country to handle ideas and therefore liberty.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

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.'

The people change defense obviously doesn't work for Damore, who was fired over his actions while employed at Google

Lots of weird comments in this thread.

moreover he immediately posted a “fired for telling the truth “ response - perhaps he’s since changed but very different circumstance.

Yeah, I don't have a very strong opinion on Damore, but the two situations are clearly not the same. One was published 14 years ago and another was published in the same week where it blew up.

They're clearly not the same because Damore said nothing anywhere near as offensive as this. He said, paraphrased, that there are fewer women in tech than men because they are less interested in it. He backed it up with a whole pile of research showing that this obviously true claim is true. And he pointed out that women are biologically different to men, so maybe that is part of the explanation, and even if it is, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to be a programmer (which is in a sense a tautology, it's a way of saying "women are different because they're women").

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.

>One was published 14 years ago

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.

Damore never backed down

Given his original point was that voices countering the radical left wouldn't be tolerated, and they proved him right, it's not obvious what he could back down from?

I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two.

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.

The quote was: "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself"

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.

But it was also quoted worse in the tweets.

"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 think with the more fulsome context you've provided that the prior post's attempt to reduce his statement as critical of Israelis alone is a bit reductionist; his argument here extends to the diaspora that also unwaveringly support Israel in their expansionary policy.

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.

Even if he isn't saying all Jews are bad, it still reads something like "I'm just saying Israel is insatiably, vengefully violent and [an awful lot of] Jews support Israel...".

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).

"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself" is a straight quote from the last paragaraph of the post in question, not a paraphrase or elided excerpt. https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...

It’s not a straight quote if you delete the last four words of the sentence without an ellipsis.

The only thing I deleted is the period. "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." is the entire first sentence of the last paragraph. Again, people can read the linked original post and see for themselves.

That’s not how this was quoted to claim he’s an antisemite. See this:

https://mobile.twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1400065933...

I did not look at any other source. Again, I am citing the post that got the Google diversity head in trouble, not anyone else's interpretation.

Well I was commenting on the business insider article that’s linked at the top of this comment thread.

Pretty sure he was not chief diversity officer 14 years ago but I agree it should have been "If I were an israeli...".

Even then... do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering? Or every Chinese person for their governments treatment of the Uighur/Tibet/etc?

Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.

Thank you.

> do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering?

Not bloodlust, but partial responsibility. 'Tis the nature of democracy.

No, that's merely the nature of collective blame, which should be avoided.

certainly you can avoid being partially culpable for your nation's actions - by dropping out of society, refusing to pay taxes to it, and probably supporting yourself via a life of crime.

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.

Refusing to pay taxes is not a viable strategy for ending the war, as it results in your arrest and incarceration.

I did not say it was a viable strategy for ending the war I said it was a viable strategy for minimizing and hopefully removing completely culpability for the actions of one's society.

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 don't agree. One cannot be responsible for one's actions taken under threat of coercive violence. The violent aggressor remains responsible for the outcome in that instance.

So to be clear, as a corollary of the standards you've defined here, 1.3-1.4 billion Chinese have some level of culpability for what's going on with the Uyghurs?

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.

as I also clearly stated earlier "...for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning"

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)

You are conflating collective blame with collective punishment, which not an unrelated term.

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.

I'm not conflating them. I think collective blame is generally a bad thing in itself and it is the way of thinking that begets racist and tribal attitudes. It is also inaccurate.

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).

I think this illustrates why it is in fact about responsibility, and thinking about it as blame gets you in confusion.

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.

This is the illusion of democracy. There is no available democratic option in the USA that will bring about the end of US imperialistic war.

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.

No, this is illusion of apathy, believing you are powerless is what actually makes you powerless. Larger changes have happened within American society that in retrospect seem obvious to everyone.

There are many systems in which believing you are powerless leads to your own powerlessness.

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.

> There is no available democratic option in the USA that will bring about the end of US imperialistic war.

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?

Many people can't vote, or explicitly don't vote to avoid supporting these parties. Many more are poorly educated (intentionally). How are they responsible?

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.

Yes?

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.

Following that logic it sounds like we would need to blame German Jews for the holocaust committed against them.

I'm not sure of the politics in the Wiemar Republic. How many Jews supported the National Socialist party? How many of them voted for the National Socialists during the Great Depression economic crisis? (Not many, I suspect. Voting against a group is, by definition, not supporting them.) (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%2077...)

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.

No we should not accuse but as the citizen of such a regime I should feel responsible of its actions, I should condemn it and may be expect accusations of supporting such a regime.

Which begs the question, how does one go from that blog post to a diversity officer at one of the most famous Corporations in the world?

But this is all very consistent. Most people noticed many years ago that the people who most loudly claim to be fighting racism are always huge racists themselves. This is so common, and so obvious, the only reason it's attracting attention at all is because somewhat unusually it's Jews who are the target today, instead of white men. If the same quote about war had been made with white men instead of Jews nobody at Google would have cared. And arguably they don't care at all because the guy is not fired, just re-assigned, which tells you everything you need to know about what that company has become.

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.

