[HN Gopher] Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog...
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Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
Author : wonderwonder
Score : 351 points
Date : 2021-06-03 13:57 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| unixhero wrote:
| Ah! The old war on our internet history.
| lgleason wrote:
| 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.
| toeget wrote:
| 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.
| drewwwwww wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| You think it's homophobic for someone to write about their
| own struggle with internalized homophobia?
| weasel_words wrote:
| "I still despise it..." - you seriously did not understand
| that statement? And you took it to mean his own
| INTERNALIZED struggle?
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| 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.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The comments about Jews read in context seems worse to me
| than those comments read in context.
| kevinh wrote:
| 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.
| godshatter wrote:
| 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.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| ^ the world needs more people with this mentality.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| His successor will be his carbon copy minus a few tweets. It is
| the ideology not the guy.
| nashashmi wrote:
| 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.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| 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.
| rzimmerman wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| chadash wrote:
| 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.
| sirjee wrote:
| Pretty sure he was not chief diversity officer 14 years ago
| but I agree it should have been "If I were an israeli...".
| grumple wrote:
| 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.
| mcguire wrote:
| 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.
| sayhar wrote:
| Thank you.
| ska wrote:
| > do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our
| nation's warmongering?
|
| Not bloodlust, but partial responsibility. 'Tis the
| nature of democracy.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| ska wrote:
| > 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?
| yownie wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| No, that's merely the nature of collective blame, which
| should be avoided.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| Refusing to pay taxes is not a viable strategy for ending
| the war, as it results in your arrest and incarceration.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| 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.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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)
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| WalterSear wrote:
| 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.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| 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).
| ska wrote:
| 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.
| sirjee wrote:
| 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.
| ejanus wrote:
| Was he unread then?
| sirjee wrote:
| He was conflating jews with Israeli government and
| zionists, so I can assume he was unread on the topic.
| yownie wrote:
| 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?
| thu2111 wrote:
| 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.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| 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...
| david38 wrote:
| 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.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It wasn't a tweet they provided at least some of the
| surrounding context in the article.
| [deleted]
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| 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.
| ant6n wrote:
| 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.
| TMWNN wrote:
| "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...
| ant6n wrote:
| It's not a straight quote if you delete the last four
| words of the sentence without an ellipsis.
| [deleted]
| ABCLAW wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| 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).
| bigwavedave wrote:
| > 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.ka
| mau...
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| " _" 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.
| ta2161 wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| throwaway2162 wrote:
| >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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwaway2165 wrote:
| >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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chefkoch wrote:
| >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?
| silly-silly wrote:
| I loved that version of office.
| throwaway2162 wrote:
| 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.
| Melchizedek wrote:
| Jews and Israelis are obviously not the same thing (even
| though the connection between them is very strong) but the
| reason you are not allowed to criticise _Israel_ in the US is
| that _Jews_ have a great amount of power there (hugely
| disproportionate to their population size).
| yownie wrote:
| Is this statement a joke?
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| What is not right about the statement? Jews are
| overrepresented, it's not a secret or some dumb
| conspiracy, but a fact.
| phlakaton wrote:
| Nonsense! People are criticizing Israel right and left
| around here in the Bay Area. Spend an afternoon in Berkeley
| and it will dispel any illusions you might have on the
| matter.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| I don't get the comparison with Damore, his hobby sociologist
| bad takes were recent, ongoing and deeply embedded into his
| job.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| "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.
| acituan wrote:
| > 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.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| _> 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.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| The "micro" part does a lot of heavy lifting here. The
| difference is in effort made per post.
| HPsquared wrote:
| This is why anonymity is so important on the internet.
| threatofrain wrote:
| 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.
| kulig wrote:
| If only there were some genius programmer guy who has been
| saying that for the last 30 years
| kube-system wrote:
| ... and/or privacy. In this case, it's was a once-public
| post, but the same issue applies to messages sent in
| confidence.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >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.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >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.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I wouldn't touch a murderer with a 10 foot pole.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| 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?
| timthorn wrote:
| 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.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > 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.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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.
| ipaddr wrote:
| But never police or doctors who can prescribe drugs.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well sure, in America.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| 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...
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| 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?
| ipaddr wrote:
| 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.
| syshum wrote:
| 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
| 8bitbuddhist wrote:
| 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-...
| darepublic wrote:
| There is clearly a double standard in terms of groups you can
| get away with slandering, and who is allowed to do the
| slandering.
| mandliya wrote:
| 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.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It's not clear that it was anti Semitic so much as anti Israel
| although that isn't the impression given by the headline.
| ejanus wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 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.
| ehsankia wrote:
| 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.
| thu2111 wrote:
| 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.
| jonfw wrote:
| Damore never backed down
| mellosouls wrote:
| 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?
| cloverich wrote:
| moreover he immediately posted a "fired for telling the truth
| " response - perhaps he's since changed but very different
| circumstance.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > but today it is all about getting scalps,
|
| You say "today" as if it's ever been any different. Has it?
| jseliger wrote:
| 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...
| michaelscott wrote:
| 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.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| 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).
| derivagral wrote:
| 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
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| 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.
| MajorBee wrote:
| 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".
| akiselev wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| allturtles wrote:
| > 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?
| anoonmoose wrote:
| 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.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _...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.
| Steve0 wrote:
| An apology used to go a long way... in my perception. Could
| be wrong of course.
| fruityrudy wrote:
| 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.
| johnasmith wrote:
| Google has stopped mandatory arbitration for all employment
| disputes.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeenmabud/2019/02/26/worker-o...
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| >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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ilaksh wrote:
| 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.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| 'To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not
| allowed to criticize." They fear an open discussion about these
| issues because if the truth were the standard people might stop
| viewing such statements as repugnant.
| a1pulley wrote:
| Google no longer forces arbitration [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.vox.com/technology/2019/2/22/18236172/mandatory-...
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| The main thing I find odd about that person's blog post
| (https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau...)
| is that it also doesn't really make any sense mechanically.
|
| The first five paragraphs are all comments on how it must be
| difficult for a progressive Jew to simultaneously support
| progressive values and Israel
|
| > 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's only in the last paragraph that the author goes to a
| different place and starts blaming Jews directly.
|
| > If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
|
| I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it as
| it doesn't make much sense to me.
| insickness wrote:
| > If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
|
| 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.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| "Why were you fired?"
|
| "I used the wrong word once in a deleted personal blog post
| from 14 years ago."
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| He wasn't fired, and the entire point of that job is to
| provide leadership on that topic. You can't be a figurehead
| against racism after having publicly been racist.
| fwip wrote:
| Yep, and it's clearly echoing the second sentence of the
| piece, "the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that
| Israel, my homeland, has now acquired."
|
| Perhaps it's a deliberate conflation of Jews and Israel, or
| perhaps it's thoughtless writing when trying to echo &
| rephrase the opening/title.
| nashashmi wrote:
| I think he must have established by the end the Jews he is
| referring to are those who support Israeli aggression. Not all
| Jews.
| cloverich wrote:
| This is how I read it as well, although some are less
| charitable with how they interpret actions in the moment --
| people mis speak all the time and are heavily criticized for
| it. As another commentor suggested, this was probably not a
| carefully thought through thesis but more of a thought piece
| put together in a short time frame and meant more as an
| expression than some hill to die on. My charitable reading is
| that the last section (and title) perhaps carry the piece too
| far away from nationalist Jew and into ethnic Jew which
| aren't quite the same. Perhaps if the Author had thought
| through their goal and audience more thoroughly they might
| have re-worded it. Hard to tell. I think it is otherwise a
| thought provoking piece.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Replace the word "Jews" with "men" and gauge the reaction of
| those in the modern diversity movement. Either it's ok to say
| "not all <group>", or it isn't.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Thank you for sharing the full post. It indeed does have a
| different tone when taken as a whole. It's far too common for
| people to dig out half a sentence from hundreds of blog posts
| you've written over a decade ago, intentionally omitting
| everything else.
| arenaninja wrote:
| This is what was weird to me. The article title and contents
| didn't appear to match for me
| slim wrote:
| He was angry. Feeling the injustice of what was happening in
| Lebanon at that time.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Original post, please don't read: Weird - I've been angry
| before, but it never made me racist.
|
| Updated post after getting dang-slapped: Is being angry an
| acceptable justification or mitigating factor for racism?
| Does anyone care, or should anyone care, whether a white
| person may just be angry when they are racist against a black
| person?
| dang wrote:
| Please stop taking this thread, and other HN threads,
| further into flamewar. This comment is a noticeable step in
| the hellish direction, and that's not cool. We're trying
| for a different sort of conversation here: thoughtful and
| curious. I realize it's much harder to maintain that state
| when the topic is divisive and strong emotions come up, but
| that's what the site guidelines ask everyone to do:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Also, we've had to ask you about this many times in the
| past. That's not good.
| fabbari wrote:
| After the bombs on Lebanon I was mainly angry at myself. I
| overheard the news during dinner - "Beirut has been bombed" -
| and kept eating. Somehow growing up I ended up in a mental
| state where bombs being dropped on Beirut was 'normal'. It
| bothered me to no end: it would have been a completely
| different reaction if I heard "Paris has been bombed".
|
| I ended up taking up an international cooperation job in
| Beirut, worked there for about three years. I danced, drank,
| worked, ate, drove around and enjoyed time with people that
| to this date consider very close friends.
|
| I guess I just suck at blogging.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I wish this part would get more attention. People say and do
| stupid shit when they're highly emotional & vulnerable.
| _Everybody_ has "wrong" feelings and thoughts now and then.
| You wouldn't be human if you didn't. Sometimes people vent
| those thoughts/feelings, and that can hurt other people's
| feelings. We should obviously deal with that and take
| responsibility for that, but then the other side needs to
| accept that apology so both can reconcile. Otherwise
| everybody stays hurt.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it
| as it doesn't make much sense to me.
|
| 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.
| nullc wrote:
| > My blog is no longer up and running, and maybe that's now a
| good thing.
|
| Instead they can just troll you over some random wikipedia
| edit war you were in 13 years ago... you can take your blog
| offline but not Wikipedia. :-/
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Now _that_ is so inside baseball I 'm struggling to imagine
| how you'd ever get anyone to care about it. First you'd
| have to spend an hour explaining what userboxes are, by
| which point everyone would already be bored to tears.
| nullc wrote:
| I'm subject to pretty regular trolling because I got
| blocked once for being overly aggressive and editwarry
| about removing some rule violating images.
|
| Actually the inside baseball plays in the trolls favor
| because they go dig up some quotes and false accusations
| from some histrionic commenter calling me a malicious
| vandal and what not, which anyone on WP at the time took
| in the context of the speaker (e.g. not worth much), and
| then try passing it off as some kind of official finding.
|
| It's pretty nuts. Basically the only thing that protect
| anyone is either having something more substantive to
| whine about when targeted, to have no online history, or
| to just never be targeted.
| dmix wrote:
| Now would someone coming from his ideology have the same
| reasoned approached to being young and dumb?
|
| Or even well educated but ill-informed about some subjects.
|
| Or part of an organization/group/etc that has some negative
| public positions or legacy but is not the uniform agreement
| among the entire group or evolved entirely over the years?
|
| I personally see every election as choosing between lesser
| evils. Yet some groups see voting for any party as full
| agreement with everything the political party says and has
| done.
|
| There is so much context and grey area that modern diversity
| or social justice groups are (or act?) completely ignorant
| of. So does it make it rational to put them to their own
| garbage public trials, or give them a pass like mature
| rational individuals - also to a certain degree filled with
| it's own grey areas?
| decremental wrote:
| In a sane world there would be no such position as "head of
| diversity."
| raclage wrote:
| Why, because bias and prejudice wouldn't exist in such a world?
| dgb23 wrote:
| Well that would be too much to ask I think, those are natural
| mechanisms and typically not harmful.
|
| I think positions like these are needed because there are
| severe forms of discrimination, hate, exclusion based on
| ethnicity, gender and so on.
| jfengel wrote:
| Arguably, they're more about the "typically not harmful"
| things than about the severe cases.
|
| The severe cases are bad, but they're also obvious. Your
| ordinary management should be able to handle that. They
| often don't, and it helps to have a special level of appeal
| when the chain of management fails, but that's not the real
| reason for the job.
|
| The real reason is that those "typically not harmful" cases
| are cumulatively harmful. They're bricks in the briefcase
| of every employee being discriminated against. They get all
| of the usual problems of life, plus a new set aimed at
| them. So they don't perform quite as well, and aren't the
| best when promotion time comes around. Then you end up with
| a whole chain of command who thinks that those "typically
| not harmful" cases aren't the reason everybody in authority
| looks like them -- and then do nothing about it.
|
| Dealing with the explicit cases is easier, even though
| companies often fail at that, too. If they can't handle the
| easy cases, there's nobody looking out for the hard ones.
| And worse, people often say, "Look, we fired the blatantly
| racist guy, why are you still complaining that every single
| manager is white? It's just a coincidence, OK?"
| dgb23 wrote:
| I was thinking in general terms of bias and prejudice.
| You can't remove it from existence because those aren't
| qualitative terms. A decent person can recognize and
| actively combat bias, but not erase it. You're still
| going to have some form of bias. At least I haven't met a
| single persom who does not.
|
| Now you're talking about discrimination. Those can appear
| mild and harmless in single instances, but the
| accumulation is the problem as you said but also what we
| could call passive ignorance. In my experience people are
| often not even aware of being discriminatory, some are
| even well meaning, but are patronizing.
|
| But there is a key difference in a spectrum of
| bias/prejudice and flat out not reflecting on our
| behavior.
|
| I realize I'm discussing semantics here, just wanted to
| explain how I understand those terms in my response.
| mikaeluman wrote:
| Very true.
|
| 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.
| danShumway wrote:
| The fact that categories are often fuzzy does not make them
| useless as a general heuristic for finding people who are
| more likely to share similar experiences with each other.
|
| Almost every kind of categorization system shares the
| problems you talk about: people can call themselves
| "programmers" for a variety of different reasons, even though
| they're working in wildly different environments and might be
| totally unsuited for each other's jobs. People self-identify
| with political parties, even though there are no strict rules
| about what a "Democrat" or "Republican" are, to the point
| where beliefs of members of those parties might overlap with
| each other or even be the opposite of what the party normally
| espouses. We separate games/movies into genres, even though
| genres are often a complete mess that don't always map well
| to player preferences or experiences. We take a light
| spectrum and we break it up into distinct colors, even though
| the number of colors and lines between those colors are
| completely arbitrary and meaningless.
|
| It's good to recognize that categories are fuzzy human
| inventions that are prone to abuse, and it's good to be
| cautious about putting a lot of weight on them in every
| situation. It's good not to assume that everyone in a
| category is identical. But abandoning categories entirely
| would make it much harder (even impossible) to go through
| normal day-to-day life.
|
| So it is similarly useful to be able to think about
| categories like "Black", "Gay", "Conservative", "Christian",
| "Rural", "Trans" -- even as we acknowledge that those
| categories are just human inventions and that they blur
| around the edges. Those categories are still be a useful
| heuristic for trying to find people who are more likely to
| share certain attributes or who have had certain life
| experiences.
| slibhb wrote:
| > Those categories are still be a useful heuristic for
| trying to find people who are more likely to share certain
| attributes or who have had certain life experiences.
|
| In other words, prejudice is a "useful heuristic".
| danShumway wrote:
| > In other words, prejudice is a "useful heuristic".
|
| If you don't see any difference at all between community
| and othering, or if you think we need a single universal
| metric that defines whether categories are being used for
| evil in every single scenario, then I don't think you
| understood what I was saying about fuzziness.
|
| Categories are a neutral tool, it's how they're used and
| the effects of their usage that determines whether or not
| an action involving them is problematic -- just like
| every single other tool in existence.
| honkycat wrote:
| Why not? I can think of plenty of reasons why google would want
| a head of diversity.
|
| - 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?
| NoOneNew wrote:
| "Diverse teams" does not mean having a proper ratio of white,
| Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay or ginger. It means
| having people who have complimentary skills for a task and
| everyone got to that point differently. A legal team made up
| of one person from Harvard, one from UCLA, one from Princeton
| and one from a no name school is a type of "diverse". It's
| even more if one person was an engineer first, one was JAG,
| another was an accountant or some other profession before
| getting into law. A legal team where everyone is from Harvard
| and that's all they know since they've done nothing else with
| their lives, but check off different minority boxes, and have
| a token redheaded stepchild ginger, is not diverse. It's
| pandering due to both being lazy and being useless.
|
| Someone that diversifies teams actually has to know the team
| well, what they do, and identity their strengths and
| weaknesses. Then, they need to figure out what kind of person
| can bring the neccessary perspective or skillset to round out
| the team... but that takes work. It's easier to just say,
| "You dont have a ginger on your team, here you go. Diversity
| achieved!" This is why people hate "diversity heads". They're
| glorified checklists.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They can be. Credentialism facilitates structural racism
| and class boundaries. Nobody gives a shit about gingers,
| that is a red herring.
|
| One of my parents used to work in the housing
| discrimination space. Those same types of arguments were
| used there. Instead of credentials, they'd advertise in
| targeted ways, like only advertising at law or medical
| schools, etc.
|
| Recruiters use colleges as a legal discrimination technique
| to target specific class origins. Unless you win the
| college lottery and get into Harvard, it is not possible
| for a kid from an urban setting to get the gig at McKinsey
| that is the entry screener used to get certain gigs. It's
| like the old British civil service.
| gedy wrote:
| > "Diverse teams" does not mean having a proper ratio of
| white, Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay or ginger."
|
| Oh that's certainly what some people mean.. Some people
| have a blind spot when you bring up the lack of older
| people or from poor backgrounds.
| JPKab wrote:
| Companies are diverse as a side effect of hiring for
| competence. They aren't competent as a side effect of hiring
| with diversity as a goal. The statistically illiterate HR
| minions who preach the correlation between diversity and
| performance don't get this, because they aren't even educated
| enough to understand correlation/causation fallacy.
| danShumway wrote:
| Totally disagree.
|
| Even ignoring that diversity can be a goal in and of
| itself, and ignoring that a lack of diversity can be a
| useful metric for identifying other problems, there's also
| plenty of reason to believe that targeting diversity
| directly can yield performance improvements. If you're
| building a product for women, you should have some women on
| your team. If you're building a product for the general
| population, you'll get better results if your team has a
| variety of life experiences and viewpoints.
|
| It's the same exact reason why it's good for a CEO to have
| experience in the industry that they're targeting with
| their products, and why managers who know at least a little
| bit about code works tend to do a better job of managing
| programmers. Perspective and life experiences absolutely
| help with decision-making processes and can help you avoid
| certain pitfalls in your product.
|
| Diversity increases your available breadth of input into
| decisions and planning; it's like the human version of
| increasing code-coverage in your QA department.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, we're talking past each other about two different
| things now. Classic.
| danShumway wrote:
| How did you interpret JPKab's comment? Maybe I
| misunderstood, do you agree that a focus on increasing
| diversity can lead to better products and better company
| decisions?
| honkycat wrote:
| So are you claiming opportunity is equally distributed? I
| feel if you "hire for competence", you are going to end up
| with a highly concentrated group of wealthy people who went
| to the best schools.
|
| Also, what is your metric for "competence"? You can train
| people to be computer programmers, but there are many other
| traits that are impossible to train. Like seeing the world
| from a perspective different than a middle aged white man,
| for one.
| edoceo wrote:
| I think they are saying talent is equally distributed
| across all humans.
|
| We know opportunity is not.
|
| We know education is not.
|
| Also, competence and "best" schools are not the same.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >Companies are diverse as a side effect of hiring for
| competence.
|
| I mean, unless factors you evaluate for competence are just
| 'similarity to current decision makers'. Which is what
| people largely do in practice. This is why we see that
| tests show that hiring decisions vary dramatically on the
| basis of names, pictures, educational background, etc.
|
| No one has a magic 8-ball that spits out an employee's
| power level. So something else is being measured.
|
| But even if we COULD measure for competence - say in an
| objective numerical manner - the amount of times you'd
| optimize towards a local maxima rather than overall maxima
| would be significant.
|
| So the measurement is flawed, and the algorithm is wrong.
| You'd think people on HN of all people would recognize the
| above as self-evident given how frequently 'I'm upset at
| tech hiring' threads are posted here.
| unknown_error wrote:
| "Hiring for competence" doesn't automatically get you a
| diverse labor force, especially if "competence" is measured
| by metrics that are themselves demographically correlated
| to begin with (educational background from schools that
| aren't very diverse, experience at other firms that aren't
| diverse, etc.). Criteria like that can entrench established
| demographics, especially if the people who do the hiring
| look for similar backgrounds and traits that they
| themselves have... a bunch of WASPs hiring other WASPs
| because they come from the same schools or like the same
| governance tools or some framework, for example, or a bunch
| of Japanese businessmen excluding the white applicant who
| speaks perfect Japanese because they don't think he'll
| understand cultural norms, or a BLM group not wanting to
| hire the white diversity trainer because she ostensibly has
| worked mostly with Latino populations. There are always
| unspoken preferences, often cultural things, that bias
| hiring -- even if you aim for competence -- unless we blind
| the hiring committee and resumes, etc. A few studies about
| identical resumes with different last names (suggesting
| different races) suggest that competence is not really the
| best indicator of hireability.
|
| > The statistically illiterate HR minions who preach the
| correlation between diversity and performance don't get
| this, because they aren't even educated enough to
| understand correlation/causation fallacy.
|
| That seems kinda like a strawman? Who's arguing that? It's
| not like having a more diverse team will necessarily result
| in higher quality code, or more lines of code per month, or
| some similarly laser-focused metric of "performance".
|
| Diversity can instigate cultural change at a company (do we
| value hard deadlines more, or should we emphasize work-life
| balance more?), make it easier to acquire and communicate
| with customers from diverse backgrounds (cross-cultural
| communications is hard for anyone, especially so for non-
| diverse teams with no specific training in it), fill some
| legal or marketing mandate (we gotta look diverse even if
| we aren't), help spur innovation in process or product
| development (what's "out of the box thinking" for one
| demographic may be a common process for another
| demographic), etc.
|
| Of course there are costs too. Diverse teams may or may not
| work together as well, holidays might be different, food
| and beverage preferences may not line up with current
| offerings, religious or cultural conflicts may occur, staff
| polarization becomes more likely (along
| political/ideological/national origin lines, whatever)...
|
| That's all to say diversity isn't just skin color but
| cultural backgrounds too, and you get all the pros and cons
| of that... for better or worse. It's far more nuanced than
| simply trying to hire for some arbitrary measure of
| "competence".
| tshaddox wrote:
| When you're making products for a diverse group of people,
| perhaps having a diverse team is _required_ for competence.
| rocknor wrote:
| This is probably the biggest reason, they are building
| products used by virtually everyone on the planet, they
| cannot afford mistakes that could arise just because
| their employees only represent a small percentage of
| human diversity. If all diverse groups were equally well-
| off, or all they understood the existence and power of
| privilege, or there was no risk of the built products
| putting certain groups at a disadvantage, maybe we
| wouldn't need to do this. But we know that's not true.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| That's clearly not the motivation behind it otherwise age
| and political diversity would be similarly prioritized.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming that their priorities
| couldn't be improved.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| The priorities won't change because the priorities were
| never stemming from an earnest attempt to represent
| customer demographics to begin with.
|
| Not only is there no attempt to represent customer
| demographics on dimensions such as age, but there
| continues to be rank discrimination against people based
| on these dimensions, and the people pretending to be in
| favor of diversity are consistently and conspicuously
| silent on the matter.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Age is somewhat prioritized in practice. Why do you think
| political diversity would be similarly prioritized?
|
| There's a moral argument that comes into play with
| politics that doesn't for age or race. There's nothing
| even abstractly morally problematic about making your
| product appeal to women or old people or whomever. There
| may be reasons to avoid marketing or aligning your
| product to, say, people whose political views you
| disagree with.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| We're not talking about products aimed at a particular
| demographic. We're talking about products with customers
| from diverse demographic backgrounds, where the argument
| is put that we should then have a diverse team so as to
| ensure we are serving that product competently to the
| diverse customer base.
|
| My point is that this can't be the real reason for D and
| I initiatives, since if it was, there would be a
| similarly strong push to have equal political and age
| representation in order to reflect the reality of these
| products' customer demographics.
| bitwize wrote:
| And you're not educated enough to understand that
| "meritocracy" is a myth that entrenches existing power and
| privilege structures, because the people who are good at
| something are the people with the resources and social
| capital it takes to get good at that thing.
| [deleted]
| xg15 wrote:
| So, question: Is any kind of disapproval of Israel's policies on
| palestinians now by definition antisemitic or is there a way to
| voice legitimate criticism?
|
| I agree, the "If I were a jew" sentence is an extremely tasteless
| and and insensitive way to put it, but from the rest of the
| quotes, his intent to criticize _Israel 's policies_, not call
| into question the right to exist seems pretty clear.
|
| If someone criticized the Chinese government, you wouldn't
| automatically accuse them of anti-asian racism either, would you?
