Further based on the other comment to this post he was quite an activist. Fighting for rights of the racially oppressed and in minority.
He went against white people and Israel? He is not racist. He is just anti majority dominant power holder.
Yes, the sentiment is (possibly) anti-israel, not anti-semetic, but the wording itself implies that Jews have insatiable appetites for war. I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, but someone who is chief diversity officer at a major corporation should certainly be attuned to the difference between Jews and Israelis.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself," (…)
"If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired."
It just became “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing” in the tweets.
I don't feel that position is anti-Semitic either, but I think it needs to be noted for the sake of intellectual honesty. He is critiquing a LOT of Jews here.
I'm all for charitability, but it feels like we're contorting ourselves--why would any tolerant person with a decent penchant for writing not keep a wider berth between their criticism of Israel and antisemitism? I understand that there are always going to be bad faith people who willfully misinterpret all criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but those people aside I've never found it particularly difficult to criticize Israel in a way which is unambiguously tolerant of and respectful toward Jews (and he seems like a better writer than I am).
https://mobile.twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1400065933...
Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.
Not bloodlust, but partial responsibility. 'Tis the nature of democracy.
If however you are a functioning member of a society and do things to support it you are partially to blame for the things that society does. That amount of blame is not the same for everyone - and for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning - but you do have a share.
on edit: as an example we can say with some surety that the one white man in 1800s American that should not be charged with culpability for slavery would be John Brown (although he probably would not feel the same way) - there are undoubtedly others but we can point with some justification at John Brown and say that guy pretty much not to blame for any of that shit.
I'm certainly not recommending that people have to do these things either, just to being clear eyed about things - you can't benefit from your society's actions and then say you don't share any blame from what it does without some extreme dropping out of the system.
I mean, I can see where you're coming from. But at this point we are really at the fringes of culpability and it's more of an issue of semantics and definitions.
so yes, each of those 1.3 billion probably have an atom of culpability, so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning.
I'm a citizen of Denmark, I have some share of culpability in the wrongs my country does - I do a little to minimize those wrongs (when I see them) by voting against the perpetrators but that's about it - I support the country and it is partly my fault because I am too comfortable to do what would be required to completely absolve myself of any culpability because hey, I'm pretty okay (as most people throughout history have said)
Collective punishment refers to the punishment communities en masse for the actions of individuals, that may be being harbored by some members of that community.
Just because something is done in a collective manner does not absolve the members of that collective from the outcome.
Bernie Sanders is an American who was advocating against the Iraq War. He was clearly not culpable for it, and his causal role was to lower the probability that it would go ahead. This is an example of why it would then be wrong to blame "Americans" as a collective for the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders, a member of that collective, deserves either zero blame or negative blame (if that even exists).
To extend your example: Bernie Sanders as a citizen, and further a politician, acquires an amount of the collective responsibility for the countries actions in the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders as an activist has more than discharged that responsibility by actively countering it.
A citizen who has done nothing to mitigate or counter the actions is left only with the share of collective responsibility; however large or small that may be, it's real.
The people in the voting booths in the USA can no more be blamed for the USA's warmongering than the Americans who stayed home, abstaining, or people in the next country over. The US military is going to do what the US military is going to do, and to believe anything else is to be either ignorant of history or hopelessly naive.
Not voting in an authoritarian military dictatorship masquerading as a democracy is not one such instance, unfortunately.
There is no sufficient loudness of "wake up, sheeple!" that will get the US military to stop waging war (the continuation of which is entirely contrary to the will of the US people). It is an autonomous organization, unaccountable to any branch of the US government, as evidenced over and over again by the lack of resistance to it in the USG, and the lack of consequences for its members when it breaks the law.
The CIA got busted lying to Congress about hacking into Congressional computers to delete evidence of the CIA's torture program. The torture program continues, and nobody is in jail.
Certainly not like turning off a light, but it's a clear fallacy that peoples actions (or inaction) don't change policy and practice.
Put it another way, if Americans aren't responsible for the actions of America, who is? What sort of answers to that don't undermine the entire concept of the country?
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.
Think of it as the downside of the Enlightenment idea that governments acquire their legitimacy solely from the support of the governed. If the people of a nation do not approve of the actions of their government, they have both the right and the responsibility to change those actions.
Or, think of it as basic ethics: no one who eats meat can be more saintly than a butcher. Everyone who benefits from citizenship in a nation gets to share responsibility for the actions of the nation.
Once the National Socialists had achieved power, in 1933, German Jews protested the actions of their government, leading to the Civil Service law and further restrictions on Jewish activities. (At this time, there were many German non-Jews who probably didn't like their government's activities but benefited a great deal from those activities.) By 1935-36, Jews in Germany had essentially no power, either to support or oppose the government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany...) Thus, those who could left.
And it's not really surprising that the target are Jews. In America this doesn't seem to be the case so much, but in Europe when the left engage in racism, it's always against their own countryfolk or Jews. Diversity programs, however they started, long ago became a left wing movement.