In case anyone is confused by this person’s definition of racism, I enjoyed this description of the essential impossibility of “racism against whites,”[1] as well as this Sociology of Racism[2].

[1]: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/racism-against-white-people-doe...

[2]: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthewclair/files/clair_d...

> For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers

Such a cunning rhetorical device that it became indistinguishable. What utter dreck.

I'm sure people are so confused by someone using the long established English dictionary definition of racism and not the new far left interpretation of the word that now includes social power structures that conveniently allows non-whites to be racist without being called out.

Identifying the flaws in “reverse racism” is nothing new.

you can substitute “racist” for “prejudiced” in their comment if you want, but I feel like 99% of the English speaking population would characterize what Google’s diversity officer wrote about Jewish people as racist so I don’t really see the need.

I was responding to a comment that was referring to racism against white men. I was not responding to a comment about the Google diversity officer’s language.

Anyone confused by my post should use a dictionary to refresh their memory of what this very basic and simple word means, not some random academic papers.

Ha, yes, the dictionary: the ultimate authority for explaining power dynamics in society.

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.

The dictionary is the authority for what words mean. If someone genuinely wants to "explain" power dynamics they would do so in ways designed to communicate clearly and illuminate. If they want to manipulate and confuse they would try to redefine the meaning of common words to mean something totally different and then accuse people who speak English properly of misusing words.

By the way, sociology is nonsense, surely everyone knows that by now. Their papers are usually pseudo scientific.

Given the Farhud, the Holocaust, and the persecution of Soviet Jews both remain in living memory and shape our lives today, I'd say that if you think you've got logic to prove the "essential impossibility" of antisemitism, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

I definitely was not demonstrating anything of the sort. You are misreading my comment.

Yeah, at this point, having been left-wing my whole life, I'm more surprised when a DEI activist type isn't an antisemite than when they are. "The Jews are greedy, bloodthirsty, and evil" is part of the canon for this ideology.

Was he unread then?

He was conflating jews with Israeli government and zionists, so I can assume he was unread on the topic.

It wasn't a tweet they provided at least some of the surrounding context in the article.

Exactly. I'm a Jew (by heritage, though not by belief). I oppose Israel's actions WRT Palestine and related issues. The Israeli government seems to have that "insatiable appetite for war", but that's a pretty small subset of all Jews. Even the entire Israeli population is a small subset of all Jews.

> I'm a Jew (by heritage, though not by belief)

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.

> I never understood that concept.

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.

Exactly this. It's a cultural thing, much like how you can be an American or a German or an African. There's no single ethnicity for any of those, but they're all cultural identities based on birth or citizenship.

He’s clearly referring to Israel, and since it’s a Jewish date, it’s reasonable to assume many / most Jews feel somewhat represented by Israel, voluntarily or not. Or at least that Israel’s actions reflect well or poorly on them in regards to non-Jews.

It's so incredibly wrong to pick lines from a text out of context like that to attack someone. It's exactly how some people tried to sink Bernie Sander 2020 presidential campaign by referring to his "rape fantasy" essay from the 1970s. Read Kamau Bobb's blog post in full (it's only six paragraphs or so). It s about how he imagines how a progressive Jew has to struggle with reconciling his commitment to Israel with his humanist views. His thought may have been misguided, and he may not fully have understood how Jewishness and Judaism works, but they are certainly not hateful towards Jews.

He specifically stated "if I were a Jew", not "if I were a Zionist". That makes it explicitly anti-semitism.

You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist.

> 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.

>AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.

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.

> 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).

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.

>Neither of those is “global head of diversity”.

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.

> Exactly, they're much higher positions with more scope and reach than "head of diversity" at a software company.

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.)

>was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post).

Obama was in Office 2007?

Whoops, I copied and pasted a few edits and didn't move that.

He was working on the STEM initiatives for Georgia Tech at the time of his writing.

I loved that version of office.

> I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two.

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...

>"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]

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.

There’s a post (“If I Were a Jew”) that accuses Jews in general of responding to the collective trauma of the Holocaust with “an insatiable appetite for war and killing” in pursuit of self defense rather than compassion for the oppressed. It’s naive, muddles Jewish identity with Israel, and assumes the worst about the motivations of Jews in general. Imagine how offensive it would be to make a similar argument about any other minority group that had experienced oppression in America or elsewhere.

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.

It seems that many people have difficulty making this crucial distinction. That's why after every Israeli military campaign there is a spike in anti-semitic incidents all over the world. We just need more education! You are free to hurl the most libelous, disgusting and vicious accusations at Jewish people. Just make sure you call them Israeli. Because that's acceptable.

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

He confuses Judaism with Israel.

>Google apologized for his comments and said he was being reassigned to a role on the company's STEM team.

He wasn't fired, just reassigned.

There is clearly a double standard in terms of groups you can get away with slandering, and who is allowed to do the slandering.

One has to note that he also made homophobic comments (available at https://archive.is/dp0n7):

  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.

Given that such comments resurfaced during the Pride Month, I'm surprised he hasn't been fired.

i mean, in context, that passage feels more like he is realizing the strength of his internalized homophobia but not justifying it.

but overall the existence of this blog is mystifying.