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| The reason so many criticisms are judged as anti-Semitic is
| because they are anti-Semitic. Often, they will have reasonable
| criticisms and then delegitimize their argument by
| stereotyping, supporting conspiracy theories, or conflating
| Judaism and Zionism. In this case, I think its most
| specifically: "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my
| insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself."
| Being Jewish doesn't mean being a Zionist, pro-Israel, or
| bloodthirsty
| gotostatement wrote:
| it makes me sick to see everyone thinking that this is proof of
| cancel culture - LOOK THE DIVERSITY GUY WAS HOISTED BY HIS OWN
| DIVERSITY PETARD!
|
| NO. The people calling for this are not progressives - look them
| up - Simon Wiesenthal Center and Stop Antisemitism are
| conservative zionist organizations who equate anti-zionism with
| anti-semitism. As far as I can tell Kamau Bobb's post was anti-
| zionist, NOT anti-semitic at all. If you read the passages you
| will see.
|
| This is a cancellation by the original proponents of
| cancellation: conservatives supporting an entrenched power
| structure.
| unanswered wrote:
| Let's see here... If you suggest there might be biological
| differences between men and women, you get fired. If you advocate
| for the "elimination of the Jewish problem", you get, uh,
| 'reassigned'.
| generj wrote:
| That's an...incredibly poor and uncharitable reading of his
| argument.
|
| It's not a good essay but he definitively isn't advocating for
| a genocide - and indeed is arguing against Israel committing a
| genocide in slow motion. At worst he is conflating Zionists
| with Jews, an unfortunate generalization which is anti Semitic
| but nowhere near the mental image most people have of anti
| Semitic behavior.
|
| Additionally he made these comments 13 years ago and not on
| company property. _Assuming_ the offenses were equal performing
| one more than a decade ago vs. last week on a company system is
| always going to have a different response. Your comparison
| isn't a fair one.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Jews != Israel, how many times does this need to be said
| duckfang wrote:
| The Palestinians are also Semitic peoples.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages
|
| Being against the peoples of Palestine makes you an anti-Semite
| as well.
|
| Edit: the downvote brigade is strong today.
|
| But as the top post says, there is a difference between Jewish
| genetics, Jewish culture, Jewish religion, and Jewish government.
| Smearing them is just as disingenuous as calling people anti-
| Semites (not knowing who that represents). A human can be a
| member of none, one, or multiple of these.
|
| Complaining about abhorrent *actions* member does as one of these
| does not make you an "anti-semite" or "jew hater". The key
| difference is that one focuses on bad actions, and not attaching
| "bad" to a people.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Palestinians (aka Philistines) originally weren't Semitic fwiw.
|
| They likely came from Southern Europe (the bible specifically
| mentions the island of Crete as their place of origin) arriving
| roughly the same time as the Hebrews who came in from the east.
| This was part of the "Sea People" migrations which is
| documented in Egyptian literature that occurred at the bronze
| age collapse.
|
| They were more sort of a proto Greek and most likely spoke an
| Indo-European dialect initially.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistine_language
| dalbasal wrote:
| Somewhat tangential, but who _is_ the right kind of person for a
| diversity job? What does a job well done look like? Changes in
| hiring? Changes in company culture?
|
| I'm skeptical of roles with a "my job is to care about X" kind of
| definition. That includes, for example, "customer advocate" and
| similar, especially someplace as complicated as google. I don't
| think they can have much success beyond the surface level.
|
| EDIT: lets maintain a presumption of good faith. Assuming that
| you actually care about diversity...
| Izkata wrote:
| > but who is the right kind of person for a diversity job?
|
| > 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.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Good point. But a serious company in which everyone is a nice
| person could still have D&I specialists like a training
| expert in charge of improving the masses or a
| statistician/manager in charge of monitoring and reports.
| Gunax wrote:
| The purpose of the role is to be able to show that you _have_ a
| diversity officer. Whether or not that actually helps
| diversity, or helps at all--is secondary.
| globular-toast wrote:
| So it's a bullshit job. I think the closest of Graeber's 5
| categories [0] would be a "goon", ie. they are only there
| because other companies have one.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
| nwsm wrote:
| > they are only there because other companies have one
|
| This is not Graeber's description of "goon"
| globular-toast wrote:
| It kind of is. He talks more about things like corporate
| lawyers etc which fit the name "goon" more, but I think
| the more general point is people you have to employ
| because other companies employ them. What category would
| you put it under?
| nwsm wrote:
| Box ticker. That is, if you indeed think Head of
| Diversity is a bullshit job. I don't have an educated
| opinion.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Whether or not that actually helps diversity, or helps at
| all
|
| Or even hurts.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Diversity training may help change people's attitudes, but
| you're right on the nose about actually hurting.
|
| The real reason enterprises spend money on Diversity
| Training is because it provides Faragher-Ellerth protection
| from damage claims-- even if racist conduct within the
| company has been accepted by the court.
|
| By having diversity training, corporations ensure that
| victims of racism do not receive financial restitution.
|
| https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/I0f9fbe84ef0811e2
| 8...
| jfengel wrote:
| It starts with an acknowledgement that the company has a
| problem with X. That's actually incredibly hard, because
| there's nobody in the company willing to say "I'm anti-X". If
| they did, you'd just fire them and call it a job well done.
|
| 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.
| dalbasal wrote:
| First cool headed reply. ty
|
| My question was more tactical than anything. Coding tests and
| hiring are a good example. Is a general purpose "diversity
| officer" likely to understand hiring, coding tests and such
| to improve on this?
|
| An understanding of abstract issues, like bell curves and
| bias in testing generally is one thing. Getting into the
| nitty gritty, dealing with objections and finding
| alternatives is another. Don't you need someone that
| understands coding tests, coding, technical hiring and such
| to make a difference? A nondiscriminatory hiring method is
| objectively better, even if you don't care about diversity.
|
| A person in authority, but removed from the actual task at
| hand seems like a recipe for box ticking, to me. I believe it
| could work for blatant, simple misogyny. For deeper issues
| like hiring process, don't we need subject experts?
|
| Leaving workplace diversity aside, say the issue is
| application design. An application doesn't work well for
| people of different cultural or educational backgrounds?
| Don't we need someone with both an understanding of UIs _and_
| an understanding of those needs? I don 't see how authority
| can lead someplace good. People who have never dealt with UIs
| have terrible ideas about how to improve them.
|
| >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 appreciate you wading in. Most of the other comments have
| been quite depressing. I think what we need is more
| presumption of good will, and to try and carry less baggage
| from previous experience. People can be wrong but not bad
| people. They can come around. There are multiple routes to
| getting where we want to go. That's not to say no one is ill
| willed.
|
| Lastly, I think not seeing a solution often leads to not
| seeing the problem... even though it's logically backwards. I
| also think that a deep awareness of problems leads to seeing
| solutions. I don't think you can use authority alone and
| force people to find solutions to problems they don't care
| about, or believe in. The problem they'll actually try to
| solve is "how do I me this person leave me alone."
| thu2111 wrote:
| _Their best victories look like things other people consider
| discriminatory against them ... 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._
|
| Well, thanks for admitting that diversity officers are just a
| massive power play by the hard left to take control of every
| institution by creating hatred of men and white people.
|
| BTW, given almost the entire software industry now does use
| coding tests during interviews, you are seriously claiming
| everyone who does this is _either_ sexist _or_ lazy, with no
| other possibilities. Do you realize that this is how pro-
| diversity people end up getting such a bad name? You are
| willing to make sweeping accusations of sexism against entire
| industries.
|
| There's no way to ever satisfy people like you except by
| literally giving women jobs to do nothing all day, just so
| you can say you have lots of women. These attitudes are so
| grotesque, so deeply morally wrong, that it will one day be
| you being cancelled for them.
| dalbasal wrote:
| If you find yourself typing the words "people like you," I
| suggest taking a moment to cool off.
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| "Diversity and inclusion" as a separate function is mostly an
| exercise in giving the rest of the company cover. In my
| experience the people in these orgs have very little power to
| do anything, they just recieve the complaints, empathize, and
| then nothing happens.
|
| 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.
| the-dude wrote:
| The Human Rights, urrhh, _Human Resources_ department is not
| there for the benefit of the employees, but for the benefit
| of the corp.
| howeyc wrote:
| Wow, 14 years ago.
|
| I hope the current progressive correct-thinkers realize the takes
| they make today have to hold up over a decade from now, otherwise
| the next wave is going to cancel them.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The original cancel-culture was (and continues to be) against
| anyone who asserts that Palestinians are human.
| busterarm wrote:
| Sarah Silverman's blackface sketch that lost her movie roles in
| 2019 was from 2007.
|
| 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?
| thereare5lights wrote:
| McCammond's 2019 "apology" was along the lines of "sorry
| you're offended", not "I'm sorry for what I said".
| busterarm wrote:
| She also called her comments "deeply insensitive". How bent
| out of shape are you going to get over what a 17 year old
| says? "Sorry you're offended" is much closer to accurate.
| I'm nothing like 17 year old me and if you asked me to take
| present day responsibility for that person I would tell you
| to toss off.
|
| How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today?
| thereare5lights wrote:
| This is what she originally said
|
| https://twitter.com/alexi/status/1197290613701513217
|
| > Today I was reminded of some past insensitive tweets,
| and I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended. I have since
| deleted those tweets as they do not reflect my views or
| who I am today.
|
| So yes
|
| > "Sorry you're offended" is much closer to accurate.
|
| is correct.
|
| Only when her plum new editor job was threatened did she
| offer something more than "sorry you're offended".
|
| > How bent out of shape are you going to get over what a
| 17 year old says?
|
| Quite bent out of shape actually. Someone that harbors
| those kinds of views and has no history of having
| confronted it nor examples to the contrary should not be
| a position to influence the minds of millions of young
| children. You might argue that she's worked in anti
| racist/diversity efforts, but that's not good enough.
| People are often racist against specific races and not
| others. She has no examples of having shown growth in her
| racism specifically towards Asians.
|
| > I'm nothing like 17 year old me and if you asked me to
| take present day responsibility for that person I would
| tell you to toss off.
|
| Good thing you don't decide who gets to be editor in
| chief of an influential publication.
|
| > How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of
| today?
|
| Nothing actually. I was quite the goody two shoes.
|
| That argument makes no sense to me either. We should
| excuse racism from 1 year prior to the age of majority
| absent any evidence of growth? Nah, I don't agree with
| that.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of
| today?
|
| _Not that much_. For sure I made some mistakes, as I
| continue to do, but I 'd stand by what I did at 17. I
| didn't (for example) write down plainly racist statements
| and then publish them on the internet. I didn't do
| anything comparable to that.
|
| What were y'all doing at 17?
| cloverich wrote:
| Do you believe racism is an incurable ill, or in any way
| related to ones lived experiences and education? I have
| met (and still know) plenty of people that are varying
| degrees of racist, and the majority of it involves some
| pretty fundamental ignorance. In some cases people are
| outright indoctrinated into racism. I have no idea if
| this particular person was desrving of cancellation or
| forgiveness, but I can personally imagine someone at 17
| writing racist sentiments, and genuinely repenting and
| growing out of that. I can imagine someone at 25, or 35
| doing the same. I can appreciate it is hard to imagine
| that a person can change their world view, yet it
| certainly happens all the time.
| teachingassist wrote:
| I agree with this but don't believe it relates to the
| grandparent's comment, which implied that we should
| accept shameful behaviour from 17 year olds because it is
| an innate part of being 17 years old. I object to that
| idea.
|
| (Is suffering indoctrination shameful? And, as you say,
| that is not unique to 17 year olds.)
| busterarm wrote:
| > What were y'all doing at 17?
|
| Mostly really awkward attempts at being sexually active.
| Surely some of it cancelable. Just like most other 17
| year olds.
| cloverich wrote:
| The top few articles I googled quoted her as saying: "I've
| apologised for my past racist and homophobic tweets and
| will reiterate that there's no excuse for perpetuating
| those awful stereotypes in any way.
|
| "I am so sorry to have used such hurtful and inexcusable
| language. At any point in my life, it's totally
| unacceptable." Backlash against her initial comments seem
| to be that she characterized her tweets as insensitive
| rather than using the word racist, which seems important
| but certainly pedantic.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| That's what she said in 2021.
|
| What she said in 2019 when it first came out was
|
| https://twitter.com/alexi/status/1197290613701513217
|
| > Today I was reminded of some past insensitive tweets,
| and I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended. I have since
| deleted those tweets as they do not reflect my views or
| who I am today.
|
| "some past insensitive tweets" as a euphemism for racist
| tweets
|
| "I am deeply sorry *to anyone I offended.*" (my emphasis
| with asterisks) => sorry if you were offended
|
| So when it first came out, she gave the least amount of
| effort necessary to make it go away. Only when it
| threatened her plum new job did she offer anything
| simulating genuine remorse.
| cloverich wrote:
| I see. I don't agree, but to make sure I understand --
| she should have said "racist" tweets instead of
| "insensitive tweets" right? I think that is a reasonable
| ask. However how should she have worded the appology? It
| sounds like you take issue with "sorry to anyone I
| offended"? I am familiar with "sorry you were offended"
| but would not have interpreted her wording in that way --
| e.g. the former is a direct apology and admittance of
| wrongdoing towards another on her part, while "sorry you
| were offended" is a typical avoidance of apology.
| Genuinely I would like to understand. To fully state my
| interpretation, I would guess she was genuinely sorry but
| was unaware of the most suitable way to appologize for
| it.
| ericd wrote:
| One of the most striking things when reading about the French
| Revolution is seeing some of the original key agitators for
| Revolution being eventually denounced as insufficiently
| revolutionary, and some of them even being killed for being
| considered counter-revolutionary.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| In revolutionary France the self-destruction process was
| fast, less than 10 years. What historical lessons can be
| applied to the current situation?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| A Napoleonesque figure appearing soon. On Twitter,
| probably.
|
| Only half joking. After a certain time, most people get
| tired and afraid of constant paranoid vigilantism and start
| searching for protection. Any protection.
|
| And whoever gained positions of power from the previous
| tumult, will seek immunity from further revolutionary
| tumult, which is easiest to achieve by suppressing the
| worst Robespierres and ossifying the new structures.
|
| From an outside perspective, it is striking how much the
| woke wave is waning compared to 2020. Trump is gone from
| Twitter, so a constant irritant has been removed, and
| people are starting to having a bit of a hangover. Plus the
| new rulers of the nest need a bit of calm for political
| business as usual.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >From an outside perspective, it is striking how much the
| woke wave is waning compared to 2020. Trump is gone from
| Twitter, so a constant irritant has been removed, and
| people are starting to having a bit of a hangover.
|
| The ongoing self-recrimination in the media over the mass
| insta-dismissing a year ago of all COVID19 lab leak
| discussion--despite zero new evidence[1]--being one
| prominent example of the above, of course.
|
| [1] I don't mean to imply that I don't believe in the
| theory. On the contrary, I was amazed and alarmed to see
| how a year ago even stating that SARS-CoV-2 being
| accidentally leaked from the Wuhan labs was not
| impossible was censored by social media as
| "disinformation" and denounced by regular media as
| already having been "debunked", as opposed to a
| reasonable hypothesis worthy of exploration. My point is
| that, as far as I know, there is zero new evidence
| available today to support the reasonableness of said
| hypothesis versus a year ago. The only difference is that
| Trump is no longer in the White House.
| mjreacher wrote:
| >My point is that, as far as I know, there is zero new
| evidence available today to support the reasonableness of
| said hypothesis versus a year ago. The only difference is
| that Trump is no longer in the White House.
|
| The major difference I see now is that a number of major
| US media networks reported that the US intelligence
| community views lab leak as a feasible scenario now, one
| of their two main ones.
| genericone wrote:
| Extreme violence against leadership figures makes conflicts
| end sooner because leadership is incentivized not to be a
| target. True believers die in the tumult, compromisers rise
| up and rebalance.
| rixed wrote:
| Exact same thing happened during the Russian revolution BTW.
| [deleted]
| frockington1 wrote:
| And that is why I stopped calling myself a progressive years
| ago. In my youth I thought progressive meant trying to
| continually better yourself and your community. Now the focus
| seems to be on cancelling any viewpoint that conflicts with
| yours. The new trend of digging further and further back in the
| past makes it even more counter to my previous beliefs of the
| word
| vernie wrote:
| So what do you call yourself now?
| frockington1 wrote:
| Nothing, politically speaking Shrek is my role model. Get
| off my swamp, I don't care at all as long as people leave
| me alone
| chewmieser wrote:
| I just don't understand this viewpoint as it completely
| ignores the history of humanity. "Cancel culture" has been
| used for many centuries to silence dissenters. Take a look at
| Galieleo as an example. He was excommunicated or "canceled"
| by religious organizations that held the primary means of
| power. He was even forced to recant his positions by these
| groups.
|
| How is this any different than today?
| Siira wrote:
| Exactly. It's no different. Who wants a world that is no
| different from the classic dark ages?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I will address this in the spirit with which it was
| intended.
|
| Cancellation, back then, was largely top-down, driven by
| kings and popes. The current form of cancellation emerges
| from below, pressuring larger organizations to fire people
| and denounce them. And as I have mentioned elsewhere in
| this, those calling for cancellation derive increased
| status when their attempts succeed.
|
| It's a bit more equivalent to witch hunt mania than papal
| disapproval.
| frockington1 wrote:
| It is not different than today. I think instead of the word
| changing I just grew up and had a reality check.
| Progressive means following culturally approved thoughts,
| when in my youth I thought it meant pushing boundaries and
| trying to better the world (even if it meant the occasional
| wrong think to get a different perspective)
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Is the cancellation of Galileo by the Church a _good_
| example? A way a civilized society should function?
|
| If not, if we consider historical examples like these as
| _failures_ of past societies, then things "not being any
| different than today" suggests our society is also failing.
| chewmieser wrote:
| My response was around "cancel culture" being a new
| phenomenon, as posed by the parent comment. I am not
| suggesting that this is a good or bad behavior, just that
| it has existed for a long time and nothing is new about
| it.
|
| So, yes, in the context of my post the Galileo example is
| a good example IMO.
| jbjohns wrote:
| The scale. In the past you had to watch what you said about
| those who had the power to hurt you. Now you can have your
| life derailed by people you've never met and never will,
| who's only power is being popular in some community you may
| have never heard of (and may not even exist until years
| from now).
| xg15 wrote:
| To be fair, we don't know who made the decision to reassign
| him. It might have been a HR decision in preemptive fear of bad
| press instead of an actual demand by any group.
|
| 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.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I think the point is that the blog post is not really a big
| issue if you're an average engineer, but as head of DEI it's
| not a great look, hence the re-assignment.
| rzimmerman wrote:
| His old posts are more than just solidarity with Palestinians
| or criticism of the Israeli government (which obviously
| should never get anyone fired).
|
| > 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.
|
| It's really hard to read stuff like that and not feel
| attacked as a Jewish person. I know it's an old post and
| people change, but I don't want people walking away from this
| thread thinking someone lost their job for merely being
| critical of Israel. That just feeds the cycle of distrust and
| makes it harder to discuss.
| banannaise wrote:
| He was not canceled by progressives. Equating anti-Zionism and
| anti-semitism is generally an anti-progressive stance in the
| US. This is progressive principles being morphed into a weapon
| to be used against progressives.
| 0xy wrote:
| If progressive people create a weapon known as cancellation,
| then they absolutely deserve it when the same weapon is used
| against them. They created the new normal.
| reccanti wrote:
| At least one of the sources in this article, the Washington
| Free Beacon, is financed by a right-wing activist.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon
|
| So yeah, doesn't really seem like a case of progressives
| eating-their-own
| TMWNN wrote:
| banannaise's point is that the rhetorical weapons used by
| the left to bludgeon its enemies can and are being used by
| others. As esyir said, "It's hard to feel any sympathy when
| that chicken comes home to roost".
| esyir wrote:
| If one develops a rhetorical superweapon, they should expect
| it to be used against them eventually.
|
| It's hard to feel any sympathy when that chicken comes home
| to roost.
| mikewarot wrote:
| So, it took some digging, but here is the text
|
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:luIscB...
|
| As you can see, it's a quite well written critique of Israel, and
| it is definitely NOT anti-Semitic.
|
| I find it quite ironic that it took Google's cache to find the
| thing Google itself wants canceled
| wonderwonder wrote:
| It is Anti-Semitic in that he is lumping all jews in with
| Israel. I am a Jew, America is my homeland. I live here and am
| an American. I am not an Israeli. I give almost zero thought to
| Israel in my day to day. Jews are consistently labeled with an
| "other" tag, we are not Americans, we are Jews and Israel is
| our country.
|
| 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?
| hirundo wrote:
| The first sentence sounds anti-semitic to me. The second does
| not. It's well worth being concerned about ones insensitivity
| to suffering in the conduct of self-defense. It may be
| particularly important if you feel that defense is entirely
| righteous. If hurting anyone for any reason does not provoke
| self-reflection, something is wrong.
|
| That's completely consistent with doing what is necessary to
| defend your loved ones, including violence.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| Replace jew with 'israeli' in every occurance. Who's fault is
| it that israel intentionally tried to muddy the water and
| make the word confusing? I don't see any anti-semitism here.
| I see here concern that israel does not care about the
| humanity of their neighbors.
| balls187 wrote:
| That is an absurd argument.
|
| Replace "Jew" with "Krogan..."
|
| The blog post took aim at Jewish people, not the policies
| of Israeli government.
|
| Even it's title "If I were a Jew" is problematic.
|
| https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Krogan
| wonderwonder wrote:
| He said Jew, not Israeli. He is intentional in the use as
| the entire article is about Jews and Israel. Also the
| person in question is not an idiot, he is a mature adult
| smart enough to work in stem at Google. Your argument
| essentially absolves any anti semitic statements / actions
| by blaming the Jews for it.