Frankly it's a lot more shocking when someone working in diversity does not turn out to be racist or sexist. Those are very rare people indeed. Oddly, I vaguely recalled the Google head of diversity making some sensible comments some years ago, but I don't recognize this name. It seems he's actually just "a" head of diversity, not "the" head.
[1]: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/racism-against-white-people-doe...
[2]: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthewclair/files/clair_d...
Such a cunning rhetorical device that it became indistinguishable. What utter dreck.
I understand the draw of believing in “reverse racism.” When I was in junior high, and was targeted for being a white boy, it made sense to me. And it felt unfair. But then I gained more perspective through a better understanding of sociology and history.
By the way, sociology is nonsense, surely everyone knows that by now. Their papers are usually pseudo scientific.
I never understood that concept. The idea that Judaism is transmitted from lineage is itself only a belief of Judaism. If you don't believe in Judaism there is no reason to believe in this particular fiction. This specific feature is obviously a hack on the reproductivity of the meme. There is no Judaism gene, it's not transmittable, it's not an ethnicity.
No problem! It certainly doesn't make sense if one approaches it from a Western Christian mindset. I am not trying to imply that is how you are approaching it, rather I mention this because Judaism often gets compared to Christianity, but I think they are quite different.
It is better to think of Judaism as a tribe. Membership to this tribe is mainly given under two conditions: through matrilineal descent or through religious conversion. Some subgroups within the tribe have different membership conditions like recognizing patrilineal descent, others may not recognize conversions done by other subgroups.
People are having a hard time distinguishing between the two because he had a hard time distinguishing between the two. Saying "If I was a {memberOf(someOrganization)}, I'd be concerned about how {adjective} I am," is calling out every member of that organization.
If he'd said "If I was an employee of Buy N Large, I'd be concerned about how much I love to destroy the environment for personal gain", that's a blanket accusation of all BNL employees being greedy anti-eco monsters.
If he'd said "if I was an exterminator, I'd be worried about how my complete and total lust for killing things is eventually going to accelerate into becoming a full fledged serial killer", that's a pretty clear indictment of all exterminators, regardless of who they actually are as individuals.
Saying "If I was a member of BLM, I'd be worried about how much I love torching businesses and assaulting bystanders" is a sweeping attack on all BLM activists, not just anyone who was looking for an excuse to loot and riot.
"If I was a dentist, I'd be worried about my insatiable bloodlust for hunting lions that were rescued and rehabilitated." I mean, come on.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."[1]
It's not "If I was an Israeli governing official" like you claim, it's "if I was a member of an ethnicity/religion." It's a little unfair of you to be so dismissive of people who interpret his words the way he wrote them.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...
Also, notice how he writes that self-defense is an instinct. As in, he doesn't actually think self-defense is, prima facie, morally justifiable. He actually thinks you need to sit and ask yourself, "Am I the baddie, for existing?", if you are Jewish.
He confuses Judaism with Israel.
From the post:
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.
There’s definitely more than criticism of the Israeli government here (some dog-whistle and overt antisemitism, whether the author understood that at the time or not). But I agree with the commenter - people can change and grow up. I don’t know the full story so it’s hard to really say what’s justified and what’s an overreaction.
You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist.
AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
That’s not to say that being able to distinguish between Jews, Zionists, Israelis, and the Israeli government isn’t basic threshold knowledge that should be expected of anyone publicly commenting on Israeli policy and how it should make anyone feel based on group association, but setting expectations of people’s knowledge based on their future jobs is a bit bonkers.
He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post).
Please update your post as you're spreading FUD.
>AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
He's been a DEI grifter for over a decade, including when he originally wrote his anti-semitic post.
Neither of those is “global head of diversity”.
> Please update your post as you're spreading FUD.
No, I’m not and I see no need to update my post. If the upthread post were updated to refer to his actual position at the time of the post, I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot, but given that it seems (like your post defending it) to be from a single-use throwaway account, I don't expect that to happen.
Exactly, they're much higher positions with more scope and reach than "head of diversity" at a software company. Thanks for agreeing with me.
>I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot
Except the premise of your post was proven categorically false. He absolutely should have known the difference between "Jews" and "Zionists" if he was a diversity advisor to the Obama administration. QED.
I don't agree that that’s necessarily evident from the titles alone, and reviewing the actual positions themselves is difficult, e.g., the one he was described upthread as being in at the time of the memo could not have even existed at that time, since it was in 2007 and the position was described as being in an Administration that didn't take office until 2009.
The flow of time seems problematic for the throwaway accounts in this subthread.
> Except the premise of your post was proven categorically false.
The premise of my post was that the post it responded to described an expectation of knowledge based on a specific position he held only much after the time of writing the piece. Which has not been proven false since it was and remains true.
(That the author of that post might have been able to refer to a different position that did not have that problem is a side issue.)
Obama was in Office 2007?
He was working on the STEM initiatives for Georgia Tech at the time of his writing.