It's his portfolio that got him his jobs, like a programmer's GitHub repo.

The comments about Jews read in context seems worse to me than those comments read in context.

You think it's homophobic for someone to write about their own struggle with internalized homophobia?

"I still despise it..." - you seriously did not understand that statement? And you took it to mean his own INTERNALIZED struggle?

Did you read the whole blog post? Right after that paragraph he talks about the dichotomy between his inner emotional struggle and his explicit thoughts.

> 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.

A year later, California would vote to ban same-sex marriage. I won't hold their bigoted views against them, as long as they no longer hold them. If I didn't have that forgiveness, there would be half of the voting population of my state that I'd refuse to talk to.

^ the world needs more people with this mentality.

The notion that people change and grow and sometimes learn from their mistakes and become better people seems to have gone by the wayside in recent years.

I'm curious why this is downvoted. Do people think others shouldn't become better people, or that they should never be forgiven for past transgressions they've learned something from?

Thanks. Comments like yours reinstate my faith in humanity.

In a sane world, his job wouldn’t even need to exist.

Most people interested in diversity thrive on creating drama and conflict. Embarking on witch hunts. Arbitrating blame.

What comes around goes around.

What frustrates me the most about this, is that we clearly have diversity teams to help encourage more diversity and inclusion AND to change the minds of people who may have been historically opposed or perhaps subconsciously discriminative.

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.

> but today it is all about getting scalps,

You say "today" as if it's ever been any different. Has it?

In terms of getting people fired/removed/cancelled for remarks, yes absolutely. That may be a function of social media and the scale of communication in modern times, but either way the sensitivity of the vocal minority has definitely changed even in my relatively short life.

Alternatively, we just may just hear about more examples which increases our perception of prevalence (similar, maybe, to the perception of increased violent crime in the 90’s while violent crime was actually reducing).

You say yes, but can you explain how it is different? As far as I can tell it's the same as it was a century ago. The only change is the subject matter.

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 regret that I have only one upvote for the Sinead O'Connor reference. This isn't new, the only thing that's new is that people are broadcasting their opinions far and wide for everyone to find/see/hear.

Not to mention if you uttered something even vaguely socialist/communist sounding a few decades ago, you would be fired from your All-American job, be socially ostracized, and have the FBI on your tail before you can say "Stalin is bad".

You didn't even have to utter anything. During McCarthyism (aka the second red scare), false allegations of communist sympathies was an easy way to eliminate competition for particularly immoral opportunists, especially in entertainment. The obvious weaponization was probably why the whole thing was eventually shut down by the courts.

> Look at what happened to Sinead O'Connor in the early 90s after she spoke out against child abuse in the Catholic church.

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?

Witness what happened to the Dixie Chicks when they protested the impending invasion of Iraq.

No I'm not saying the mechanism has changed, mob rule has probably been a thing since humans organised in groups larger than 5, but the scale and level of scrutiny definitely have.

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.

"No celebrity in my lifetime before the advent of this new wave of cancel culture has been completely cancelled the way they are today"

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.

Ah I didn't realise the Hollywood blacklist had been that serious! It's definitely not in my lifetime though, I wasn't around in the 50s. I'm also not sure that's a good example; you're talking about what could be termed a national security threat vs. something like saying you don't agree with unisex bathrooms. As I said, the scale is way out of whack.

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.

How would you say this differs from the communist-era stuff that the USA went through? I suppose the new wave of social media isn't (?) as existential to USA security, but the fear tactics and other-ing mechanisms seem quite similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

"...the sensitivity of the vocal minority has definitely changed even in my relatively short life."

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.

An apology used to go a long way... in my perception. Could be wrong of course.

I think so, because the sheer amount of material many people have written is larger, the hunt for it is more intense, and the ability to form rapid mobs for two-minute hates is much greater. What will institutions do? https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs...

In context I assumed GP was talking more about the witch-hunt mentality. At scale now, I agree -- witch hunts are overall more accessible and so are undertaken more freely.

Google no longer forces arbitration [1].

[1] https://www.vox.com/technology/2019/2/22/18236172/mandatory-...

His successor will be his carbon copy minus a few tweets. It is the ideology not the guy.

Google has stopped mandatory arbitration for all employment disputes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeenmabud/2019/02/26/worker-o...

It's not clear that it was anti Semitic so much as anti Israel although that isn't the impression given by the headline.

14 years is such a long time. I am not the same person I was a year ago. There is no excuse to what he did, but what if he is a different person altogether now.

I agree that the scalp collecting is horrible, but at the same time I am not sure a simple conversation can make prejudice go away that easily.

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.

So, why do you think that conversation with them would de-radicalize them?

We need to send clear message to the world that we don't stand with such people.

Arguing that there is equivalence between Damore's politically incorrect but truthful statements and antisemitism is "repugnant". They may have offended in equal amounts, judging by reactions. But if you find Damore distasteful then you've already been radicalized and your taste ruined.

I don't get the comparison with Damore, his hobby sociologist bad takes were recent, ongoing and deeply embedded into his job.

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