|
| This is exactly the definition of anti-semitism, and now I
| am speaking about your words, not his.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| I'm being as clear as i can, when I read the document I
| don't see anything about "the jewish race". What i see is
| commentary on the jewish nation of israel. I can only
| blame israel for bluring that distinction as much as
| possible.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| No need to clarify, I very much understand what you see.
| The fact that that is what you see is the problem.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| Honestly, I have no clue what you are trying to say.
| Clearly we have different definitions of anti-semitism?
| To me anti-semitism is a form of racism. By definition
| being opposed to the political actions of a nation is not
| racism. It could have underlying racist motives, but you
| cannot ascribe those from the position that a nation
| state is doing inappropriate things.
| mikewarot wrote:
| >He is intentional in the use as the entire article is
| about Jews and Israel.
|
| Determining intent from a single page of text is about as
| solvable as the halting problem.
| bagacrap wrote:
| questioning the definition of anti semitism is anti
| semitic?
| throwusawayus wrote:
| I'm Jewish, and I personally found the post to be offensive
| and anti-semitic.
|
| Israel is not my "homeland". I've never been to Israel, let
| alone lived there. My parents have never been to Israel.
| You'd have to go back over 2000 years to find an ancestor
| of mine who lived in Israel. I have no connection
| whatsoever with the actions of the Israeli government. So
| if you attribute their actions to me, simply because I am
| Jewish, that is by definition racist and anti-semitic.
|
| Imagine if the non-black head of diversity at a major US
| corporation wrote a post titled "If I were Black", directly
| tying the actions of modern-day African governments to all
| African Americans. Or a post titled "If I were Catholic"
| doing the same thing to all US Catholics based on actions
| of the Vatican or even just the Pope. This sort of thing
| happened in the US decades ago and was acceptable then, but
| is not even remotely acceptable now, nor was it acceptable
| when this post was written.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| Thanks for the commentary, it's a useful perspective.
| Perhaps it depends on many things, but i feel like this
| post is not attributing these actions to you, in any way.
| My reading of the actual actions being criticised in that
| there is no way the author could mean anything _other_
| than the jewish state of israel. Working backwards from
| there, it 's clear to me that any reference to jew is
| simply because AIPAC and western media in general have
| spent the last ~50 years blurring the discourse to the
| point where Jew ~= Israeli.
| throwusawayus wrote:
| Among other blatantly offensive things, he directly said
| "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself."
| Certainly sounds to me like he's attributing these
| actions to me and all other Jewish people.
|
| Stop blaming "the media". If the _head of diversity of
| one of the largest corporations in the world_ doesn 't
| understand the difference between a Jewish person and an
| Israeli, they are not qualified for their position.
| vidarh wrote:
| > Stop blaming "the media". If the head of diversity of
| one of the largest corporations in the world doesn't
| understand the difference between a Jewish person and an
| Israeli, they are not qualified for their position.
|
| Their position is the key aspect to me.
|
| It's _possible_ the commenter above was right and that he
| didn 't mean it that way (it's also possible they very
| much meant it exactly that way). It's possible their
| views have changed. But it reads the way you describe,
| and while one might give some random nobody the benefit
| of the doubt about a post from 2007 after perhaps having
| a conversation about it, it's an entirely different
| situation to have them as head of diversity.
|
| Even _if_ HR at Google have talked to him and are 100%
| confident his views are ok today and that they understand
| the issue with the statement, and that it won 't impact
| their _actions_ in the role, the problem still remains
| that they 'll have to interact with people and
| communities that may never be able to trust someone who
| once said those things.
| bagacrap wrote:
| the group that called him out on Twitter are clearly
| Zionists, though, not Jews who want nothing to do with
| Israel. I think a Jew who never thinks about Israel is likely
| to read that essay and think it doesn't apply to them.
|
| If someone wrote "man, people in Colorado like to go on
| shooting rampages" I would think to myself, "yeah, that's
| right, we should not sell ar15s to folks; also, what is it
| about this place that affects mental health?" I would not
| take offense just because I happen to live there.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| He called out Jews, not Israelis. Can you think of any
| other race that is expected to ignore comments that
| specifically insults their race and think "doesn't apply to
| me".
| csa wrote:
| > How is that anything except Anti-Semitic?
|
| As you frame it, there is no other way to interpret his words
| (found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https
| ://www.kamau...).
|
| If one takes a charitable read of his words, it might be less
| damning (although definitely questionable in terms of style):
|
| 1. It's clear in the post that he's speaking about Israeli
| Jews. While even Israeli Jews are not monolithic, and
| speaking of them like they are is suspect, he could have been
| clearer by using "Israeli Jew" rather than "Jew" in this
| post.
|
| 2. Furthermore, it seems more like he is speaking about
| "Israeli Jews" both in terms of being an actual Israeli Jew
| as well as a term used to represent the Israeli government.
|
| 3. He use the wrong pronouns. He used I/me when we/us would
| have been more standard when speaking of the acts of a nation
| state (esp. a democratic one). Even this creates problems
| since it would paint Israeli Jews as being monolithic in
| their thoughts (my experience is that they very very much are
| not monolithic). That said, with a charitable read, the
| stylistic use of I/me is definitely more powerful and more
| personal, and it probably provided the effect the author
| wanted of making the violence feel personal. As an editor, I
| would have given this stylistic choice a firm veto, but try
| explaining that to a young person who is finding their voice
| and is discovering the amount of violence towards various
| peoples that is occurring around the world.
|
| TL;DR - Another way of interpreting the post is that a young
| kid trying to find a powerful voice made some very suspect
| stylistic choices when trying to write about the government
| of Israel.
|
| Thanks to 'andrewla for finding the original post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27381980
| stickfigure wrote:
| I find the whole thing offensive in concept, even if he had
| used "Israeli" instead of "Jew".
|
| If some white dude wrote " _If I was a Black, I would find
| it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of
| oppression that Blacks have endured and the insatiable
| appetite for crime that permeates inner cities_ ", we would
| rightly castigate him as a virulent racist.
|
| It also wouldn't matter if you replaced "Black" with
| African, or Senegalese, or Mexican, or any other
| nationality. You aren't that thing, you don't have the
| experiences of that culture, you don't get to write from
| that perspective.
| csa wrote:
| He was writing about the government of Israel using some
| questionable stylistic choices.
|
| Folks seem to have turned his stylistic choices into his
| thesis, which seems slapdash at best.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| Doesn't matter. The JIDF will scour the world for anything
| negative of Israel
| almog wrote:
| > "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself"
|
| 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.
| zasz wrote:
| It's definitely anti-Semitic! He's acting like _all_ Jews are
| pro-Israel and therefore pro-slaughtering. That kind of
| stereotyping is bad.
| bagacrap wrote:
| ok, so s/Jew/Zionist in the post and it's all ok? The thrust
| of the essay seems to be condemning violence in the name of
| an identity, whether that's a religious, racial or national
| identity, and it seems to me Zionists don't make a
| distinction between Jew and Israeli.
| [deleted]
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Uh, yeah. That's the point. That to be Jewish, to be
| Israeli, and to be in support of the Israeli government in
| power are three very distinct things.
|
| Next up, let's write an article critical of Hamas and start
| with "If I were a Muslim, I would be concerned about my
| insatiable appetite for war and killing".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > it seems to me Zionists don't make a distinction between
| Jew and Israeli
|
| This serves their interests, but the framing shouldn't be
| accepted. There are plenty of non-Zionist or anti-Zionist
| Jews, or even Zionist Jews who have specific concerns about
| the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere; it's a
| little funny seeing people like Bernie Sanders being deemed
| antisemitic, for example.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Kamau Bobb has removed ALL of his blog posts. I think he
| himself is afraid of the reaction of many of the things he's
| written.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Cancel culture does that to people.
| workallday21 wrote:
| Remember just yesterday the same thread from dailymail was remove
| from YCombinator.
|
| This site is censored to the gills. You can talk all you want
| about tech stuff, but don't cross the boundaries. That is, until
| it hits a major paper and then perhaps it can't be ignored.
| masterphilo wrote:
| I read the blog post and while the author's tone was a little bit
| harsh, I really doubt it can be called anti-semitic.
|
| I guess that's why they re-assigned him and he wasn't fired. You
| probably don't want a "head of diversity" to be controversial in
| that way.
| [deleted]
| Jabbles wrote:
| Usually the argument I see online is that criticism of Israel
| isn't necessarily anti-semitic.
|
| 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.
| busterarm wrote:
| That was one of the most heinous, blatantly bigoted screeds I'd
| read in quite a long time. There isn't anything defensible
| about it.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Does mild criticism shake you to your core, or something?
| thereare5lights wrote:
| Blatant stereotyping of a people is not mild criticism.
| busterarm wrote:
| I'm not Jewish first of all, but to categorize the
| character of an entire group of people based on their
| birth/religion is the definition of bigotry.
| smileybarry wrote:
| "mild criticism" mixed in with generalizing Jewish people,
| regardless of country, in the last paragraph?
|
| > 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.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kama
| u...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's definitely anti-semitic, but I regularly will see worse
| stuff even on here.
| busterarm wrote:
| In other comments in this thread, even.
| masterphilo wrote:
| All I'm saying is that the charge of "antisemitism" is too
| heavy and the author's post didn't sound that way to me, but
| since I'm not Jewish, I'm not going to press this point this
| further at the risk of sounding too insensitive or
| privileged.
|
| If you'd like a Jewish perspective on this, here's a comment
| made by someone who claims to be Jewish that basically echoes
| my sentiments -- that the author of that blog post was naive
| and got carried away in his rhetoric, instead of being an
| actual antisemite:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27385448
| olivermarks wrote:
| A major reason why today's politicians are so bland and
| uninspiring is because they have been groomed to never say
| anything controversial or contentious. Trawling through adults
| adolescence photos and shaming/blaming them for some youthful
| indiscretion is another aspect of this societal disaster.
|
| The anti war candidate Tulsi Gabbard in the recent US election is
| an example of someone relentlessly ridiculed and destroyed
| despite the absence of anything controversial in her background
| and is a dismal example of the way politics works today.
|
| Now we have the pretentious corporate diversity industry
| insisting no one in their orbit has any opinions that might
| offend. Hopeless.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| And if there was a referendum: "Political correctness should be
| dismantled", I guess most people would vote "Hell yeah!".
|
| So much for democracy.
| 6foot4_82iq wrote:
| The most intolerant wins.
|
| > It suffices for an intransigent minority -a certain type of
| intransigent minorities -to reach a minutely small level, say
| three or four percent of the total population, for the entire
| population to have to submit to their preferences.
|
| > Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of
| the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression
| that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.
|
| https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
| dict...
| olivermarks wrote:
| I don't understand your point. Are you suggesting 'political
| correctness' - a relatively new term and phenomenon largely
| enabled by the internet - was something installed by society
| and is a good thing, and that a vote to 'dismantle' it would
| be a bad thing?
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| No, quite the oposite.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Still not clear what your point is?
| jpadkins wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness
|
| It's an old term, and has been used in it's current form
| since the 1970's. I remember it's usage in media in the
| 80s, before the commercial internet.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Looks like mid eighties when term took off
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=politically
| +co...
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| It's hardly a failing of democracy that vague platitudes
| don't get turned into policy.
|
| Ending "political correctness" might be unpopular in
| principle, but I doubt any specific proposal for how to
| dismantle it would be popular.
|
| How would you even do that? You can't force people to not be
| offended by something.
| MikeUt wrote:
| Odd. You never hear about people fired/removed for anti-white
| statements. Nick Cannon was an interesting example, where his
| anti-white remarks went completely ignored:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nick-cannon-apologizes-for...
|
| Edit: To those saying he apologized. Yes, he did - but only to a
| specific subset of those he insulted: ""First and foremost I
| extend my deepest and most sincere apologies to my Jewish sisters
| and brothers for the hurtful and divisive words that came out of
| my mouth during my interview with Richard Griffin,''"
| isis777 wrote:
| Antiwhite statements are okay because whites are the oppressors
| and are in privledged positions of power. We need more Jews in
| leadership positions at influential organizations like media
| companies. Then we can promote more Jewish tolerance
| joenathanone wrote:
| > Nick Cannon apologized Wednesday night for comments he called
| "hurtful and divisive" after the television host and producer
| was dropped by ViacomCBS for remarks the company called anti-
| Semitic.
|
| First sentence from your link, seems like maybe you are just
| trying to be controversial.
| tobesure wrote:
| There are additional examples, but posting them and
| discussing the normalization of anti-white racism is
| "flamebait" and will get your account suspended on HN for
| "ideological battles".
|
| In any case the fact that he hasn't been completely cancelled
| speaks to the unique status that anti-white racism has over
| other forms.
| loopz wrote:
| It is better to point out how it is counterproductive and
| offer better arguments on the table. Because we won't bring
| "balance" by stomping on some other ethnic group, or fall
| into even more generalization about groups of people.
| djrogers wrote:
| I think GP's point was that he was fired for anti-Semitic
| remarks, while he made remarks about white people that were
| ignored:
|
| " those without dark skin "have a deficiency" and have acted
| as "savages" throughout history. He references "Jewish
| people, white people, Europeans" "
| jimbob21 wrote:
| Its even in the actual hyperlink. Trolls will be trolls.
| ostenning wrote:
| The article you have linked said that he got fired. Its
| literally in the headline:
|
| > Nick Cannon apologizes for anti-Semitic remarks after firing
| _-david-_ wrote:
| The person you were responding to was trying to say he did
| not get fired for his anti white remarks.
| Gunax wrote:
| I support his speech, I just despise the hypocrisy.
|
| Nevermind that this position has an unwritten rule that it must
| be occupied by a minority.
| mc32 wrote:
| Not exactly. The ex-Apple DO was fired because she offered an
| opinion that was considered heretical, though I think it was an
| uncontroversial claim.
| mooseburger wrote:
| Yeah, that was interesting. Apparently even being a female
| POC doesn't allow you to blaspheme against the nameless
| faith. It has evolved.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I am enjoying the ever-more-blatant examples of this kind of
| thing.
| CivBase wrote:
| I actually think this was handled well.
|
| I'm normally against taking punitive action against employees for
| old social media content. People make mistakes and they should be
| allowed to grow and improve without being held permanently
| accountable for their past selves. However, this isn't like James
| Gunn being fired for old jokes with bad taste. This person was
| Google's _head of diversity_ and he posted serious, blatantly-
| antisemitic arguments. That post would compromise his credibility
| with subordinates - not just as a person, but as a leader with a
| focus on diversity.
|
| I like how Google reassigned him instead of firing him. It's an
| old post and he has hopefully changed for the better since then.
| He's no longer fit for his previous role, but there are probably
| many other roles he can still be effective in. I don't want to
| see someone crushed for past mistakes if they've learned from
| them.
|
| IMO, this sets a good precedent for how to handle issues like
| this in the future. Hopefully other companies are taking notes.
| oogabooga123 wrote:
| Anyone see a pattern with the heavily downvoted posts in this
| thread? I know it's against the rules to complain about voting --
| think of it as a thought provoking observation
| erect2 wrote:
| HackerNews is a curious place.
| rightorwrong128 wrote:
| Is 14 years the new record or do we have higher bidders?
| hn8788 wrote:
| The Boeing communications chief resigned due to a 33 year old
| article where he said females shouldn't be allowed in military
| combat roles.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/business/boeing-resignati...
| xdennis wrote:
| That's so weird considering the USA only recently allowed
| women in combat.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Not tech, but in 2018 Nascar/Indycar driver Conor Daly lost a
| sponsorship because it surfaced that his (at the time) newly
| immigrated Irish father had used a racial slur in a radio
| interview in the 80s, years before Conor had even been born
| [0]. Its going to be hard for anything to beat the absurdity of
| that situation.
|
| [0]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/sports/autoracing/conor-d...
| sterlind wrote:
| He also wrote a blog post in which he confesses being homophobic:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210603012214/https://www.kamau...
|
| I was confused about why Google said "LGBTQ+ community" in
| addition to Jewish community, and I think that's it.
| czzr wrote:
| How sad that a well written post that openly and rationally
| speaks of his internal struggles, and ends in a positive place,
| gets dismissed as "homophobic".
| javagram wrote:
| Interesting to read that post, which is clearly pro-gay, and
| contrast with gay marriage referendums in the 2012 election
| which barely passed with around 47% of voters opposed (and of
| course Prop 8 had won in california just a few years earlier).
|
| 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.
| Tomte wrote:
| > Instead of firing him, though, Google is moving Bobb into a
| STEM-focused role.
|
| That's surprising, but I think it's good. He's obviously not
| viable in the diversity role, but there's no reason to go
| ballistic over a 15 year old blog post.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I don't know. I'm not Jewish, but I'd have trouble working with
| someone with views like that. I guess if they were extremely
| contrite and enough time had passed since they had said it (and
| no other incident since then).
| antisemtexism wrote:
| Sounds like you're the one with the problem then. He barely
| said anything offensive, just misspoke - if you look at the
| full blog post text, the intent is clear.
| cousin_it wrote:
| Yeah, seems like a good compromise. There's a big difference
| between "we don't want our spokesperson to say X" and "we want
| to make people saying X unemployable". I wish the second didn't
| happen at all. I wish all people saying things hateful to me
| could find nice jobs and get assimilated into live & let live.
| What else should I wish, that they'd die poor in a ditch and
| their kids too?
| staplers wrote:
| That's several steps beyond what most in society are capable
| of foreshadowing.
|
| A society of mad kings (on all political sides) who want
| anyone not like them "taken away" with little solutions on
| actually fixing the problems that caused the disagreement.
| busterarm wrote:
| Imagine being a Jew and suddenly finding this guy not only not-
| fired but on your team.
|
| I'll take hostile work environment for 1000, Alex.
|
| Thing is, I wouldn't want to work with this person at my
| company period.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There's lots of circumstances where you've gotta accept that
| your coworkers might believe offensive things. Imagine being
| a gay man and finding a devout Muslim on your team who
| wholeheartedly believes it's wrong to be gay - if she's
| willing to treat you respectfully and not bring it up at
| work, would you insist she be fired?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| C'mon, if we go back 20 years, I'm sure A LOT of Americans
| wrote and said unspeakable things about middle eastern
| people. Same goes for a lot of Iraqi and Afghani people,
| after the invasion.
|
| Point is - war and conflicts brings out emotions, and people
| say things they necessarily don't mean under normal
| circumstances.
|
| What's more, people mature and change. The person you were
| 10-20-30-xx years ago, isn't necessarily the person you are
| today.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I would.
|
| As long as he can keep his work and private lives seperate,
| and doesn't let these opinions infiltrate the work life, all
| is fine.
|
| Just like kinky sex is fine for someone at home, but a
| fireable offence if done in the office.
|
| If I saw him write stuff like this in an internal memo, that
| would be the time to fire him.
| busterarm wrote:
| Some people are more sensitive to affected by anti-semitism
| than others. That's the issue.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Likewise, some people would feel very uncomfortable
| working with him if they knew he had a massive dildo
| collection.
|
| But no HR department will recommend firing him for the
| size of his dildo collection, unless of course he brings
| it to work...
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I'm a Jew. If he apologized publicly and it was a long time
| ago, I think it would be ok. We have to be able to give
| people second chances and the ability to evolve their views.
| If someone was a neo nazi as a youth and grew out of it and
| regretted their past then they should be allowed to live a
| normal life. Preventing this just leads to more
| radicalization.
| busterarm wrote:
| While in sentiment I agree with you, this is not being
| applied consistently throughout society. We are currently
| in an environment of maximum consequences, no tolerance
| afforded. Until something pulls us back from the brink, it
| needs to be that way consistently or more tensions will be
| inflamed.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| You are not wrong in that enforcement is definitely
| applied inconsistently and with extreme bias with regards
| to race and gender. I struggle with the correct approach
| to take though and if its cracking down on everyone or
| hoping that this at least is a crack in the door and
| people will realize the current trend of punishing people
| for decades old comments is wrong and should be stopped.
| Unfortunately it is likely that the rules will just
| continue to be unevenly enforced stoking anger and
| further dividing people.
| uh_uh wrote:
| Something tells me Google wouldn't be so gentle had he been a
| white male talking in a similar tone about women, blacks or
| muslims.
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| why would they use an engineer for such a role anyways. Should
| have gotten someone with a degree in gender studies
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >why would they use an engineer for such a role anyways.
|
| So that the engineers who have to comply with the policies
| and orders this guy sets or sets in motion feel better about
| it.
| mcherm wrote:
| A major goal of a diversity leader in a tech-focused company
| like Google is to influence the behavior of engineers. A
| fellow engineer is often able to do that far more effectively
| than someone without a strong technical background.
| loopz wrote:
| Probably overrated the engineer aptitude to learn the domain.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > but there's no reason to go ballistic over a 15 year old blog
| post.
|
| 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.
| Proven wrote:
| What is that shocking to anyone?
|
| What did they expect?
| spinny wrote:
| > Odd. You never hear about people fired/removed for anti-white
| statements. Nick Cannon was an interesting example, where his
| anti-white remarks went completely ignored:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nick-cannon-apologizes-for...
|
| WRONG THINK ALERT - get the army of snowflakes and flag this
| persons comment. ohh wait somebody did already.
| BTCOG wrote:
| What I find most absurd in all of this is the utter stupidity of
| beliefs in entirely man made fairytales that have been causing
| nonstop wars for the past few thousand years.
|
| Maybe eventually, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, and
| any other gullible belief systems in fake sky people, written by
| total nutcases 1k+ years ago and miraculously still followed
| today, will end. Believing that you're somehow superior to the
| other faction of people based on your beliefs in false Gods is so
| laughable that it borders on showing that all humanity is largely
| insane. I find it absolutely baffling that you can read any of
| these ancient texts and do much more than laugh your fucking ass
| off. Where is God? Why would he have you launching rockets at
| innocent civilians over what amounts to gang turf wars for phony
| belief systems.
|
| Nothing I said here was racist before anyone even starts.
| Religion is fake bullshit. Abolish religion, and you free the
| people to the reality of the universe. God is dead. You fight for
| no reason other than your murderous nature to want to kill. All
| sides. Any nation. Religion is man made, man written, has no
| basis in any reality, and is cult-personality total insanity.
| Koshkin wrote:
| But, but... _Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer._
| drewmate wrote:
| It's not about the literal beliefs of religions. It's about
| having a 'tribe' or in-group. That was helpful to our survival
| as a species, and that instinct has not gone away. If it's not
| religion, it's political ideology, national identity,
| ethnicity, or allegiance to a football team. We love defining
| the world in terms of 'us' and 'others.' The trick is in
| finding a way to live (and dare I say work) in proximity with
| 'others.'
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Religion made sense back in the day. Life was hard and short,
| and we didn't know what would happen afterwards. Today, people
| work their butts off because they know (hope) they'll be able
| to enjoy life in retirement - back then, people endured life
| hoping that they'd enjoy afterlife.
| BTCOG wrote:
| "Working our butts off" for the future hope of a payoff after
| retirement and after our bodies have lost all our vitality is
| as big a scam as all religions. It keeps the coffers lined,
| keeps people head down, and it's nothing but a lie. All
| people should be able to live free of slavery and not be
| duped into believing all this office work 50 hours a week
| ends in some magical, mystical payoff. It doesn't. I've known
| a TON of people who died right after retirement, and who
| can't do anything they wanted to do after retirement as
| they're too damn worn down. The entire working for another
| company to make them profits in return for a paltry little
| barely livable wage, is a scam.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Abolish religion, and you free the people to the reality of
| the universe.
|
| You'd be better off abolishing politics/politicians[1]:
| religion is but one way of "othering". Religion/sectarianism is
| only a hot-button issue because it serves hard-liner
| politicians well on both sides of any conflict/blood-feud
|
| 1. Good luck with that! Especially when politicians make the
| laws.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Abolish those as well, as the nationalism is also a crock of
| zealot-religious bs. In America, we have lost religion and
| instead many now feel the need to jump into identity
| politics. This mentality is disgusting and very small minded
| tribalism. It's inherent in human nature and we still share
| so much of that earlier hominid brain.
| teddyh wrote:
| The nazis were not especially religious in nature. And russian
| communists were specifically _anti_ -religious.
| BTCOG wrote:
| It's a similar premise in the fact that each of these
| systems, whether it be religion, political ideology, or a
| cult personality all require mindless and low IQ followers to
| work.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think there are a few noteworthy components to this:
|
| * Kamau's post conflates Jews with Israel, which is
| simultaneously a common, innocent mistake _and_ a rhetorical
| strategy used by Zionists and the far right. Having read the
| actual post[1], I 'm inclined to believe that Kamau falls for the
| aforementioned strategy.
|
| * One of the Twitter accounts linked in the article,
| "StopAntisemitism," is a Zionist organization. They've been
| outspoken in their attempts to conflate Israel (and Israel's
| Jews) with Judaism as a whole, and to generally delegitimize the
| faith and politics of the millions of diaspora Jews who reject
| Zionism and do not support Israel.
|
| I am a Jew, and I thought that Kamau's blog post was tone-deaf.
| But it's also over a decade old, and its chief fault is that it
| falls for a rhetorical conflation that countless organizations
| have dedicated extraordinary resources too (that Jews are
| fundamentally foreigners, that we all belong in Israel, that to
| be an anti-Zionist is to be an anti-Semite). I don't think he
| deserves blame for falling for that dirty trick.
|
| [1]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau...
| mcguire wrote:
| Excellent point!
|
| 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.
| Udik wrote:
| > They've been outspoken in their attempts to conflate Israel
| (and Israel's Jews) with Judaism as a whole
|
| 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...
| woodruffw wrote:
| The actual poll[1] paints a substantially different picture:
| less than half of American Jews polled said that Israel was
| "essential" to them; the 80% figure comes from a separate
| group that _explicitly_ said "important, but not essential."
|
| That could mean any number of things. For example: I have
| family members in Israel. Their health and happiness is
| important to me. Does that make caring about Israel's affairs
| important to me? It would probably depend on _how_ the
| question was framed. But it would be _incorrect_ to conflate
| that with support for the Israeli state.
|
| Other important numbers from the poll:
|
| * Only a minority of American Jews (34%) oppose the BDS
| movement, and believe (33%) that the Israeli government's
| peace effort is "sincere"
|
| * Only 32% believe the core doctrine of Zionism, i.e. that
| Israel was is the land of the Jews by birthright.
|
| In other words: I don't think it's correct to conflate the
| American Jewish identity with any positive or dispositive
| interest in Israel. We're a big group, and our national
| identity is overwhelmingly American. Asking us to reconcile
| our _ethnoreligious_ identity with an unrelated _national_
| identity is bewildering at best, and insulting (cf. canards
| about Jewish loyalty) at worst.
|
| [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/21/u-s-
| jews-ha...
| guidovranken wrote:
| The head of racism was found to be racist. If anything, he
| deserves a bonus.
| erect wrote:
| Criticizing Israel is not racist.
| chakhs wrote:
| It's weird how people are judged by what they wrote/said without
| anyone asking them for clarification for what they meant?
|
| I feel like with "Jew" in the excerpt he means Israeli, which is
| more like a political view. Basically saying if you support
| Israel you have an insatiable appetite for war. And honestly
| there always is some vagueness regarding the word jew, it can
| refer to religion, race, sometimes an ideology or a country.
|
| It could be a racist comment though, but I think it's good to
| give people the opportunity to clarify rather than chace any
| utterance they make. No one can express themselves with
| exactitude Everytime they speak or write a blog, it wasn't a
| book.
| nojokes wrote:
| How are his comments antisemitic?
| nojokes wrote:
| Some other comments point out that his posts contain general
| racist sentiment so perhaps also these comments should be
| viewed in this context.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Will be interesting to see how Google handles other old examples
| of people writing things perceived to be offensive. Apple clearly
| has taken the opposite approach, with the firing of Antonio
| Garcia Martinez. While the google employee's comments are clearly
| anti Semitic, one can hope he has changed since then and give him
| another chance. We are too quick to condemn people for life due
| to their past mistakes. With that said though, a diversity role
| is probably not going to be an ideal spot for him going forward
| and re-assigning him is good.
| mooseburger wrote:
| Regarding Garcia Martinez, I am still surprised "straight male"
| is such a disadvantage that being POC doesn't buy enough
| oppression points to allow you to criticize white women. Then
| again, maybe it's more that being Hispanic specifically isn't
| enough. I have a hard time imagining a black man getting fired
| for the same comments.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| he didn't even criticize white women. he employed sarcasm in
| a book filled with sarcasm to contrast one character against
| the local stereotype
|
| it's beyond stupid, especially for a company that works with
| Dr Dre
| bluthru wrote:
| >Dr Dre
|
| I'm starting to notice a pattern.
| [deleted]
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > one can hope he has changed since then and give him another
| chance
|
| I... can't help but think that, had he been a member of a
| different demographic, he would have just plain been fired.
| underseacables wrote:
| Almost certainly. The last 13 years has created a double
| standard.
|
| White: Guilty until proven innocent, and even then, still
| guilty.
|
| Person of color: No, that's wrong, people of color cannot be
| racist or prejudice, what they said was taken out of content
| by someone who is racist.
|
| That's the new paradigm.
|
| Racism, prejudice, and bigotry, of any kind, by anyone, is
| just wrong.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| 13 years should be plenty of time to have some studies
| covering this; do you have studies to prove this claim?
| lainga wrote:
| Plenty of time... the totalitarian principle of QM
| notwithstanding, not everything not forbidden is
| compulsory at a macro level; academia is not a
| deterministic machine for yielding studies given the
| appearance of a phenomenon. Otherwise I'd ask you to
| provide some studies quantifying "plenty of time".
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I feel 13 years should at least be producing nonfiction
| essays or something that passes for journalism. It took 4
| years for 5000 trump books to come out. 13 years for the
| upending of racism towards being against the whites
| should be plenty, too.
| [deleted]
| bagacrap wrote:
| how many years was it between the invention of floss and
| the connection of data that proved its efficacy?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Unfortunately you are probably right.
| yosefjaved1 wrote:
| Here is the original post he wrote if anybody wants to read it
| (it's a quick read. 5 min):
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamaub...
| nazca wrote:
| Slightly shocking that he didn't get fired. (yet?)
|
| They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf,
| insensitive, but largely supported by research. Bobb goes on a
| clearly antisemitic rant, and just gets reassigned.
|
| Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with
| these things changed over the past few years?
| zuminator wrote:
| Damore held and advanced his beliefs while working for Google.
| Bobb went on his "rant" (actually just one instance) back in
| 2007 and has recanted his beliefs. So the disparate treatment
| is based on disparate behavior, which isn't on its own an
| inconsistency nor necessarily a policy change.
| throw1103 wrote:
| A blog post from 13 years ago.. which has since been removed..
| is different from an email sent internally.
|
| 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.
| throwusawayus wrote:
| > which has since been removed
|
| Literally within the past day, along with the rest of his
| entire blog. This post was still online _yesterday_!
|
| I also don't see any form of public acknowledgement or
| apology anywhere on his site or twitter. Perhaps he made one
| but I just can't find it. I'm not sure how people are
| affirmatively concluding that his views have changed so
| substantially since this post.
|
| > Taken out of context
|
| The full post speaks for itself. Nothing is taken out of
| context here; he's directly making offensive statements about
| all Jewish people based on stereotypes and actions of the
| Israeli government, which literally has no relation to the
| majority of Jewish people in the world.
| randompwd wrote:
| Are you the head of diversity? If no, then it doesn't
| matters. You won't have outsized power and influence.
|
| Kind of hard to claim diversity matters when you install a
| demonstrable racist at the top.
|
| Who else is he discriminating against that we just haven't
| found yet?
| DoctorNick wrote:
| "largely supported by research" is complete horseshit. It's was
| just reheated biological determinism:
| https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-...
| sanity31415 wrote:
| > They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf,
| insensitive, but largely supported by research
|
| 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...
| austhrow743 wrote:
| "Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism" was a big one I
| remember people having issue with back when this story was
| news.
| kbelder wrote:
| Is it false? Doesn't seem like something he would assert
| without a cite.
| ackfoobar wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
|
| Male: 2.68 SD: 0.65
|
| Female: 2.94 SD:0.67
|
| d: 0.39
|
| Non-native English user here, it seems the word
| "neurotic" has some connotation that the trait
| "neuroticism" doesn't? And that's why it's received so
| poorly?
| sanity31415 wrote:
| "Neurotic" does have a negative connotation in common
| usage, but it's also the term used by personality
| psychologists, it's the 'N' in the OCEAN personality
| model. It means "risk averse".
| ackfoobar wrote:
| "Educate yourself" is often thrown by the left in heated
| conversations.
|
| But when a academic term (that is closely related to a
| negative word) is used, some on the same side refuse to
| understand and get butthurt instead.
|
| E.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23122068
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Is it false?_
|
| Within the context in which the claim was made, it's "not
| even wrong". Lots of the claims in the Damore memo are
| similarly better to characterize as "not even wrong"
| rather than "false".
|
| _> Doesn 't seem like something he would assert without
| a cite._
|
| I can find a cite for literally anything.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand, but afaik no.
| nazca wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be
| truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone
| deaf and insensitive. The bar for insensitive is very low in
| this context.
|
| I think with a fair and honest reading of his letter & the
| context that it came up in, its clear that he was trying to
| contribute in a positive way to the discussion & effort.
|
| This is why the inconsistency between these two cases is so
| remarkable. Antisemitism, even if from years ago, and not
| related to company business, is pretty damning (esp for
| someone leading D&I efforts). Meanwhile, an attempt, albeit
| executed in a politically naive way, to positively contribute
| to a discussion led to a firing & character assassination.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| > I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be
| truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone
| deaf and insensitive. The bar for insensitive is very low
| in this context.
|
| If a fair and honest reading of his memo reveals that he
| had good intent, and the memo was scientifically accurate -
| and yet he was fired and publicly vilified for it, then
| isn't describing it as "tone deaf and insensitive" a form
| of victim-blaming?
|
| It seems similar to pointing out that the victim of a
| sexual assault was dressed provocatively.
| [deleted]
| tolbish wrote:
| People take issue with the following, but I don't recall
| Google confirming/denying if it is true:
|
| _I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I
| think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more
| equal gender and race representation, Google has created
| several discriminatory practices:
|
| * Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a
| certain gender or race
|
| * A high priority queue and special treatment for "diversity"
| candidates
|
| * Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for
| "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
|
| * Reconsidering any set of people if it's not "diverse"
| enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse
| direction (clear confirmation bias)
|
| * Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which
| can incentivize illegal discrimination_
| kbelder wrote:
| I don't get it. He's pointing out five problems with
| Google's efforts. I don't know whether they're correct or
| not, but I don't see anything here to criticize. If these
| are true, and they seem plausible, they do need to be
| fixed.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| To my knowledge Google has never challenge the accuracy of
| those claims, and such practices are commonplace in many
| tech companies in the name of "diversity".
| jms55 wrote:
| Do you think purposely hiring X group is a bad practice?
| From what I understand, it's not enough to say "we'll
| hire X if they're better than Y". When you don't actually
| have any X at the moment, your company might not be very
| welcoming to X, and so they won't join. So you purposely
| go out of your way to hire extra X, to account for the
| lower acceptance rate.
|
| The common response is "that's not fair to Y, you should
| be hiring only based on quality, not on X or Y". But the
| issue is if you only hire on quality, but the quality X
| candidates don't join, then you're actually losing out on
| quality. So instead, you lower quality requirements, with
| the goal that overall you're actually promoting quality
| in the end, by working towards an environment where
| quality _is_ the only determining factor, and removing
| the current factors that work against X candidates.
|
| What about this do you disagree with?
|
| Note: This kind of handwaves over what "X won't join is".
| There's a lot of nuance to this. It may be that X grows
| up thinking the job isn't for them, because they always
| see Y in those types of jobs, and never bothers to try
| that job. It may be that X tries to join, but the people
| hiring them all Y, and favor Y instead because it's
| familiar to them, and the rest of the company is Y. It
| may be that X joins, but they feel uncomfortable that
| everyone is Y, and quits. There's a lot of different
| factors that goes into what discrimination looks like,
| which is why affirmative action is a lot more than just
| company policies.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Beyond your handwaving absurdity, is there any empirical
| evidence at all that lowering the quality bar for X ends
| up actually raising quality in the end? Because it sounds
| like a bunch of unicorn fairytale nonsense to me.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This may be of value.
|
| https://blog.capterra.com/7-studies-that-prove-the-value-
| of-...
| sanity31415 wrote:
| I believe that people should be treated as individuals,
| not collectivized into groups based on immutable
| characteristics like ethnicity.
|
| I believe that while "reverse-discrimination" has become
| commonplace in the name of diversity, it is unfair,
| divisive, counterproductive, and illegal under Title VII
| of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
|
| I'm not accusing you of making this argument, but the
| assumption that a particular ethnic group can't compete
| on a level playing field is deeply condescending towards
| those groups. It's "the soft bigotry of low
| expectations".
| jms55 wrote:
| I don't entirely disagree with you. But by the same
| token, trying to treat everyone as an individual without
| acknowledging disadvantages due to race, gender, etc
| isn't a good idea either.
|
| For instance, I'm trans. I'm not openly out when
| searching for jobs / at work, because I fear I will be
| discriminated for it. If I saw a company already had
| several trans people, and they were seeking trans people
| out and asking them to apply, I would maybe change my
| mind.
|
| Should companies treat everyone as individuals, and say
| "if trans people wanted to work here, they need to
| apply"? Because that's how you get no trans people
| applying, and that perpetuates the cycle of "I can't come
| out, no one else in the world is trans". Sure, it would
| be better if companies didn't have to advocate for
| diversity, but until society doesn't have stigmitism,
| real or imagined, against minorities, then I don't think
| it's wrong to help them on the basis of their identity.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that you are fearful of discrimination
| and it has discouraged you from seeking employment.
| That's wrong and unfair.
|
| I have no problem with companies going out of their way
| to advertise that they are welcoming to all, whether
| black, trans, white, gay, young, old, etc, and that
| candidates will be judged on merit.
|
| But I do have a problem with holding people to a
| different standard because of their ethnicity, gender,
| gender identity, or any other inborn characteristic
| that's irrelevant to their ability to do the job.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The issue is the statistics show fairly consistently that
| the playing field starts non-level, at multiple points.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06
| -24...
| sanity31415 wrote:
| As Damore explains at length in his memo, statistical
| disparities in representation don't prove discrimination.
|
| For example, 74% of NBA players are black - compared to
| just 13% of the US population.
|
| Is this disparity evidence that the NBA is discriminating
| against non-black players?
| tolbish wrote:
| If that is the line of thinking, that certain races are
| naturally predisposed to playing basketball, then I could
| see why Google took issue with insiuating that certain
| genders are naturally predisposed to be engineers.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| I didn't claim that certain races are naturally
| predisposed to playing basketball, I just quoted an
| uncontroversial statistic and asked whether it could only
| be explained by discrimination.
| [deleted]
| brianberns wrote:
| He suggested that biological differences between the sexes
| (rather than bias/discrimination) are the reason why women
| are underrepresented in the tech industry.
|
| It's not hard to understand why many people find this
| offensive.
|
| Here's the direct quote if you need it: "I'm simply stating
| that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and
| women differ in part due to biological causes and that these
| differences may explain why we don't see equal representation
| of women in tech and leadership."
| haberman wrote:
| Damore's quote says "in part" and "may explain," suggesting
| the possibility of multiple causes, and making clear that
| there is uncertainty.
|
| Your paraphrase says "the reason" and "rather than
| bias/descrimination", suggesting both certainty and only a
| single cause.
|
| How do you reconcile this difference between your
| paraphrase and Damore's quote?
| brianberns wrote:
| That's why I used the word "suggested", which is exactly
| what he did, in a section prominently titled "Possible
| non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech".
| haberman wrote:
| He suggested that non-bias causes are possible
| contributing factors to the disparity, yes.
|
| Nowhere does he suggest they are the _only_ causes, or
| that bias /discrimination do not exist.
| brianberns wrote:
| Parsing his sentence for tiny nuances like that isn't
| very helpful IMHO, but I'll indulge you.
|
| His exact words are "these differences may explain". He
| doesn't say "these differences may PARTLY explain". If I
| say that A may explain B, the reasonable implication is
| that A may fully explain B. So, yes, he does suggest that
| non-bias causes are the _only_ causes.
|
| Just to be clear: I don't think this makes any real
| difference. The reaction to his email would've been the
| same either way. But the fact remains that your
| interpretation of the quote isn't supported by the actual
| words he used.
| haberman wrote:
| If a holistic reading of Damore's memo reinforced the
| idea that he was trying to deny the possibility of
| bias/discrimination, then perhaps you could call your
| inference a "reasonable implication." But the opposite is
| true, Damore repeatedly tries to represent the
| uncertainty and possibility of multiple causes. This is
| true even in the single sentence you quoted.
|
| Given this, I do not think it is a reasonable implication
| to turn "may explain" to "may fully explain."
|
| It's hard for me to believe this distinction doesn't
| matter given that his critics always seem to specifically
| call out his "denial" of bias/discrimination when they
| want to paint him in the most unflattering light (even
| the NYT: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/136062688
| 7035338752).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'd assume they'd just direct you to the NLRB findings that
| Damore's firing was lawful.
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K1JRtRYBLyhhgkJLXnW2Nxjo5Bn.
| ..
|
| "... statements about immutable traits linked to sex - such
| as women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the
| top of the IQ distribution - were discriminatory and
| constituted sexual harassment..."
| treeman79 wrote:
| Insensitive part was being truthful. Tone deaf was not
| changing personal beliefs
| diomedes wrote:
| > Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal
| with these things changed over the past few years?
|
| 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.
| geodel wrote:
| Well isn't it plainly obvious to be fired one has to be
| targeted by rabid left.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Read Damore's post again and you might see the epic burn he
| laid on Google executives. That is why he was instantly purged.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| I think the blog post is definitely worse than Damore's email
| (although I thought it was pretty crappy in itself), but you're
| talking here about a blog post from 2007 and an email that was
| sent via company channels while he was working there.
|
| 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.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| No Damore sent supposedly confidential feedback when
| solicited to do so by diversity trainers. That content so
| enraged the diversity staff they leaked it to the rest of the
| company. Perhaps Damore was naive in thinking the feedback
| about diversity training was welcome or confidential, but he
| definately did not send a company-wide email to anyone.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| "Damore emailed his memo to the organisers of Google's
| diversity meetings in early July. When there was no
| response, he started sending the document to Google's
| internal mailing lists and forums, eager for a reaction."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-
| dam...
| rsj_hn wrote:
| This is the Guardian telescoping and generalizing with
| it's usual rigor.
|
| There were two diversity trainings, both requesting
| feedback. There was no email there was a google doc, a
| link to which was sent as part of a feedback form in the
| trainings and then shared with a larger group called
| "skeptics" created for these types of discussions at the
| request of Damore's manager.
|
| You can read the timeline here:
| https://www.dhillonlaw.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/04/201804...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > called "skeptics" created for these types of
| discussions at the request of Damore's manager.
|
| No, at the suggestion of a random person who was a
| manager. Not damores manager.
|
| And the skeptics group has nothing to do with diversity,
| is open to anyone, and by sharing with the group,
| functionally meant that the doc was emailed to hundreds
| or thousands of people.
|
| The guardian is correct.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Read the timeline, so he shared it on a forum, he
| persisted with it through the month via various channels
| (who were all seemingly dismissing him, and I'd say that
| in itself is a huge failing on their end considering his
| autism), then he shared it another forum, several days
| later an anonymous source leaked it. So his legal
| testification of events isn't at all far from the
| Guardian's one paragraph summary.
|
| Meanwhile, your initial summary of it was that he sent
| confidential feedback to the diversity team after a
| training session which pissed them off so much that they
| leaked it to screw with him.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| That's not true. Damore posted his document to larger and
| larger making lists (it was essentially ignored on the
| first two or three) until it finally got a reaction. He
| shared it with thousands of people.
| balls187 wrote:
| I think the point being made was Damore's email was sent
| using company resources, while employed by the company,
| presumably on company time.
|
| Bobb's blog post was from 2007.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| He was using company resources to respond to a company
| request for him to provide feedback to a company event.
|
| When the company asks you "tell me what you think about
| the content of our diversity training, we promise your
| response is confidential and we are interested in hearing
| what you have to say", and you respond with an evidence
| based argument that the diversity training is incorrect,
| then this is a very different situation from the head of
| diversity making public comments on a blog. Remember
| Damore was a non-management developer.
|
| If you are going to fire people for their views, which is
| what apparently Google has no problem doing, then the
| Damore situation is much less justifiable than this
| situation and the person with the offending views was not
| even fired.
| balls187 wrote:
| I don't have all the facts, but this article [1] seems to
| refute your accounting.
|
| The memo was initially sent to Diversity Training, then
| after a non-response, Damore himself circulated to a
| wider internal audience.
|
| According to Google [2], he was fired because portions of
| his memo were found to be a violation of Google's Code of
| Conduct, specifically "each Googler to do their utmost to
| create a workplace culture that is free of harassment,
| intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."
|
| But again, this all misses the point--a 2007 blog post
| when you were not an employee is much different than
| sending a memo internally while on the clock.
|
| 1:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-
| dam...
|
| 2: https://blog.google/outreach-
| initiatives/diversity/note-empl...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| That seems like a pretty shallow distinction considering
| Google's "bring your whole self to work" policy and
| cultural norms. People at Google regularly expressed far
| more controversial opinions than Damore's using company
| resources on company time. Further, the explicit
| rationale for canning Damore was not that he was
| expressing himself on company time or with company
| resources, but rather the patently false notion that his
| criticisms of the company constituted a hostile work
| environment.
|
| Of course he was only fired because he was criticizing
| popular regressive policies and that provoked the wrath
| of employees who identify with those kinds of policies,
| and management decided it was easier to give in to the
| authoritarians (indeed, Google's management the
| authoritarian employees in question are probably not
| distinct groups--they certainly overlapped).
| balls187 wrote:
| > People at Google regularly expressed far more
| controversial opinions than Damore's using company
| resources on company time.
|
| Do you have proof of this?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Is that better or worse?
|
| In Damore's case: He was asked to privately(?) provide
| his thoughts to the company(hence while employed and on
| company time).
|
| Bobb's case: He decided to write a blog post. No-one
| asked him nor compelled him to share his thoughts.
|
| My view is that firing people over views and opinions is
| dumb as long as they are not trying to force their views
| and opinions on other people in the workplace.
|
| On the other hand, my view is that one's views and
| opinions are private and don't need to be spewed
| everywhere, hence why I have a dim view of social
| media(notes the irony/hypocrisy of posting this on HN).
| balls187 wrote:
| > [Damore] was asked to privately(?) provide his thoughts
| to the company(hence while employed and on company time).
|
| Except that wasn't why he was fired.
| mc32 wrote:
| Given prior behavior around similar issues with other people
| I'm very surprised this person maintained their job.
|
| 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.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal
| with these things changed over the past few years?
|
| 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).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The simple explanation is not always correct.
|
| Damore doubled down on defending the document and asserted
| his right to publish it. At that point, he made himself a
| walking Title VII violation and tied Google's hands. Whether
| management wanted to fire him or not, the legal cost of
| retaining him was going to exceed his value as an individual
| contributor.
|
| As far as I can see, Bobb is doing everything he can to work
| with Google to avoid the further creation of a hostile work
| environment. It might not be enough, but for now it seems to
| be worth more to the company to keep him than to fire him.
|
| There may be one aspect, however, where your observation
| about relative American tolerances for hostile-environment-
| creating speech matters. Hostile work environment is
| partially decided by fellow employee's reaction to behavior.
| If the average Googler is, in fact, less tolerant of
| biological essentialism than antisemitism, that could create
| a corporation where one speech is punished more hardly than
| the other. But I think we ought not to discount the reaction
| of the separate actors in these two stories once caught in
| the spotlight.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, people on the Left haven't realized women's innate
| biological tendency towards neuroticism, which renders
| affirmative action self-defeating.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Why does this statement sound sexist? Is it true? I feel
| like I should disagree on principal, but honestly I've
| remotely no idea if this is true or false.
|
| I thought the data was that there are differences, but
| they're so small that the average man and average woman
| overlap in the majority of their characteristics.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They are small, and we are not nearly as good at
| separating out nature and nurture as Damore's claims
| require.
|
| The comment was an experiment, I was somewhat appalled to
| see I got upvoted for that here.
|
| Absolutely a fireable offense to inject that sort of
| discourse into a professional workplace imo.
| [deleted]
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| > women's innate biological tendency towards neuroticism
|
| What the actual...
|
| Are you serious right now? Men kill women and other men at
| much, much higher rates than women kill men or other women.
| What does that say about the the "innate biological
| tendencies" of men?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Of course not.
|
| I was seeing how far people would go with Damore, and it
| really saddens me how much my comment was upvoted. People
| here are the type of people I work with... they all hold
| these views?
|
| Of course, now that I've clarified, I expect the Damore-
| types to downvoted my comment, it peaked at +5.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Jfc. You had me there. I need to calm down and get back
| to work. This whole thread is way too much.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What's even more interesting is that it wasn't flagged
| and taken down until I clarified that I was trying to be
| critical of Damore.
| artichokes wrote:
| It's universally acknowledged that men are more violent
| than women.
| kbelder wrote:
| Would saying so at Google get you fired?
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| It is not universally acknowledged. Case in point, during
| the 2016 campaign, people asked if a woman could be
| trusted with the nuclear codes, but no one questioned
| whether a man could be trusted with them.
| zpeti wrote:
| This is the correct answer. The amount of anti-semitism shown
| during this recent Hamas Israel conflict in the woke left has
| been very worrying. We are likely to see a big resurgence of
| anti-semitism in the next period. It's more and more socially
| acceptable on the left.
| antisemtexism wrote:
| Criticism of Israel's apartheid policies isn't
| antisemitism. It's such nonsense how the two have been
| conflated in recent years.
| xdennis wrote:
| Arabs in Israel have the same rights (and more than Arabs
| in Arab countries).
|
| Where is the apartheid? Is letting the Palestinian
| Authority govern Gaza and the West Bank apartheid?
| zpeti wrote:
| Most of the stuff I've seen recently is not criticising
| the "apartheid policies" (debatable) of Israel. It's
| actual anti jewish rhetoric.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Seriously, _most_ of the stuff you 've seen recently?
| antisemtexism wrote:
| Well, I've seen the opposite. I suspect it's not leftists
| you're witnessing saying such things.
| javagram wrote:
| Street harassment or violence against visibly Jewish
| individuals has nothing to do with "criticism of Israel"
| though, and it did spike and has been increasing based on
| news articles and counts of reported incidents.
| https://www.jta.org/2021/05/21/united-
| states/antisemitism-in...
| Macha wrote:
| I am curious how much actual vs perceived anti-semitism
| there is. I've seen more people conflate "Criticism of the
| state of Israel" with "criticism of Jewish people" and
| further still with "discrimination against Jewish people"
| than I have seen actual antisemitic sentiment on the left.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Damore held and advocated for those beliefs so much so that he
| communicated them within the company at the time of his firing,
| and then legally disputed his firing.
|
| Bobb wrote something which he has since recanted, 10 years ago,
| outside of Google's official channels?
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| They are entirely consistent. They succumb to pressure from
| their far left employees, which don't like insensitivity to the
| Jews, but abhor any take that conflicts with their "diversity =
| equal outcomes" nonsense. There is no room for thought even
| remotely consistent with conservatism, whether or not it's
| consistent with scientific consensus.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > far left employees, which don't like insensitivity to the
| Jews,
|
| The far left doesn't like insensivity to Jews? Which far left
| are you thinking of? In the US, the far left is the most
| reliable source of public anti-Semitism. (Note specifically
| that I said public. I'm not going to try and divine whether
| rightwing anti-Semitism is worse in private, which it very
| well may be.)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Not everyone agrees.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/far-right-extremists-
| blam...
|
| https://www.bendthearc.us/announcing_howtofightantisemitism
| _...
| wutbrodo wrote:
| The first link is about Germany. I specifically mentioned
| the US. It's also about anti-Semitic _violence_, not
| public statements, another thing that I made sure to
| clarify. I'd be pretty comfortable guessing that anti-
| Semitic violence is more right-skewed, incl in the US.
|
| Your second link is interesting, thank you. Caputo in
| particular is a good example of anti-semitism among
| rightwing public figures. It doesn't dispute my
| impression that anti-Semitism (and other racism) on the
| left is much more acceptable in public statements than
| rightwing public anti-Semitism; it just claims that the
| media disproportionately focuses on leftwing anti-
| Semitism (possibly true).
|
| I don't think complaining about Internet votes is
| particularly constructive, but this is more of an insight
| than a complaint: the downvotes on my original comment
| are a perfect reflection of how inanely most people
| engage with topics like these. There are "good guys" and
| "bad guys", and the "good guys" don't do any of the bad
| things. I don't use the phrase anti-Semitism reflexively,
| and think it's often wielded as a bludgeon, particularly
| in the context of criticism of the Israeli government.
| But the idea that one would be surprised at anti-semitism
| on the far left, like the comment I responded to, is
| ridiculous.
| delaynomore wrote:
| Well, they can't afford to fire another person from an under-
| represented group, it'll really screw up the percentages :)
| londons_explore wrote:
| I really wish we could seperate people's private and professional
| lives.
|
| This guy _in his private life_ wrote some nasty blog posts. That
| shouldn 't impact his professional life. Nor vice versa.
|
| This blog post isn't sufficiently against the law to end up with
| him in prison. Yet this is a case of extrajudicial punishment.
|
| Unless there is any evidence of him bringing that thinking into
| his work, he shouldn't be punished.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| How private is it when you can easily read his thoughts online?
| If you want a private life then keep it private.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can't be openly racist in your private life, and have it
| not be a problem in your professional life managing and hiring
| people at a job. The idea that you think it shouldn't is weird.
| If I think that social netowrks are garbage that should be
| regulated out of existence and their operators jailed (in my
| private life, on my blog), should it affect my job at Facebook?
|
| 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?
| randompwd wrote:
| 7 billion people in the world. I don't think the global lead on
| diversity strategy role should be going to someone who wrote an
| elaborate essay in which he was clearly anti-Semitic. He
| graduated university in 1994 - it's not like he was a kid when
| he was writing these words.
|
| Who else has he helped discriminate against based on their
| ethnicity or views?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I just have an alternative name for the world of work.
| vidarh wrote:
| This guy expressed views that would reasonably call into
| question whether or not he would do the position he was in.
| Merely the appearance of such views might make it impossible
| for him to be able to e.g. get the respect of communities he
| might have to work with as part of his role.
|
| For many other positions I would agree with you, but not a
| position like this.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| This guy is the head of diversity. His job description involves
| him ideally having a) having a certain open state of mind b)the
| trust of the people he is dealing with. So this blog post
| disqualifies him since it demonstrates he lacks trait a) and he
| will most likely be lacking b) in the future making him totally
| useless at his job. So this is not a _punishment_ , just a
| _consequence_ of past misdeeds. If this man had been born
| white, the consequence would have most likely been that he
| would have never received this role in the first place. So i
| don 't see how this is different in any way
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| If you supported the firing of Antonio Garcia Martinez this
| should make you happy. If you thought that Apple overstepped
| their bounds by punishing a new hire for old creative work, this
| should outrage you, too.
|
| Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency in
| peoples' views on these two closely related incidents. Why?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I am outraged, but on the other side for me the whole diversity
| industry is parasitic with undertones of blackmail. And I am
| generally speaking fan of poetic justice.
|
| 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.
| geodel wrote:
| > If you supported the firing of Antonio Garcia Martinez this
| should make you happy.
|
| 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.
| koheripbal wrote:
| His bigotry goes beyond anti-semitism. Kamau Bobb's blog posts
| were almost exclusively about White and Jewish people, as a
| whole, and their mistreatment of Black Americans both
| historically and today. He even targets progressive white people
| for their more unspoken racism.
|
| There is a very obvious tone of distaste for white and Jewish
| people in his posts. 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 should be
| fired. I don't see how he, having himself being accused of being
| a racist [2], can work in _any_ diversity or HR department.
|
| [2] http://kamaubobb.blogspot.com/2011/08/accused-of-being-
| racis...
|
| Some choice excerpts...
|
| > 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.
|
| It goes on and on...
| extra88 wrote:
| None of those excerpts are concerning on a personal blog. I
| assume his removal is based on something more substantive.
|
| 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.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > It would be very different because it's very different to
| be black rather than white in America.
|
| That's a race essentialist myth[^1]. There are no "white
| experiences" or "black experiences". We assign "white" and
| "black" labels to diverse individuals with diverse
| experiences who process their experiences differently. The
| _average_ black person may have a different experience than
| the _average_ white person, but the variance is so large
| (more variance within a race than between races) that this is
| utterly useless for talking about any individual (the
| "average white person" and "average black person" don't
| actually exist).
|
| [^1]: I would say "a racist myth" but that's a bit overloaded
| these days and it carries some judgmental connotations that I
| don't want to imply, but it is no less racist than other
| racist myths.
| ebin1 wrote:
| Do note that the issue, in the media reporting of the incident,
| mentions and highlights one and not the other.
| [deleted]
| throwkeep wrote:
| Has anyone else noticed how often the loudest voices have the
| most baggage in the very subject they advocate against?
| pessimizer wrote:
| 1) Where's the lie?
|
| 2) It's funny how the Damore defenders shed their free speech
| hucksterism like yesterday's underwear.
| tobesure wrote:
| >It's funny how the Damore defenders shed their free speech
| hucksterism like yesterday's underwear.
|
| No, people are pointing out the racist double standard.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for using HN primarily for
| ideological battle. Would you please stop creating accounts
| to break HN's rules with? We're trying for a different kind
| of forum here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into all-out flamewar hell.
| We're trying to go the opposite way here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily
| for ideological battle. We ban that sort of account,
| regardless of which ideology you're battling for, because it
| destroys what this site is supposed to be for. If you would
| please review the guidelines and use HN in the intended
| spirit from now on--curious, substantive conversation--we'd
| appreciate it. Note, for example, this one:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Do you believe the acknowledgement of race or racial difference
| to be intrinsically bigoted?
| tarsinge wrote:
| The confusion between skin color, race and culture seems to
| be one of the root cause for many problems in the US. Their
| history with minorities seems to have unfortunately
| unconsciously tied skin color and culture, ignoring the fact
| that it's the definition of racism. Not saying it's all rosy
| elsewhere, but at least it seems not that deeply ingrained
| and perpetuated.
|
| So to candidly answer your question, yes there are of course
| physical differences between people, and correlations between
| people sharing a set of physical attributes, like skin color.
| Now if you attach culture and values to skin color, yes it's
| intrinsically bigoted, no matter the group. The corollary is
| that people with different skin color can have the same
| culture, and that criticizing a culture is not racist.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Do you believe white people kill black people with impunity
| in America?
| chevill wrote:
| This is a question that's so loaded its disingenuous
| without context. You weren't asking me but here's what I
| think about it.
|
| Do I think that police involved in bad shootings or another
| type of unjustified death have a really good chance of
| getting away with it? Of course.
|
| Do I think that the scenario above of an unjustified police
| killing happens more to people of color? Probably, I
| haven't looked up the numbers though and I don't know where
| to find them.
|
| Do I think the overwhelming majority of police killings are
| justified? Yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't a big deal
| when unjustified deaths go unpunished.
|
| Do I think most white people in the US could get away with
| murdering a black person? No, and keep in mind this is
| closer to the question you actually asked than the question
| you wanted an answer to.
| googlryas wrote:
| So the author claims X, and then it is asked "Is X true?"
| and that is now a loaded question? What is loaded about
| it?
| chevill wrote:
| The original statement "It is true that white people kill
| black people with impunity in the US" is problematic
| without contextualizing it.
|
| If he means in a general sense (which he most likely
| didn't) then its obviously a false statement. If I as a
| white man in the US murdered a person of color, most
| likely I would be arrested and convicted.
|
| If he means in the literal sense that in a country of 350
| million people that its possible for a white person to
| kill a black person and get away with it, well then you
| could probably say that about any demographic vs any
| other demographic because its impossible to make sure
| that never ever happens in a population that size.
|
| What I suspect he really meant is that there's a problem
| with American police getting away with it when they are
| involved in unjustified killings of black people. But he
| chose to word it in an exaggerated and inflammatory way
| for emphasis. Then you also have to take into account
| that we were presented with that one sentence out of a
| larger blog post so perhaps he added the context that
| would have made that sentence make sense.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Less so today than they did before BLM highlighted the way
| they repeatedly did so.
|
| EDIT: I mean, two people actually think the recent spate of
| prosecutions of white law enforcement officers for
| unjustified killings of blacks is because in the last few
| years American law enforcement officers have _just_ become
| violently racist in ways they previously weren 't, and not
| a change in accountability resulting from public attention
| to the issue?
| koheripbal wrote:
| Do you honestly believe that you could have murdered a
| black coworker without criminal justice ramifications
| prior to BLM?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Do you honestly believe that you could have murdered a
| black coworker without criminal justice ramifications
| prior to BLM?
|
| Well, no, but that's not germane to the issue being
| discussed.
|
| Your asking that question in this context embeds several
| assumptions, at least one of which is incorrect.
| munificent wrote:
| One of the failure modes I see often in today's discourse
| is that using a _group term_ as a subject makes the
| associated verb profoundly semantically ambiguous. If I
| say:
|
| "Brunettes like smooth jazz."
|
| It can mean any of:
|
| * There is at least one brunette who likes smooth jazz.
|
| * Some brunettes like smooth jazz.
|
| * Most brunettes like smooth jazz.
|
| * All brunettes like smooth jazz.
|
| * Brunettes are more likely to like smooth jazz than people
| with other hair colors.
|
| * Brunettes are more likely to like smooth jazz than people
| as a whole.
|
| * Liking smooth jazz is a defining characteristic of
| brunettes.
|
| * Liking smooth jazz is a defining characteristic of people
| who identify themselves as "brunettes".
|
| * _Disliking_ smooth jazz is a defining characteristic of
| _non_ -brunettes.
|
| * Liking smooth jazz causes (some|most|all) people to dye
| their hair brown.
|
| * Having brown hair causes (some|most|all) people to like
| smooth jazz.
|
| When the group term has a long history of power imbalance
| (unlike brunettes for the most part) and when the verb has
| deep moral implications (like "murder"), then obviously
| these different interpretations connote wildly different
| things.
|
| When you take that ambiguity and place it in the context of
| the Internet where context is stripped and nothing is known
| about the audience who will be interpreting it, you are
| setting yourself up for misinterpretation.
|
| When you do that in a political environment where people
| are seeking power and stand to _benefit_ from willful
| misinterpretation, you get, well, much of what US online
| culture looks like today.
|
| There are obviously many deep systemic problems, but one
| technique to try to improve the quality of discourse is to
| simply avoid using groups as subjects in sentences. It
| almost never conveys anything that can't be better
| expressed in some other form.
| dgb23 wrote:
| My intuition from reading these quotes is that this person
| spent a lot of time thinking about socioeconomic differences
| in relation to race[0], so they see things through that lens.
| It can come off as hostile, but the more generous
| interpretation that they simply emphasize this theme.
|
| [0] I dislike the term "race" in these contexts. In
| biological terms there is only one human race currently alive
| as far as we know. Every time I read or use it I feel like
| the pseudosciences such as social darwinists have won.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The issue is that other people think in racial terms, and
| you need the nuance to be able to describe that thinking.
| naivedevops wrote:
| About [0], in Portuguese we have abolished the usage of the
| term "race" for human beings for exactly that reason. Now
| we exclusively use the term "ethnicity".
|
| Edit: What about the downvotes? Are people going crazy?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Which is why Brazil is such a beautiful post-racial
| utopia?
| naivedevops wrote:
| Using more precise terms in language has nothing to do
| with being an utopia. Really, as a native Portuguese
| speaker it sounds really weird to ask about the race of a
| human being.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Compared to Latin America as a whole? Yup, pretty clearly
| so. They're on a path to becoming more racially
| progressive than much of the U.S.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > They're on a path to becoming more racially progressive
| than much of the U.S.
|
| Having spent time in Brazil and as a luso-American, that
| is ridiculous. Brazil has an even bigger problem with
| racist police violence and extra-judicial killings than
| the US does!
| naivedevops wrote:
| Both Brazil and the US are really large countries. I'm
| not sure if comparison is so simple.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In fairness the U.S. has been on a regressive trajectory
| for the last ~10 years, so anyone who isn't similarly
| regressive is "on a path to becoming more racially
| progressive than much of the U.S.", strictly speaking.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Just because problems are more visible does not mean they
| have regressed IMO.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| When the racism is more visible because the racists feel
| more comfortable broadcasting their messages, and indeed
| when the media and academy effectively and
| institutionally endorse and promote those messages, that
| seems like textbook regression.
| dbingham wrote:
| A racial construct has been used to shape every facet of
| our society and we can't make right those wrongs with out
| maintaining an awareness and understanding of that
| construct. We can't undo the historical (and current) harms
| of racism with out continuing to see race.
|
| This is why the colorblind approach to solving racial
| issues failed. All it did was make us blind to the
| continuing harms of racism and there for unable to change
| those systems and solve those problems.
|
| Kendi expands on it in great detail in his book "How to Be
| an Antiracist"
|
| Here's a TED talk version of the explanation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCxbl5QgFZw
| tobesure wrote:
| >A racial construct has been used to shape every facet of
| our society and we can't make right those wrongs with out
| maintaining an awareness and understanding of that
| construct.
|
| This is a dangerously myopic view of the development of
| this country and more importantly it ignores progress
| over the last few decades.
|
| The fact that blacks have not achieved representational
| parity or wealth equity yet does not mean that that the
| path of race blindness was not working. By all metrics it
| was working, and there must be room to discuss the
| internal cultural issues within the black community that
| account for the remaining lack of progress.
|
| Instead by silencing any such criticism we are falsely
| blaming whites as a demographic for cultural change that
| is beyond their control, and artificially forcing
| transfer of power and wealth from said demographic in a
| misguided attempt to correct past wrongs, in a manner
| that is fundamentally at odds with the principles of
| meritocracy that are critical to a functioning society.
| Hiring minorities for the color of their skin is no
| better than hiring whites for the color of their skin.
|
| The combination of a fundamentally racist theory/policy
| and vicious cancellation of anyone who publicly
| criticizes the movement is going to lead to severe
| backlash. It's immoral at its core. You can't have your
| cake and eat it too - either racism is acceptable and we
| have the freedom to discuss _when and where_ it is
| acceptable, or racism is unacceptable. Wordplay with
| euphemisms which disguise the racist nature of CRT
| inspired policies is intellectually dishonest and not
| sustainable.
| [deleted]
| morelisp wrote:
| On this topic I strongly recommend _Racecraft_ by Karen
| and Barbara Fields.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/233136/racecraft
| -by...
|
| "Race-blind" anti-racism is like "money-blind" anti-
| poverty programs. You can't effectively fight racism when
| you ignore its most fundamental product.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Good point and thank you for the book recommendation.
|
| My comment was not on why the term is being used today
| but merely the fact that I don't like it, because it
| solidifies the racist pseudosciences in our culture in a
| way. It just feels wrong to me to speak the lingo of an
| enemy.
|
| At the same time, as you said the term is here for a
| reason, so simply changing or ignoring it won't change
| the underlying problem.
|
| Thinking about it, it might even be a good thing that
| using, reading or hearing the term stings. It reminds us
| of how incredibly frustrating the problem is. It appears
| so simple and arbitrary, is insufferably harmful and it
| should not exist in the first place, but here we are
| still.
| acituan wrote:
| > acknowledgement of race or racial difference
|
| Acknowledgment of race is inherently an _essentialist_
| position; that there is an _essence_ to being a certain race
| that sets it apart from other races. Doesn 't matter if that
| position casts the purported essence in a positive or
| negative light, it is bigotry in one way or the other.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| You can acknowledge that there is a social construct called
| "race" that some people believe is useful for predicting
| things about individuals _without subscribing to those
| beliefs yourself_.
|
| E.g., some people argue that white people are unfit for
| certain roles because they haven't endured the sufferings
| of people of color which is clearly expressing a belief
| that (1) race is real and (2) race is useful for predicting
| things about individual white and non-white people. This is
| racism, race essentialism, etc. But I can also acknowledge
| that those people are more likely to treat white people
| (i.e., the people that they put into their "white"
| category) differently than nonwhite (i.e., the people they
| put into their "people of color" category). This is not
| racism or race essentialism or etc.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| What the U.S. calls "races" would simply be considered
| subcultures in the rest of the world. (Bordering on
| ethnicities, but not really - they're way too integrated
| within mainstream culture to be true ethnic
| subdivisions.) You can acknowledge subcultures without
| clinging to the absurd notion (that is, absurd to much of
| the civilized world) that "race" is a legitimate term at
| all, even for a socially and culturally-bound construct.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I don't think that's correct considering people from
| Nigeria, France, or N-th generation Americans can all be
| considered "black" provided they have a certain set of
| physical traits even though these people very likely have
| very different cultures. So the American notion of "race"
| spans cultures and it is derived from physical traits,
| not cultural artifacts.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Whether African immigrants qualify as "truly" Black is
| actually a very contentious point within Black culture
| itself, and that's despite widespread solidarity with
| Africa and Pan-African ideals. This makes 100% sense if
| you regard this U.S. notion of "race" as a pure social
| construct, something not dependent on any fixed set of
| physical traits or purported ancestry.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Within American culture, it's not contentious that dark-
| skinned African people are "black", certainly no less so
| when they immigrate to the US. But that's _race_.
|
| There is also a distinct notion of "black culture" which
| is a subset of American culture (people who identify with
| black culture also tend to be racially black, but not
| every racially black American identifies with black
| culture). That there is a "black culture" doesn't mean
| that the American notion of race is incorrect.
| morelisp wrote:
| > Acknowledgment of race is inherently an essentialist
| position
|
| No, you can acknowledge race _as a widespread social
| construct_ , which having been constructed, has material
| effects that can only be fully discussed by including race.
| The idea that we can only discuss categories with an
| essential characteristic is, itself, an incorrectly
| essentialist idea.
| JPKab wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Kids don't see skin color the way these ideologues do. They
| look at it like hair color. My twin brother and I were
| literally the only white kids on our school bus, attending
| mostly black public schools in a mostly black county in
| southeastern Virginia. We were never really aware of skin
| color as a thing, just "this kid let's us borrow his gameboy
| and is nice", vs. "this kid punches us in the back of the
| head on the bus cuz he's psycho". Race was a useless proxy
| for good/bad when you are in a heavily integrated school
| system, because it's ALWAYS been a useless proxy for judging
| human character.
|
| People that speak like this publicly ("sea of white
| children") are THINKING like this constantly.
|
| In my opinion, he projects his own bigotry and obsession with
| skin color onto everyone else around him. That's what bigots
| of all colors do.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > Kids don't see skin color the way these ideologues do.
|
| _Infants show racial bias toward members of own race and
| against those of other races_ :
| https://phys.org/news/2017-04-infants-racial-bias-
| members.ht...
| xeonoex wrote:
| Kids do not write laws or have political agendas. In an
| ideal world, skin color would be an afterthought. But that
| is not the world we live in. I grew up as a white person in
| a 99%+ mexican/hispanic area. I grew up thinking the same.
| I didn't think much of people's race, but other people did.
| I was treated differently because I was white. It took me a
| while to realize that I wasn't seeing the world from the
| minorities point of view because I wasn't a minority. If
| you try to ignore race completely, you ignore the issues
| minorities are facing.
| noen wrote:
| Through my childhood I would agree with you. By the time I
| was in high school this was no longer the case. Had many
| black friends, and once we all pass puberty and got cars,
| the world changed.
|
| The first time I was with a black friend who got pulled
| over for no reason, and seeing the cop visibly change his
| demeanor when he saw me (white clean cut male) in the
| passenger seat, changed me. Talked with my friend after -
| this was already normalized for him. I was angry beyond
| belief.
|
| It's a useless proxy for judgement and yet US society does
| it to black and hispanic people with alarming consistency
| and frequency. It hasn't gotten better since my youth.
|
| This is the crux of white privilege and why "cancel
| culture" is bullshit for snowflakes who can't imagine that
| the world is as systematically unjust as it really is.
|
| I've listened to many black activists who ARE anti-white,
| who do self segregate, and I don't blame any of them for a
| second nor hold any animosity towards them. They spent
| their lives being lied to, despised, tricked, and crapped
| on. Why would anyone want to continue that cycle?
| JPKab wrote:
| Walk into a trailer park in Appalachia and talk about
| white privilege. See what they think.
|
| Not that you've spent a minute of your life in one.
|
| Ever met a coder from that background? Didn't think so.
|
| Class is the issue, but putting it all on race let's the
| man off the hook, which is why this so called revolution
| is corporate sponsored.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Both are an issue. Trying to reframe all racial issues as
| only class issues is as dumb as trying to claim all class
| issues are racial in nature.
|
| Few people who think about racism deny class has impact
| though. An intersectional analysis would suggest that a
| rich black, rich white, poor black, and poor white
| experience would all be different.
|
| > Walk into a trailer park in Appalachia and talk about
| white privilege. See what they think.
|
| Right, I can't tell if your argument here is that you
| don't think a poor Appalachian person would be up on the
| intersectional lingo, or you think that they can't
| critically analyze different kinds of privilege, or you
| think that they think that there's some kind of moral
| argument that poor white people can't also have
| advantages over black people and I'd feel bad talking to
| them about that? In any case, you're wrong.
|
| Also you realize that Appalachia has a significant black
| population right, its 10% of Appalachia vs. 12% of the US
| population. Appalachia includes large swaths of Georgia,
| Alabama and Mississippi. (also it includes major metro
| areas in Pennsylvania, so trying to paint "Appalachia" as
| a rural-white-poor thing is dumb and misrepresentative of
| Appalachia).
| JPKab wrote:
| Look I'm not going to quibble about what is and is not
| Appalachia. My definition of Appalachia part of the South
| that was inaccessible to rivers and navigable waterways
| and had poor soil and was therefore not remotely of
| interest for plantation owners. Therefore there were no
| native populations of slaves when the civil war ended.
|
| My point is that a plurality of people in the United
| States who live below the poverty line happen to be
| white. And when you talk about class have you ever seen
| Google or any tech company talk about making sure they
| are hiring from a diverse set of classes? Of course not.
|
| Show me a bunch of googlers and I'll show you a bunch of
| people whose parents were college-educated no matter what
| their skin color is.
|
| All of this is just laziness at it's core. Treating
| humans differently because of their group membership in
| person-to-person interactions is the epitome of bigotry.
| It's not acceptable when cops do it and it's not
| acceptable for you to give passes to people of certain
| colors who have become bigots despite probably never
| experiencing extreme racism themselves. My cousin was
| murdered in Virginia Beach by a man who happened to be
| black in 2006. It would be inexcusable for me to hold
| that against other people that share that man's
| ethnicity. But if the colors were reversed you would have
| no problem giving me a pass because you have low
| expectations for people that don't look like you.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It's one thing to acknowledge differences. It's another to
| define ourselves by them.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Or to conflate "this is true on average for this group of
| people" with "this is true for everyone in this group".
| chrischattin wrote:
| It seems like it's always the more "holier than thou" that are
| the most evil and corrupt.
|
| And, the ones who are always preaching "inclusive" the most
| tend to be the most bigoted.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| Cancel culture is not about canceling people who say racist,
| misogynist, homophobic, etc things. It is about canceling
| (read: disenfranchising and taking revenge on) straight white
| males, who are at the bottom (top? intersection? whichever) of
| the intersectional hierarchy. Kamau Bobb is not a white male,
| therefore this does not apply. He is receiving the same
| treatment that any powerful person, regardless of skin color,
| would have received 10 years ago in the western world: tuck
| them away until the scandal blows over.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| What? This event seems to match the collectively assigned
| definition fine.
|
| "Cancel culture or call-out culture is a modern form of
| ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or
| professional circles - whether it be online, on social media,
| or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to
| have been "cancelled". The expression "cancel culture" has
| mostly negative connotations and is commonly used in debates
| on free speech and censorship.
|
| The notion of cancel culture is a variant on the term call-
| out culture and constitutes a form of boycotting or shunning
| involving an individual (often a celebrity) who is deemed to
| have acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial
| manner." [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
| world_peace42 wrote:
| That definition is neither empirical, nor is it
| collectively defined. It is selectively assigned and
| selectively enforced. And here we are, in a thread where
| the top level post provides an obvious example.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Miriam Webster also seems to agree. [1]
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cancel-
| culture...
| fouric wrote:
| Miriam Webster is even further from "collectively
| defined" than Wikipedia is.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| I'm more concerned with individuals attempting to rewrite
| the modern lexicon to their own benefit.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| Then go have a chat with Jimmy Wales about diversifying
| the political beliefs of his editors. And good luck.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| Great, now also link me to a cacophony of Twitter
| activists who've defined it the same way, I am proven
| wrong.
|
| But, and of course it's a silly request, can you provide
| any _objective_ large-scale studies as to who (their
| demographics) is being canceled, for what categorization,
| and the net effect of their cancellation? It doesn 't
| matter, granted, because the Wikipedia definition of
| highly politicized terms is, of course, what counts.
| justaman wrote:
| I don't agree with the guy above, but take a look at what
| Nick Cannon said and how he is still employed.
| throwkeep wrote:
| Not quite. It's about ideological alignment and purity. The
| cancel mob just got Antonio Garcia Martinez fired, for
| example. And they are constantly trying to cancel Glenn
| Greenwald, a gay man married to a minority POC, and with
| minority kids.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| I don't know Antonio Garcia Martinez's ethnicity, but he
| looks and sounds very much like a straight white male, so I
| would not consider that a counterexample. Also, certainly
| there are no absolute laws of who is always targeted and
| who is never, just clear trends.
|
| However, it is true that to some small degree I am
| oversimplifying something quite complex, partially because
| the cited example was James D'Amore. Other examples you
| might cite include Dave Rubin or Ric Grennell. Certainly
| gay white men and straight white women (specifically if
| they are Republican) are targeted. What happened at Disney
| with the treatment of Gina Carano vs. Krystina Arielle is
| evidence enough of that.
| codyb wrote:
| Hmm... I'm a white man who doesn't consider himself half as
| "woke" as the (I'm certain a bit exaggerated) descriptions of
| what happens on Twitter and none of that feels particularly
| offensive to me?
|
| "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.
| tobesure wrote:
| >White people kill Black people with impunity
|
| >Hey lets take a look at why people may be feeling in some
| manner
|
| >Perhaps it's time to focus our inquiry on white people who
| may have complex emotions regarding their changing position
| in society
|
| All of these are painting white people with broad strokes.
| More importantly if you replaced "white" with any other
| minority it would be socially unacceptable. There's also a
| problem with the framing of the argument here - any criticism
| is premptively dismissed with accusations of "complex
| emotions" which is conflated with "white fragility" and
| eventually racism. The CRT inspired framing is basically
| whites as a demographic are wrong, must step back and allow
| us to force them to collectively atone for the sins of past
| whites, and anyone who criticisms this forced transfer of
| power is a racist. The grand irony here is that the entire
| premise is fundamentally racist and falsely justifies
| increasingly socially acceptable anti-white sentiment.
|
| Either racism is socially acceptable, or it isn't.
| Normalizing this talk about problematic whiteness is only
| opening a can of worms, regressing progress toward race
| blindness, and the backlash will be severe. It's exactly the
| sort of _perceived_ disenfranchisement that CRT accuses
| whites of doing, except it 's being done intentionally and
| subversively here - hidden via intellectually dishonest
| rhetorical technique.
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| Only the purest of the pure can lead a diversity effort. And it
| doesn't count unless you were pure from the beginning. Growing to
| overcome past problems is not sufficient.
| bozzcl wrote:
| Alternatively, you could just delete your social media accounts
| regularly to minimize your trail.
| local_dev wrote:
| I find the best solution is to simply never use a social
| media account attached to your real identity.
|
| Innocent comments taken out of context or a general changing
| of accepted speech can turn a decade old bit of text into
| damning evidence of bigotry, racism, or any other ism.
| poutine wrote:
| A religion without redemption.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >Growing to overcome past problems is not sufficient.
|
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| "Their"
|
| Who are they? The people who believe racism exists?
| xg15 wrote:
| Do you believe racism can be overcome?
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| The people who judge and define others primarily by the
| color of their skin rather than the content of their
| character.
|
| Those who fight racism with racism and call it anti-racism
| or reverse-racism.
|
| Those who use hate, blame, and punishment as their tools of
| power, rather than love, forgiveness, and self/community
| empowerment.
|
| Those who focus on division rather than unity.
| fwip wrote:
| Anti-racism doesn't say that people cannot grow.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| _Some_ self-described anti-racists do indeed hold that
| idea[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.ocpathink.org/post/does-race-massacre-
| silence-sh...
| fwip wrote:
| Could you point me to the paragraph in question? I've
| read the article a few times now, and I don't see A)
| anyone described as anti-racist or B) anything saying
| people who do racist things cannot grow.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Sorry! Somehow I managed to paste completely the wrong
| link, and now it is too late for me to edit my previous
| comment. I realise now that scrolling down on that
| website automatically loads new articles _and_ updates
| the address bar.
|
| Here[0] is the article I had meant to link to.
|
| Ah man... I really feel bad that you read the wrong
| article a few times after I unwittingly mislead you. I'm
| genuinely sorry about that.
|
| [0]: https://www.ocpathink.org/post/whites-will-always-
| be-racist-...
| sverona wrote:
| > Robin DiAngelo
|
| I'm going to have to start asking for better sources on
| antiracism than a white woman who makes a career out of
| corporate "diversity training." Like, of _course_ that 's
| her entire thesis.
|
| White fragility is a very useful concept, for sure. But
| the way DiAngelo uses it seems to be more focused on
| making white people hem and haw and feel guilty for even
| trying instead of doing mutual aid, reading theory,
| forming community, anything actually helpful or useful.
|
| If I wanted to set up a strawman, that's exactly what I'd
| do.
| mavsman wrote:
| Ya, I wonder at what point someone is accepted as having
| changed.
| NateEag wrote:
| It helps some if they've ever actually claimed to have
| changed.
| throwkeep wrote:
| It's worse than that, only the purest of the pure can be
| employed. Look at Apple's recent mob firing of Antonio Garcia
| Martinez. Who made the mistake of writing a best selling and
| critically acclaimed book just 5 years ago. Featured as one of
| NPR's best books of the year, recommended by NYT, Washington
| Post, etc. But now it's suddenly a fireable offense.
|
| "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
| thereare5lights wrote:
| I have little doubt plenty of women didn't want to work with
| someone that writes the things he writes about women.
| eigen wrote:
| Can you provide a source for best selling? I dont see it on
| the NYT Fiction or NonFiction list in 2016.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Fiction_Bes.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Nonfiction_.
| ..
| throwkeep wrote:
| According to the publisher it was an NYT bestseller:
| https://www.harpercollins.com/products/chaos-monkeys-
| antonio...
| thelopa wrote:
| "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and
| naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full
| of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism,
| and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is,
| come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they'd become
| precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade for a box
| of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
|
| "PMMess, as we'll call her, was composed of alternating
| Bezier curves from top to bottom: convex, then concave, and
| then convex again, in a vertical undulation you couldn't take
| your eyes off of. Unlike most women at Facebook (or in the
| Bay Area, really) she knew how to dress; forties-style, form-
| fitting dresses from neck to knee were her mainstay."
|
| "Out of nowhere British Trader informs me she is once again
| pregnant; the calendar math takes us right back to my move-
| out imbroglio in December, our last tryst after a breakup
| desert of nonintimacy. After a brief debate, British Trader
| confirms her desire to keep the child, whatever my thoughts
| on the matter. It occurred to me that perhaps this most
| recent experiment in fertility--and the first--had been
| planned on British Trader's part, her back up against the
| menopause wall, a professional woman with every means at her
| disposal except a willing male partner--in which case I had
| been snookered into fatherhood via warm smiles and pliant
| thighs, the oldest tricks in the book."
|
| "To make an analogy, a capped note is like having to seduce
| five women one after the other, while an equity round is
| having to convince five women to do a sixsome with you. The
| latter is exponentially harder than the former.*
|
| * The women analogy breaks down in that, unlike with women,
| the more investors you seduce into your moresome, the more
| likely others are to join. This is an expression of the
| lemming-like nature of tech investors, most of whom scarcely
| merit the title."
|
| --Antonio Garcia Martinez
| grammarprofess wrote:
| I love these paragraphs so accurate. Truth hurts I guess,
| womyn at FB were DONE with the guy who published a
| description of their lives to the world.
| throwkeep wrote:
| Out of context excerpts from a 500 page book written in the
| style of Hunter S. Thompson is not compelling evidence to
| anyone but the mob and those seeking to be offended. People
| who have actually read the book don't find them to be so
| problematic, including the reviewers at New York Times,
| NPR, Washington Post, Techcrunch and others who gave the
| book a big thumbs up.
| thelopa wrote:
| Please try to contextualize those quotes. The context
| I've seen has actually only made them seem worse.
| monocasa wrote:
| I don't think that Hunter S. Thompson represents what you
| want out of a FAANG engineering manager either.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Would have made a hell of a Sheriff.
| NDizzle wrote:
| For example, Obama could never lead a diversity effort. That's
| how pure you have to be.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I believe he currently is? At least, his foundation is.
|
| https://www.obama.org/diversity/
| metalliqaz wrote:
| if you hang around long enough, you can watch the woke eat the
| woke. what is "pure" changes, and some who have delighted in
| getting scalps in the past will have theirs taken by someone
| else once the goalposts change.
|
| i'm thinking there is a decent chance trans-racialism will
| eventually become woke
| fighterpilot wrote:
| What do you mean by "trans-radicalism will eventually become
| woke"?
|
| EDIT misread "racialism" as "radicalism"
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| Trans-Racialism, I assume they mean ala Rachel Dolezal.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The sadly-deceased Mark Fisher wrote a piece called "Exiting
| the Vampire Castle" about at least a portion of this problem.
|
| Essentially, you gain "cred" by publicly taking down a more
| powerful figure than yourself. It's the problem of
| _diablerie_ in Vampire: The Masquerade in that, once
| accepted, you create a set of rewards and initiatives that
| foster a constant churn of figures eager to snipe at those
| above them, to drain them of their woke cred and get at least
| a little for yourself in an act called "critique." Of
| course, there's only so much blood/cred to go around so
| figures rise and fall as these very public lives are examined
| for any kind of transgression: "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." Twitter and Tumblr
| are not exactly structured for careful, nuanced thought and
| so produce an endless stream of hot takes which, when gone
| cold, can be mined for evidence.
|
| And so the revolutionaries are declared counter-
| revolutionaries and come to be the next layer of corpses in
| the mass graves they have dug, Khmer Rouge style.
| falcolas wrote:
| Another successful witch hunt. Never mind wondering whether his
| opinion has changed in the intervening 14 years.
|
| This vigilantism has to stop.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Regardless of the exact wording of this post anyone who has ever
| harshly criticized Israel's government policies has gotten
| reflexively called antisemite so it's rather amusing to see it at
| such a high profile place. It shows how it trumps any social
| justice points.
|
| You just don't, which is why you see so many very mild takes in
| this thread and people are extremely afraid of being reprieved
| for wrongthink (by American standards).
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Being Jewish has nothing to do with Israeli state policy. Is that
| so difficult to understand? Some German living in the US in early
| 40s was not responsible for Nazis. What is wrong with people?
|
| Lately it's seems to me simple logic has no correlation with
| technical ability. You're not a general genius Bob, you're just
| good at computers.
| bushbaba wrote:
| He directly said Jews. Quote from his blog:
|
| "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself"
| beaner wrote:
| Isn't that the point that the person you're responding to is
| trying to make? That the diversity head was wrong to make
| such a generalization?
| toss1 wrote:
| If that's the quote, damn, that is sooo wrong. Aside from the
| overt antisemitism, just replace whoever he is talking about
| with "X".
|
| For any X, when they live constantly among existential
| threats, in particular other petro-states, who explicitly
| state that you should be "wiped off the map" and who use and
| fund impoverished neighbors to instigate and wage proxy wars
| against you, you should be extremely concerned if you and
| your nation do NOT prepare strongly by taking up arms in
| defense of themselves.
|
| Characterizing a necessary defense posture as some kind of
| blood lust is just sick and ignorant.
|
| The guy should be fired.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| He wasn't fired? Are you kidding me? He was reassigned to a comfy
| position in research?
| ffggvv wrote:
| lol if someone had written this about any other race they'd be
| immediately fired (look how agm was let go like a rock from apple
| or james demore)
|
| but this person gets to keep their job despite blatant racism
| because it's against the right groups (and because of what group
| they belong to)
| rightorwrong128 wrote:
| I really can't tell if this is right or wrong. On one hand, these
| comments are hurtful and obviously stupid. On the other hand,
| this post is 13 years old. We all say or think stupid things
| sometimes, especially when we're naive about a topic. Isn't it
| possible his stance has changed? All this publicity now may have
| ruined this guy's career forever, all because the scribbled down
| some random stupid thoughts more than a decade ago?
|
| Downvote me, but I am truly sorry for him. Stuff like this makes
| me never want to post on the public web under my real name, who
| knows what will be marked as "offensive" a few decades from now.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| This is how it works now, yes it's extreme. But if you say
| something demeaning over women or blacks the response is much
| much worse. Here the guy just got transferred to another cushy
| job with big pay, not even fired. Jews are fair game
| unfortunately
| [deleted]
| geodel wrote:
| > All this publicity now may have ruined this guy's career
| forever,
|
| 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.
| ebin1 wrote:
| Something says to me that if he said "Europeans" instead, it
| would be ok. Of course, it is hard for me to back up this claim,
| other than with the anecdotal data that such comments are common
| on (liberal) Twitter and the like. In a world with so many
| protected classes, this former head of diversity made the really
| foolish mistake of not making a remark at the expense of one of
| the lesser protected classes, instead.
|
| Edit: found in a related comment that he did make such a comment,
| and that those such comments are precisely the ones not really
| mentioned or cared about in the media...
| xdennis wrote:
| > if he said "Europeans" instead, it would be ok
|
| Only if he said "Western Europeans + Russia". The rest of us
| didn't colonize anyone.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| "Diversity and Inclusion", and woke ideology writ-large has
| turned into a complete farce. I have zero respect for these
| people because their concern is a facade - it exists only to
| exert power over people that you disagree with. There is not a
| single person in existence that meets their ridiculous standards
| - they just haven't spotted you yet.
| ostenning wrote:
| Here is a classic case of someone conflating the state of Israel
| and Jewish people and lumping it all together.
|
| Plenty of Jewish people that live both inside and outside of
| Israel are critical of the state.
|
| People can be critical of the state of Israel, but they should
| not be antisemitic. His comments are offensive for this reason.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _People can be critical of the state of Israel, but they should
| not be antisemitic._
|
| 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.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| You are terribly correct. It reminds me of the left claiming
| Islam is a peaceful religion because only a ~third (whatever
| the numbers they allege) support violence and a much smaller
| fraction perpetrate it. Unfortunately, your claim is
| unquantifiable, so, as evidenced by your replies, the people
| who hate Israel vehemently deny any anti-semitism.
| 8note wrote:
| If you're taking the position that the actions of some
| people who follow some version of a religion to be defining
| for it, every religion is the religion of war, including
| atheism.
|
| At that point, it's not a very interesting statement
| door101 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Because it's a colonial ethnostate, with massive support from
| the United States. Israel (the colonial ethnostate) should
| not exist. Palestine is not an ethnostate, it is the name for
| the multicultural, multi-ethnic state who rightfully controls
| the area occupied by Israel, before British colonialism and
| subsequent invasion and occupation of the territory.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| This is incredibly ignorant of the history of the region.
| It's also patently untrue. The amount of misinformation
| that westerners propagate about Israel and "Palestine",
| which has never been a country, constantly amazes me.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| "never been a country" -> except for the 138 countries
| that do recognize it as a country.
|
| Moreover, why is this a strong rejoinder? Black South
| Africa was never recognized as a country either, does
| that mean there was no moral concern?
| junon wrote:
| Yes, except for the "westerners" bit. People from
| everywhere conflate this issue - even people living in
| the region. Check out The Ask Project on youtube, tons of
| people on all sides of the issue are misguided or simply
| wrong - and they _live_ there.
| bushbaba wrote:
| This is off topic. And getting away from root article.
|
| However Before Israel there was the British mandate. Before
| that Ottoman Empire.
|
| The Palestinians in Gaza never controlled the land.
| truth_ wrote:
| 90% of what is touted as "Palestine" was always empty.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _The Palestinians in Gaza never controlled the land._
|
| Doesn't that just mean "they were never powerful"? If
| they were living there, does it matter who was in power?
| English rule never stopped the Welsh being Welsh, or
| Wales from "belonging to" them. (I don't know how
| applicable this analogy is to this situation - probably
| not very, given there isn't a territorial dispute over
| who should have Wales.)
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Doesn't that just mean "they were never powerful"?
|
| Not necessarily. It could also mean that the people
| living in Gaza today were not historically from Gaza but
| were from Egypt or elsewhere.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Good point. Do you know whether they were?
| Veen wrote:
| If you believe "Israel should not exist", you have to
| account for what would happen if it didn't. What would
| happen to the Jews who live in the Hamas-controlled
| "multicultural, multi-ethnic state" that would inevitably
| replace it? We all know the answer: they'd be killed.
| That's why people who call for the non-existence of Israel
| (anti-Zionists) are considered anti-semitic. If you support
| a position that leads inevitably to the death or
| displacement of millions of Jews, you are an anti-semite.
| door101 wrote:
| I never said I support a genocidal Arab ethnostate,
| that's extremely offensive. I support no ethnostates, no
| colonialism, and no occupation in the region.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Ok, but what you fail to recognize, is that the best way
| to do what you want, is for there to be 2 separate,
| independent states, controlled by each of their
| respective population.
|
| A single state solution is not going to have good
| consequences.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _it's a colonial ethnostate_ _Palestine is not an
| ethnostate_
|
| That's a strange view on the situation. Let's say I give
| you a choice. 1. Be a practicing Jew living in Palestinian-
| controlled territory. 2. Be a practicing Muslim living in
| Israel.
|
| I'd definitely choose 2, choosing 1 would be suicide.
|
| _who rightfully controls the area occupied by Israel_
|
| The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that
| territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and
| occupy Israel?
| anoncake wrote:
| > The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that
| territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and
| occupy Israel?
|
| When? The region of Palestine was majority Muslim when
| Israel was founded. That your _ancestors_ lived in a
| region doesn 't give you any rights to it. If anyone has
| a birthright to a region, it's those who were born there
| and no one else.
| 8note wrote:
| Why would Israel's founding matter then?
|
| What matters is who's being born there _now_ , not where
| your grandparents were born
| anoncake wrote:
| Sure.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that
| territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and
| occupy Israel?
|
| My maternal ancestry is of the Bering Strait islander and
| First peoples. Does that make me an indigenous person for
| the entirety of Americas and thus give me the right to
| control and occupy the entirety of America and expel all
| the "recent" migrants? Because that's the equivalent of
| claiming a blond haired blue eyed German Ashkenazi with a
| couple of generations in New York is somehow indigenous
| to the area of historic Judea and thus has the right to
| expel a different tribe of Semitic people who have only
| been there for say what, a thousand years?
|
| I'm no expert but doesn't the Torah directly say that the
| Jews took Canaan from the Canaanites as directed by
| Yahweh? Wouldn't that make Canaanites the actual
| indigenous people of that territory? So would Canaanites
| thus be accorded the right to control and occupy that
| territory using your logic?
| lisper wrote:
| > The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that
| territory.
|
| No. Even according to their/our [1] own mythology, the
| indigenous people were the Canaanites.
|
| [1] I am ethnically Jewish. My parents were both born in
| Israel (except that it was still Palestine at the time).
| I grew up speaking Hebrew. But I do not self-identify as
| a Jew and I am highly critical of the conduct of the
| state of Israel. It has quite clearly become an apartheid
| state, and think that is reprehensible. But I am also a
| descendant of Holocaust survivors, so I am mindful of the
| very real historical oppression of Jews, and the
| importance of Israel is pushing back against that
| oppression. It's a very thorny problem with very few
| unambiguous protagonists. But no matter how you slice it,
| promulgating falsehoods like that Jews are the indigenous
| people of Palestine is unhelpful.
| door101 wrote:
| > The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that
| territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and
| occupy Israel?
|
| This is a fictional narrative constructed to justify the
| state of Israel. It has no basis in historical fact --
| there never existed a Jewish ethnostate in the territory
| known as Palestine, this is a modern construction.
| Regardless, I don't believe in ethnostates -- of any
| ethnicity, anywhere.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >I'd definitely choose 2, choosing 1 would be suicide.
|
| Isn't choice 1 called being a settler? As far as I know
| they make up 10% or so of the Jewish population in the
| region, a far cry from suicide.
| yaakov34 wrote:
| Seeing how the actual Declaration of Independence
| promulgated by the actual would-be founders of Palestine
| states that "The State of Palestine shall be an Arab State
| and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation", I think
| you failed to clear your non-ethnostate theory with the
| relevant people.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > colonial
|
| A colony of what empire exactly? Jews were a group of
| massacred refugees.
|
| > massive support from the United States
|
| There is no massive support from the United States
| actually, at least not monetary. There is military help
| that is needed because Israel's enemies want to destroy it,
| still to this day. And it's not that big compared to
| Israel's gdp (4 billion to 400 gdp = 1%) and is completely
| meaningless to the U.S budget. The other support is vetoing
| U.N decisions that constantly target Israel. Which is
| needed for the same reason the military aid is needed.
|
| > Israel (the colonial ethnostate) should not exist
|
| Should the U.S exist? Last I checked California used to be
| part of Mexico - why isn't it being returned to it's
| rightful owners? How about West Europe? Maybe it should be
| dismantled and have all it's assets transferred to Africa?
| I've never heard anyone say stuff like that but when it
| comes to Israel sure let's destroy the evil ethno state.
| door101 wrote:
| > Should the U.S exist? Last I checked California used to
| be part of Mexico - why isn't it being returned to it's
| rightful owners?
|
| Yes, the U.S. is also a colonial state. Not all states
| owe their existence to colonialism and occupation, but
| the U.S. is definitely one of them. We committed a
| genocide on an unimaginable scale, and took all the line
| of the people whose territory this was rightfully theirs.
| Not a good example of states to emulate.
|
| > How about West Europe? Maybe it should be dismantled
| and have all it's assets transferred to Africa?
|
| Its colonial territories in Africa should have been, and
| were, transferred to Africa.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > Yes, the U.S. is also a colonial state
|
| Who is actively calling for the dismantling of the United
| States? No one. But Israel is fair game.
|
| > Its colonial territories in Africa should have been,
| and were, transferred to Africa.
|
| How is that enough though when comparing with the much
| more minor "crimes" Israel did? Israel displaced 700000
| people as part of a brutal civil war where it also
| suffered major casualties. Belgium, Germany, France and
| others destroyed millions of Africans and robbed their
| nations. How is it enough for them to simply retreat from
| their colonies? If you actively call out for Israel to be
| dismantled I would expect for Europe to at least give
| away 50% of it's wealth to the people it destroyed. That
| sounds somehow fair to me or at least morally consistent.
| If what happened 73 years ago in Palestine must not be
| forgiven I don't see why everybody else gets a pass.
| door101 wrote:
| > Who is actively calling for the dismantling of the
| United States? No one. But Israel is fair game.
|
| Because we "won". There are almost no indigenous people
| left in the United States, because we killed nearly all
| of them and destroyed their culture and civilization. I
| hope that this does not happen to Palestinians. For those
| indigenous people that remain, I definitely support
| greatly expanded rights and territory.
|
| > If you actively call out for Israel to be dismantled I
| would expect for Europe to at least give away 50% of it's
| wealth to the people it destroyed.
|
| One could argue on the number and logistics, but I
| absolutely support stronger European reparations for the
| damage done by colonialism.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > For those indigenous people that remain, I definitely
| support greatly expanded rights and territory.
|
| Huh? What expanded rights some tiny resorts? Give them
| everything back - it's theirs. Even if there are only 1
| million of them left make a referendum and ask them if
| you are allowed to stay. Also California is Mexican! Boy
| we have a lot of fixing to do! But basically I can infer
| from what you're saying this isn't about morals at all
| but about how strong you are. The U.S is super strong so
| no one calls for it's destruction (at least not
| seriously). Israel is tiny and weak and surrounded by
| enemies that want to see it go down. That's what this is
| about.
| yoavm wrote:
| It's not about taking example from the US, it's about how
| popular it is to say that Israel shouldn't exist while
| many other countries had a much worst history. Not many
| of the places people live in now were empty when their
| ancestors arrived there.
|
| More importantly, I keep hearing about the Israeli colony
| and am a truly interested to know what empire my family
| are representing. As far as I heard they were massacred
| pretty much everywhere and came to Palestine with
| literally nothing, some being jailed in Cyprus by the
| Brits to prevent them from entering the country. No one
| told them about the big empire that was backing them up.
| 8note wrote:
| Its hard to criticise the US for past transgressions
| without also criticising Israel for presently doing the
| same thing.
| 8note wrote:
| Land in the US is slowly being returned to native
| American groups.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The US doesn't have a law that says "you can immigrate
| and be a citizen but only if you are white"
|
| Also, the US wasn't born out of a revolution against
| equal voting rights for people regardless of national
| origin, Israel, like Rhodesia at the time, was.
|
| In both cases, minority groups rebelled against British
| attempts to impose majority-rule democracy, Israel has
| just succeeded more than Rhodesia did at the time.
| yoavm wrote:
| I thought it was the UN that decided the country should
| be split into two states, where one would have a Jewish
| majority and the other would have an Arab majority. When
| did people rebel against imposing a majority-rule
| democracy?
|
| Last time I checked Israel just changed the prime
| minister after having an election, while Palestine had
| its last election in 2006 and chose a party that
| literally killed its opponents.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'm on my phone, so the history lesson is going to be
| pithy.
|
| The Jewish insurgency in mandatory Palestine was prompted
| by British indications that it was going to create a
| multi-racial, democratic state in Palestine, as they did
| in many of their other colonies once they departed. I
| believe there was a policy white paper published but I
| don't recall the name.
|
| After substantial British civilian/government worker
| deaths at the hands of insurgent bombs (ie. King David
| Hotel bombing), the British retreated and gave it to the
| UN, who did the partition.
|
| > Palestine had its last election in 2006 and chose a
| party that literally killed its opponents.
|
| I may be misremembering, but I believe a large reason
| elections haven't been held since then was because the
| party elected in 2006 was ejected in a coup by the party
| supported by the US and Israel.
|
| So, 14 years since an election in Palestine, and
| Netanyahu has been prime minister for 14 years.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > The US doesn't have a law that says "you can immigrate
| and be a citizen but only if you are white"
|
| Israel doesn't have that law either, there are black Jews
| and Indian Jews and white Jews as you probably know.
| Israel is an anomaly because of 2000 years of persecution
| that culminated in the holocaust. Maybe when there is no
| more any antisemitism (yeah, right) Israel will happily
| dismantle itself. Until that day it seems to me quite
| clear why Jews need a nation state.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > But as a matter of probability, a lot of people who
| criticize Israel are also antisemitic.
|
| Agreed. In practice, antizionists (folks who believe that
| Israel shouldn't exist) virtually are virtually always
| antisemitic. Whatever you think of him, Bret Stephens makes a
| pretty insightful analogy that it's like how there could
| theoretically be segregationists that aren't racist, but they
| don't exist in practice.
|
| That said, there's a distinction to be made between
| antizionism (i.e., "Israel shouldn't exist") and criticism of
| Israel (e.g., "Israel's settlement policy violates human
| rights"). The former is de facto (but not de jure)
| antisemitism while the latter is not.
|
| EDIT: I'm getting a lot of downvotes for this, I'm guessing
| I've offended a lot of people who identify strongly with
| antizionism/antisemitism. My intention wasn't offense, but
| rather observation. That said, I make no apology for any
| offense taken--enjoy my Internet Points! (:
| austincheney wrote:
| I have known devote Jewish Americans who are extremely
| critical of Israeli politics. I would be hard pressed to call
| them antisemitic.
| asidiali wrote:
| Such strong arguments, such as "I guess," and my personal
| favorite, "as a matter of probability."
|
| Just fanning the flames, let's work together to find a
| solution instead of gaslighting.
| chevill wrote:
| >But as a matter of probability, a lot of people who
| criticize Israel are also antisemitic.
|
| This is a meaningless statement though. We can expect that
| nearly anyone that's antisemitic would be critical of a
| country run and mostly inhabited by Jewish people.
|
| It becomes a problem when people try to extrapolate that fact
| to dismiss every criticism of Israel as "this guy's probably
| just antisemitic."
|
| Its only true as a matter of probability throughout the
| entire world because its true in a particular region that has
| an enormous population padding those statistics.
|
| There is antisemitism everywhere in some amounts and it is
| wrong like all forms of bigotry. However, in many countries,
| such as the US, you are just as likely to run into a person
| that criticizes Israel for reasons that have nothing to do
| with the religion of its inhabitants. You are still free to
| think that they are wrong, but people should stop using
| accusations of bigotry as a weapon to silence people simply
| for disagreeing with them. If you want to call someone a
| bigot, its pretty important to make sure you are right about
| it.
|
| And for the record when it comes to that Israel/Palestine
| conflict I think neither side is even close to being
| innocent. I don't give a shit about their religions I just
| want families to stop being murdered by the actions of two
| shitty governments.
| davemel37 wrote:
| "people should stop using accusations of bigotry as a
| weapon to silence people"
|
| Huh? Are you seriously calling someones words who feels
| victimized, a weapon? Are you seriously holding fear of
| actual violence to an unsubstantiated standard?
|
| "If you want to call someone a bigot, its pretty important
| to make sure you are right about it."
|
| Please show me one other form of bigotry accusation you
| hold to the same standard.
|
| This perspective is almost certainly a blindspot. Im not
| certain - but I definitely would not rely on you to stand
| up or defend folks from actual antisemitism.
|
| How do people even think, let alone say these things and
| not get called out by everyone immediately?
|
| Do you actually and critically think this is true or even
| appropriate to say?
| chevill wrote:
| >Huh? Are you seriously calling someones words who feels
| victimized, a weapon? Are you seriously holding fear of
| actual violence to an unsubstantiated standard?
|
| The idea of figuratively describing something as a weapon
| isn't new or unusual. I'm not even sure what you mean by
| the second sentence. I was talking about people
| defaulting to claims of bigotry at any sign of criticism.
| If every criticism of Israel, even legitimate criticisms
| not coming from a sense of bigotry, makes a person feel
| victimized then there is something wrong with that
| person. If words cannot be used as a weapon exactly how
| do criticisms of Israel make a person feel victimized?
|
| >Please show me one other form of bigotry accusation you
| hold to the same standard.
|
| I hold all forms of bigotry accusations to the same
| standard. The example given was basically "a lot of
| people exist that are antisemitic so we can assume that
| criticism of Israel is probably antisemitic." Which is an
| argument that's basically uses the same sloppy logic that
| actual bigots use to justify their beliefs. Calling
| someone a bigot can have severe consequences for that
| person whether they are actually bigots or not. The key
| part of that sentence is that it can have consequences
| when they are not guilty. Yet people throw accusations
| around assuming someone's intentions simply because they
| said something they don't like. That's wrong so its
| important to try to only make those accusations against
| people that are actually bigots. I'm not sure how that's
| controversial. Some people do this because they genuinely
| think that anyone that criticizes a thing they like is a
| bigot. However, some people know better and intentionally
| falsely accuse people of being antisemitic because they
| know that it makes people afraid to voice their opinions.
| Thus, I called it a figurative weapon.
|
| >but I definitely would not rely on you to stand up or
| defend folks from actual antisemitism.
|
| Well whether you rely on me or not I will do the right
| thing if a genocidal antisemitic political party attempts
| to take over US politics. In the meantime, if I see
| people doing bigoted things I will stand up for people
| being targeted. Like I always have. This is kind of what
| I was talking about though, you seem to have labelled me
| as an enemy of yours simply because I suggested that
| there are people that criticize Israel for reasons other
| than antisemitism. There is no government in the world
| that doesn't sometimes deserve to be criticized.
|
| >Do you actually and critically think this is true or
| even appropriate to say?
|
| I don't understand. Are you saying its impossible to be
| critical of Israel without being antisemitic?
|
| To be clear, what I was saying wasn't intended as a
| defense of the person OP was about. I think that the
| Google employee's letter was poorly worded and offensive.
| I don't know if he's antisemitic, but the phrasing saying
| that "Jews have an insatiable appetite for war" comes
| across as bigoted to me. It could be the result of poor
| phrasing causing someone to say something that they
| didn't mean, but it might not be. I can't blame someone
| for interpreting his statement as antisemitism because it
| was an overtly antisemitic statement. He could be a
| different person today, but no one made him publish that.
| davemel37 wrote:
| "I was talking about people defaulting to claims of
| bigotry at any sign of criticism."
|
| The idea that antisemitism is used to silence criticism
| of Israel is meant to do exactly that, victim shame them
| into silence - its an outrageous accusation without any
| factual basis.
|
| I don't know anyone that defaults that way about every
| criticism of Israel...but there are many types of
| critiques that are clearly antisemitic - for example
| blaming Jews or even Israelies collectively for their
| governments actions - or holding Israel to a standard you
| dont hold anyone else to or leveling criticism at Israel
| with no attempt to even get the facts on the ground
| correct.
|
| Can a claim of antisemitism be taken at face value
| without accusing the victim of weaponizing it to silence
| criticism of Israel?
|
| Why are you looking for reasons to dismiss accusations of
| anti semitism?
|
| Why isn't your default compassion and understanding?
| [deleted]
| alichapman wrote:
| I disagree with this. There are certain things that the
| Israeli government have done that are worthy of being
| criticised - the same can be said for every government in the
| world. Brushing off all criticism as antisemitism is
| unhelpful.
| [deleted]
| Redoubts wrote:
| _it's really strange..._
|
| You don't think there's anything about it's recent creation
| that makes this a special case?
| varjag wrote:
| I don't think so.
|
| There's plenty of states with ongoing ethnic strife, and
| they do face a lot of deserved criticism. However I can't
| really recall popular, internationally supported calls for
| their abolition altogether.
|
| The age of state again has not much to with it: for example
| Lebanon is younger than Israel and has a rich history of
| ethnic/sectarian conflict. Now there must be people who
| want to abolish Lebanon, but somehow you never hear them.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > for example Lebanon is younger than Israel
|
| What people usually find particularly offensive is the
| de-facto annexation and settlement of territories that
| exceed the UN resolution that created the State of
| Israel, along with the complete imbalance in both
| military power and casualties of both sides. It's not
| just ethnic/sectarian conflict. In many aspects, it would
| qualify as genocide.
| varjag wrote:
| Well, Syria is just across the border with genocide (not
| just as rhetorical device) very much ongoing. Military
| imbalance a plenty. Anyone up for dissolving it yet?
|
| Hell, even outright Nazism wasn't deemed a reason enough
| to dissolve Germany (although at some point it was
| seriously considered).
| treeman79 wrote:
| Seems like a lot of people forget there was a goal in a
| big portion of Europe to exterminate all Jews.
|
| So when some are shouting to end Israel, it's not
| unreasonable to think the next step is finish the
| genocide.
| bern4444 wrote:
| Italy just celebrated the founding of its republic, which
| was in 1946...
| cratermoon wrote:
| So no state called "Italy" existed in more-or-less the
| same form before 1946?
| floren wrote:
| True, the disparate Italian states were unified into the
| Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s, so it's older than Israel
| but younger than the US.
| strken wrote:
| Italy was unified back in the 1800s, so this is
| stretching the truth a little. It existed as a kingdom
| well before becoming a republic.
|
| It also has a surprisingly long list of separatist
| movements[0], which it has has thus far refrained from
| bombing with US-funded F16s.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separati
| st_move...
| iratic0 wrote:
| Nothing to do with Israel's recent creation, many states
| have been created recently without them being targeted by
| neighbours for mass destruction and genocide.
|
| What makes it strange is sense of normalcy people (sorry, I
| mean racists) have about a sense of white / Islamic
| supremacy over Jews, that makes them think it's ok to say
| things like 'we will wipe every Jew off the face of the
| planet' etc.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| So now we're against indigenous peoples having autonomy in
| their ancestral homeland?
| devtul wrote:
| > how the one tiny country in the whole world
|
| This tactic of saying "oh try to find Israel on the map, it's
| so tiny, oh poor state of Israel" is often pushed by
| Zionists, also often trying to link anti-zionism with anti-
| semitism.
|
| I saw a talk with Ruth Wisse, a professor at Harvard
| University pushing this narrative.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Because the argument has validity.
|
| If Israel weren't Jewish, nobody would care about it. You
| can go line by line describing Israel and its so-called
| "atrocities" and I'll show you countries that are far more
| appropriately accused of those types of atrocities... yet
| those other countries never make it into the international
| news cycle.
|
| I'm not Jewish. I'm not religious.
|
| But the singling out of Israel by political/antisemitic
| forces has not escaped my notice.
| Macha wrote:
| China vs the Uighurs and Tibetans? India vs Pakistanis?
| Pakistan vs Indians? Russia vs Chechnya? Spain vs the
| Basque people? Canada in the 80s vs native people (we had
| an article just the other day)? The US vs black people?
|
| Plenty of countries get criticised for their treatment of
| minorities when they do something wrong.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| You're making my point. China is literally wiping out the
| Uighurs. There's no hair-splitting or propagandizing
| about it. They're committing actual genocide. But besides
| a few mentions here and there, the international
| community is doing nothing about it. If it were at all
| proportional, the stories and condemnation should be in
| the news every day.
|
| But instead, we see more media coverage in a single day
| of Israel's counter attacks from rocket fire than we do
| for a year of Uighur genocide.
| 8note wrote:
| If it weren't for oil and the Suez canal, nobody would
| care about Israel's genocide either.
|
| The area currently has geopolitical importance. Once
| global warming makes the canal less relevant, and
| renewables replace oil, Israel will get to wipe out the
| Palestinians in peace
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Nah, what will happen is that after renewables replace
| oil and the Palestinians keep firing rockets, people like
| you will find a new spin to claim that some grave
| injustice is being done because the Israelis defend
| themselves.
|
| Anyone who looks at the power dynamic knows the truth of
| the saying: If the Palestinians put down their weapons,
| there would be peace. If the Israelis put down their
| weapons, they would be slaughtered.
| Macha wrote:
| The news gets bored. It's why settlements don't make the
| news but it makes the news when it rises to armed
| conflict. Israel has already been pushed out of the news
| cycle by Belarus here.
|
| There were plenty of news stories about the Uighurs last
| year.
|
| The international community is not doing much about
| Israel either.
| kmonsen wrote:
| That's a huge straw man.
|
| I am critical of some of Israel's behavior, but by no means
| calling for its complete destruction.
| bern4444 wrote:
| I believe you, but too many people use the line, I'm not
| antisemitic, I'm just criticizing the government as a
| scapegoat to excuse obvious antisemitic behavior.
| plutonorm wrote:
| I've not met many. But I have met plenty of people who
| deliberately conflate criticism of Israel with criticism
| of Jews in order to easily dismiss criticism of the
| former. I'm part Jewish.
| Retric wrote:
| 'too many' is rather shifting the goalposts here.
|
| The vast majority of people are criticizing the
| government not the population. It's unusual for people to
| consider a nation's population rather than their
| government because a nation's population is largely
| irrelevant. It's not random Americans that have a history
| of overthrowing democratically elected governments, it's
| the US government that does so etc.
|
| Israel's government, like all governments, does plenty of
| things people disagree with and as such often gets
| legitimate criticism on it's own merits.
| bern4444 wrote:
| Sure, but Americans aren't randomly attacked when abroad
| or out doing normal things, like getting food out or
| drinks.
|
| And yet, Jews are today. It wasn't too long ago that
| people marched in Charlottesville chanting jews will not
| replace us. Now there's a massive rise in violence
| Retric wrote:
| > Sure, but Americans aren't randomly attacked when
| abroad or out doing normal things, like getting food out
| or drinks.
|
| Yes, they are. The US State Department issues travel
| advisories over such issues. It's safer to travel in many
| places as a Canadian rather than American.
| [deleted]
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| This. You can be critical of Israel's actions. You can also
| be critical of Israel's existence specifically as a nation
| that discriminates against non-Jewish citizens. None of
| this means you are an anti-semite who wants the destruction
| of Israel, let alone Jews.
|
| By and large, for example, the UN security council
| resolutions that the US keeps single-handedly vetoing are
| not calling for any destruction. They simply condemn
| Israel's violent behavior.
| bern4444 wrote:
| Of course one can. Except for the fact that often people
| scapegoat their criticisms with a line like I'm not
| antisemtic, I'm just criticizing the government. Which
| typically comes just before an anti semetic comment is
| made.
|
| It's also an entirely an uneven playing field. No other
| country is condemned and attacked by the international
| community as often, and as widely despite other
| countries' far worse offense.
|
| Criticisms of Israel is unique and direct and no other
| country is held to the same standard.
|
| How much of a joke is it that Saudi Arabia was on the
| human rights commission at the UN for so long. Or the
| lack of similar statements against China for their
| decimation of Uighurs.
|
| This isn't a finger blaming game, its recognizing that
| the UN demonstrates a massive bias against a single
| country with standards that no other nation has to face
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| This is technically true but ignores the complexity of
| the situation, which is that Israel is essentially at war
| with groups such as Hamas, which call for Israel's
| destruction and deny its right to exist. When Hamas
| starts firing rockets at Israeli civilians, it just isn't
| clear what response critics prefer Israel show. Israel
| has little choice but try to destroy and degrade the
| infrastructure used to fire those rockets. Israeli
| violent behavior is in response to attack on its civilian
| population. Ignoring this while criticizing Israel seems
| strange to me
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Your comment is a straw man because I never claimed that
| you couldn't be critical of Israel but not be antisemitic.
| In fact, I said it's theoretically possible. I just find
| that in practice, people who show their hand at being
| antisemitic seem to try to hide behind the whole anti-
| zionist/antisemitic distinction.
|
| Based solely on the merits, you'd think that Israel's
| ethno-state bona fides wouldn't be any worse than dozens of
| other countries'. In fact, they're far less problematic.
| You can be Arabic/Muslim in Israel and rise to the highest
| levels of government with full rights of citizenship. I can
| point to many other countries where that wouldn't be the
| case for ethnically/religiously mal-aligned individuals.
| But somehow those other countries aren't constantly in the
| news cycle for defending their ongoing right to exist.
| colordrops wrote:
| Honest question here - how do you criticize Judaism the
| religion without being called a bigot? Christians and Muslims
| are fair game for discourse. Is the Jewish religion and its
| followers not fair to criticize? They have many of the same
| arcane and backwards beliefs as other Abrahamic religions.
| 6321throwaway wrote:
| > To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are
| not allowed to criticize.
|
| -- Voltaire
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't know how to answer your question, but a thing to keep
| in mind is that Jewish people are usually less than 1% or 2%
| of the population. For example (in France), I'm worried about
| Christian and especially Muslim homophobia, but Jewish not so
| much because it's way easier to navigate around. I don't even
| have anecdotal evidence of Jewish presence or absence of
| homophobia because I didn't meet many of them.
|
| Edit because I realized I may not have been clear: what I
| mean is that in a lot of country Christian and Muslims are in
| power. For Jewish people, it's the case in one country, and
| there's not much big minorities like there are Muslim
| minorities in Chrisian countries and the opposite.
| tootie wrote:
| Being Jewish is also multi-tiered because it's associated with
| both a religion and an ethnicity. I'd love to popularize being
| thought of Ashkenazi and not Jewish. I don't have a familial
| bond with Israel for probably 17 centuries and I don't really
| care if I ever did. My culture is more strongly associated with
| Eastern Europe and we were run out of town on a rail 100 years
| ago.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Ashkenazi is just an old hebrew word for German. If you strip
| away both Germany (the HRE, more specifically), and Judaism
| then the term doesn't have much meaning. At least, not as an
| identity that people have assumed historically.
|
| Ashkenazi Jews before the war just called themselves Jews,
| with secular emancipationists often appending nationality.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The etymology of the word "Ashkenazi" is irrelevant
| (argument from etymology is a fallacy), as for a long time
| now the word has been used in a different, wider meaning.
| And Ashkenazi is a valid distinction versus e.g. Sephardi
| Jews: Ashkenazi Jews used a different reading for Hebrew,
| adopted different codes of dress, employed different
| structures of doctrinal authority and hermeneutics of
| Scripture, etc.
|
| Naturally under the Ashkenazi umbrella there were people of
| different cultures (and different degrees of assimilation
| to the surrounding non-Jewish population), but those Jews
| were still more similar to one another than to non-
| Ashkenazi Jews.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I'm not arguing the etymology. I'm just saying that
| "Ashkenazi, as a demonym would be a new idea
| _historically_. I have no problem with people forming new
| identities.
|
| It's also not about accent. There are distinct Sephardic
| reading styles. It's not technically doctrinally
| different either, at least formally. In religious terms,
| distinctions are termed is "customary/minhagim" which are
| lower on the hierarchy.
|
| In any case, etymology is not far off the mark. Ashkenazi
| judaism isn't just named after germany, it originated in
| the HRE and Ashkenazim spoke a German dialect.
|
| My grandmother was a native polish speaker, secular, and
| would not have identified as "askenazi" before the war.
| She identified as polish, strongly, and was as
| comfortable in a sephardic synagogue as an ashkenazi one.
| My grandfather, a Yiddish speaker, was more comfortable
| in an ashkenazi synagogue. Most are mixed, these days,
| whatever the majority is.
| siculars wrote:
| If you were your ancestors who were "run out of town on a
| rail" you would care very, very deeply about your familial
| bond to Israel. Like yours, my family was run out of town.
| Unlike yours, many in my family did not run fast enough. If
| only there was a place they could run to either as first
| resort or when quota had been reached in other places. If
| only there was a place that could make running a specific
| people out of town a very costly pursuit for those who were
| making those people run.
|
| Israel is and will always remain the eternal Homeland of the
| Jewish people. Am Yisrael Chai.
| tolbish wrote:
| That's the argument certain Native Americans use to say
| that they are the only ones whose home is America. Do you
| see how this argument makes you look?
| dalbasal wrote:
| Saying that Israel is a jewish homeland does not
| necessarily mean that it is not anyone else's home. It
| does to some, but they are an extreme minority. It's also
| contrary to our declaration of independence.
|
| I'm not american, but I'll hazard a guess that "certain
| Native Americans" who take this position are also more
| often assumed than real.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The history of Israel is centered around a rebellion to
| prevent the other people who lived there from getting
| joint rule. Just look at the history - this is the
| document that prompted the Jewish insurgency in mandatory
| palestine. [0]
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939#Content
| dalbasal wrote:
| Let me hazard a guess that I know the history of my own
| country better than you. That doesn't make me right, but
| don't be condescending.
|
| "history of Israel is centered around" - bollocks.
|
| First, the main faction, which later became the
| government, did not "rebel" against the British Empire.
| In fact, they offered to contribute troops and enforced a
| truce on the grounds that the UK was fighting nazis. It
| was a minority faction that fought the British, both
| before and after this event.
|
| Second, nothing about the white papers had anything to do
| with voting rights. There were no voting rights during
| the British period. Arabs had voting rights in Israel
| once Israel existed, but that's neither her nor there.
| The "rebellion" was about immigration restrictions. More
| to the point, it was about _emigration_ restrictions,
| cutting off the last escape route out of the third reich.
|
| Third, the "Palestinian Civil War," as the British called
| it, had started 10 years prior, shortly after the first
| partition of Palestine. It started when it became clear
| the French & British were going to chop the region into
| nation states and skedaddle.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > It was a minority faction that fought the British, both
| before and after this event.
|
| The people actively involved in fighting are going to be
| a minority in any rebellion you would ever study.
|
| > First, the main faction, which later became the
| government, did not "rebel" against the British Empire.
|
| They were clearly opposed to the idea of a state with
| joint rule between different ethnic groups. What is the
| Jewish Resistance Movement if not a rebellion against the
| British mandate?
|
| It is disingenuous to suggest that they did not "rebel",
| indeed, I have an older friend who has recounted blowing
| up British police stations as a member of the Palmach,
| which was not the minority faction.
|
| > There were no voting rights during the British period.
| Arabs had voting rights in Israel once Israel existed,
| but that's neither her nor there
|
| Most post-British former-colonies had majority rule
| voting rights. You're right (and I was wrong) that the
| white paper didn't explicitly address that, but it did
| address the creation of a multi-ethnic state.
| dalbasal wrote:
| You've got the history garbled. The Palmach enforced a
| truce during this period. I suppose you could call Etzel
| rebels. They aren't the ones who formed the State of
| Israel, or led the majority militia. There were also
| jerusalemite militias insurrecting. against British rule
| and bedouin rebels in Transjordan. A lot of people
| disliked the British presence. Palmach didn't like them
| either, but they declared a truce so long as they were
| fighting Nazism.
|
| None of the fighting had anything to do with anything but
| migration, with the primary emphasis on getting Jews out
| of the Reich. Ships being returned to Italian ports were
| the main incendiary. You are caught up the the
| boilerplate, which preceded any document from that era.
| It was the British trying to square the circle of
| contradictory promises made to different factions. Jews &
| Arabs. Hashemites & Bedouins, etc.
|
| It's also not the beginning of anything, neither conflict
| with the British or Arabs. It's certainly not what the
| country is "centred on." Most notably, it's the only time
| Jewish militias fought one another.
|
| Who care about insurrection against Britain anyway? Why?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sure, if you only look at the first 5 years after the
| white paper. _Post-1945_ , the Palmach were actively
| bombing police stations & bridges, I know this for a
| fact, my friend/acquaintance was literally there doing
| this, he disliked Etzel/Irgun, but they were both
| fighting the British at that point.
| tootie wrote:
| Why? We were run out of Israel on a rail too. Ancestry of
| any kind means nothing to me. Sunk cost. As far as I'm
| concerned, my ancestral homeland is New York. And I'm
| pretty happy with that. My wife's parents are from Korea
| and they had a rough time there. They think of New York as
| home too. Speaking of new ethnic identities, I think of my
| kids as being Neoamerican.
| losteric wrote:
| I acknowledge the darkness of history and a desire for
| security in territory owned by the group you identify with.
| However, Israel is now repeating history by displacing
| present-day non-Jewish people who also have familial bonds
| to the territory.
| refurb wrote:
| Despite the downvotes this post has a point - if you want
| to protect your religion/ethnicity you have to do it
| yourself.
|
| Rise of anti-semitism in Europe - nothing is done
|
| Jews seek safety in other countries - immigration denied
|
| Holocaust happens - world sympathizes and moves on
|
| Israel is under no illusions as to what happens if they
| don't have a home and defend it. I kind of don't blame them
| for ignoring the worlds criticisms.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > if you want to protect your religion/ethnicity you have
| to do it yourself.
|
| What should white people be doing if they want to protect
| their race?
|
| Why the hell does all this tribalist & essentialist
| nonsense become acceptable when discussion turns to
| Israel?
| UK-Al05 wrote:
| ??? I don't agree with him. But western & majority white
| countries have the strongest militaries in the world and
| project power all around the world.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Generally we don't justify US military funding on the
| basis of "protecting the White race." The strongest
| military in the world will be representing a majority
| non-white nation in a decade or two.
| UK-Al05 wrote:
| No, but it still mostly defends it's countries interests.
|
| Just like the IDF does which has non Jewish member's.
| tootie wrote:
| I have absolutely no interest in protecting my ethnicity.
| Plenty of ethnicities have gone extinct and I fully
| expect most extant ethnicities (and religions) to fade
| away eventually too. No one will be upset when there are
| no more Jews any more than they miss Manichaens or
| Hittites. Borders and superstitions serve no practical
| purpose. To be clear, I'm not advocating genocide or
| violence of any kind. I'm just saying attrition is
| inevitable.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| There are plenty of non-zionist people who survived the
| Holocaust, it is disingenuous to paint caring about Israel
| as the natural, inevitable reaction to the Holocaust.
|
| The whole concept of having a natural "homeland" because of
| your DNA/ethnicity/race is bullshit, land doesn't care what
| color your skin is or what religion you practice.
| dalbasal wrote:
| The majority were not zionist, including my family. The
| Holocaust changed that.
|
| The premise of zionism was never _" having a natural
| "homeland" because of your DNA."_ The premise of Zionism
| was that Jews could not stay in Europe, particularly in
| the age of nation states. Most commonly, this was
| referred to as "The Jewish Question."
|
| The majority of secular Jews believed in emancipation.
| The majority of religious jews believed that only god
| could create the Jewish state. They were also skeptical
| of Zionism's desire for secular Jewish identity.
|
| That said, my grandparents never referred to themselves
| as zionists. Before the war, zionism just meant "want a
| jewish state to exist." Foreign politicians (eg
| Churchill) were referred to as zionist for this reason.
| After the war, it generally meant exuberance about
| zionists political ideologies of the time. Founding
| Kibbutz, farming, hebrew language revival, etc.
| "Zionists" wanted to take hebrew names, for example.
| Today, "zionist" just means Israeli patriotism.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The Holocaust definitely changed how the majority of
| people felt, but it doesn't mean that I can't be critical
| of that sentiment.
|
| Bundism also continued to exist after the Holocaust,
| albeit in a diminished form.
|
| "premise of Zionism was that Jews could not stay in
| Europe" -> the creation of a state where citizenship is
| granted explicitly on the basis of your ethnicity, in the
| form of a "right of return" is 100% the premise I
| suggested.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I don't think you can't be critical of that sentiment.
|
| I do dispute that it was a a sentiment at all, at least
| in grandparents' case. It wasn't ideology either. It was
| just a fact. They couldn't stay in europe. A right of
| return to a Jewish State^ was the only practical way to
| survive, besides conversion. My grandfather considered
| that route, as an atheist, but his first wife dissented.
| He also looked very Jewish. That was _their_ conclusion
| att. You are free to disagree.
|
| The majority of post war immigration was non ideological.
| There wasn't much daylight between ideological and non-
| ideological zionism, for the most part.
|
| It also (in my opinion, this time) proved true for 1.5
| million people who found that they could not stay in
| Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, etc. The new world wasn't an option
| for them, as it had been for many europeans.
|
| I might agree with you that nation states, or the common
| form of nation state, isn't ideal. It is quite terrible
| in its purist form. However, I don't see why this
| criticism is so often leveled at Zionism exclusively. I'm
| also Irish, and have never heard such a criticism of
| Irish Republicanism. Besides that, lots of countries'
| have rights of return, ethnonational symbolism, etc.
|
| Meanwhile, most Israelis supported South Sudanese and
| Kurdish independence for similar reasons. Me included. I
| think that Kurds have been screwed since the fall of the
| Ottomans, because they ended up without a state. Lebanon
| was founded on this premise. Pakistan. Lots of examples
|
| ^Zionism originally called for a homeland, not
| necessarily a state, and hoped to achieve this as
| cultural autonomy and migration rights under Ottoman
| sovereignty. Nation States were not the norm, when
| zionism was first conceived.
|
| +The downvotes are not from me.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't know your grandparents, so really can't hope to
| prevail in any discussion about what their sentiments
| were.
|
| I don't dispute that most of this immigration was non-
| ideological, I wasn't trying to suggest that it wasn't.
| Nor am I opposed in any way to Jewish immigration to
| Israel.
|
| Moreover, racial & ethnic separatism is a very common and
| understandable reaction to oppression. But I still remain
| critical of it - just as I would be if Black people in
| the United States established a separate Black state in
| North America.
|
| The crime, in my view, was the insurgency, bombings, and
| driving out of the British following their announcement
| that they planned to transition Palestine into an
| independent, multi-racial state with majority-rule.
| Fighting against that goal in order to form an ethno-
| state is, in my view, analogous to what the white
| minority in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia pulled after similar
| British announcements around their colonial state. The
| primary difference is that Israel remains, Rhodesia no
| longer does.
|
| > I'm also Irish, and have never heard such a criticism
| of Irish Republicanism. Besides that, lots of countries'
| have rights of return, ethnonational symbolism, etc.
|
| My understanding is that Irish republicanism is not based
| on the same principles as Zionism, namely there is no
| opposition for a multi-ethnic/racial state with majority
| democratic rule.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Re: Irish republicanism
|
| There is quite a lot of similarity between the two
| movements, current antagonism aside. Language revival
| being the most commonly noted. IDK what you would
| consider "principles of," but they're both nation state
| ideologies of the time... as opposed to republican
| universalism (a la france) of previous centuries.
|
| It is also true that ireland was segregated along
| religious/national lines, and that protestants in ROI (I
| am catholic-jewish-atheist, as the old joke goes) are
| nonexistent today. They were about 25% before
| independence. Driving out protestants is emphatically not
| a principle of irish republicanism. Many/most founders of
| Irish Republicanism were, in fact, protestant. Most
| emigrated, moved north or converted in the generation
| following independence. There is some dark, rarely
| mentioned parts of our history of that time.
|
| I'll also note that driving out arabs is emphatically not
| a principle of zionism, never was. The coming of the
| nation state had other ideas. zionism started in the
| ottoman period, and aspired to cultural autonomy of a
| kind that was practiced there. A nation state goal was
| adopted after France and Germany decided this was the
| future of the region.
|
| People seem to forget how mixed Europe was before the
| wars, before nation states. Poland was about 50% polish.
| Jews, Germans and other minorities made up the rest. Its
| now 99% Polish-catholic. My grandfather's region (now
| eastern Slovakia) were Slovaks, Jews, Czechs and
| Ukrainians in a "majority-minority" mix. Now 99% Slovak.
| All of mainland europe shares this history.
|
| When the Ottoman empire fell, giving way to nation
| states, same. Greek & Turkish ethnic "exchange." The
| Syriac & Armenian genocide. Yugoslavia & multiethnic arab
| countries segregated more recently. India, despite
| Gandhi's efforts. Etc. Empires were more multicultural
| than the current states.
|
| I'll note that the philosophical distinction between
| universalism and ethno nationalism is barely noticeable
| in actual history.
|
| Re: racial & ethnic separatism
|
| Seeing independence as synonymous with racial & ethnic
| separatism is a leap. But, as I said, but if it applies
| to Israel it applies to half the world. In Israeli law,
| now and since founding, there is no preference or limits
| on any citizen. The only preferential law is the right of
| return. Actual discrimination, especially during wars, is
| a real thing. It is a failure though, not an ideal.
|
| Rhodesia practiced apartheid and only allowed whites to
| vote. Israel never practiced apartheid, and all citizens
| can vote.
|
| During the 1948 war about >1m palestinians became
| refugees, most ending up in the Jordanian or Egyptian
| parts of Palestine. >1m european jewish refugees arrived
| from europe and >1m arab-jewish refugees who were forced
| out of various countries. Thats how the demographics came
| to be. There was never a time when israel, as an
| independent state, had a jewish minority.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The popular understanding of Jewish in America is Ashkenazi
| tootie wrote:
| My point being that the word "Ashkenazi" is still not
| understood by most people.
| chitowneats wrote:
| The average American doesn't know an Ashkenazi from an
| alpaca.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, but the average American also thinks of an Ashkenazi
| Jew when they think of a Jew, and has no idea that
| Sephardim & mizrahim even exist, even if they don't know
| the words for any of it.
| chitowneats wrote:
| OP's point is to refer to these people as Ashkenazi. To
| think of them as that, instead of (or perhaps in addition
| to) as Jewish.
|
| My point is we are a long way away from that, despite how
| many Ashkenazi Jews live in the US.
| [deleted]
| gadders wrote:
| >>People can be critical of the state of Israel, but they
| should not be antisemitic.
|
| As long as you (the general you, not you specifically) subject
| all countries that (allegedly) mistreat their citizens or
| neighbouring countries to the same level of criticism. When you
| single out the world's only Jewish state for criticism it looks
| kinda racist.
| ttt0 wrote:
| You can't even describe other states as "the world's only
| German state", or "French state" or "Polish state", "Russian
| state" etc. because racism, so what are we even talking
| about?
| gadders wrote:
| There are several Christian and Islamic countries but only
| one Jewish one.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Seems like you're changing the subject to talk about
| religion.
|
| Can we assume you cede the point regarding ethnicity?
| gadders wrote:
| What do you think "Jewish" means then? You think being
| "Jewish" is an equivalent adjective to being "French"?
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| 1. There's a lot of irony in your statement, since Jewish
| people were slaughtered and horribly mistreated in those
| other countries simply for being Jewish. So how have they
| not been ethno-states... or at least "anti-specific-ethno
| states"?
|
| 2. There are plenty of countries that are dominated by
| Islam, and yet their right to exist isn't generally
| questioned.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Yes, they _used to_ be. That 's usually how nations are
| born - around common ethnicity.
|
| And that's the point, everyone else got criticized for it
| _except for_ Israel, which has a bipartisan support (at
| least in America). And any critique of Israel being a
| Jewish state is somehow portrayed as a double standard
| _against_ Jews. At the same time you can freely attack
| white, non-Jewish people on the basis of what European
| and American governments did without any fear of
| repercussions. Not saying that there should be
| repercussions, because I support free speech, just
| pointing this out.
|
| The first part of your comment refers to Jews as
| ethnicity and the second as religion.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| South Africa's Apartheid was condemned as human injustice, so
| should Israel's Apartheid, no?
| logicchains wrote:
| In what way are Israeli arabs treated differently under
| Israel law than Israeli Jews?
| door101 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_
| Nat...
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Israel heavily disputed its responsibility to help with
| vaccination efforts of the same arabs of the territory
| it's annexing, so yeah, that's not great.
| gadders wrote:
| Israel offered its vaccines to the Palestinian Authority,
| and the PA refused them.
| anonbecause80 wrote:
| That's sort of like asking in what way are African-
| Americans treated differently under US law. Sure, the law
| may appear to be equal for all legal members of society,
| but that doesn't mean in practice it works like that.
|
| The settlement doctrine, removal of Arabic as an official
| language, and language specifically about Israel being
| Jewish that were passed in 2018 are also instances where
| the law actually does diverge for Arab citizens. [1]
|
| There's a pretty decent breakdown of why Israel
| officially meets the international requirements to be
| considered an Apartheid state here as well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MknerYjob0w
|
| [1]https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-
| jewish-n...
| Dah00n wrote:
| Law is a guideline. Not reality. Like American Freedom*.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| "Israel's Apartheid" is not a thing, unless you mean the
| fact that there are zero jews in Palestinian territory.
| Yes, "the squad" lied to you again.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| This is by design. Israel and spent years associating the
| _state_ of Israel with Judaism.
|
| That way you can't criticize Israel without being labeled and
| anti-Jewish semite. Nothing he posted was offensive. Israel is
| an apartheid state
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| > Israel is an apartheid state
|
| It's easy to spot people who know less than nothing about the
| situation when this word shows up. Israel is literally not an
| apartheid state. "Palestine" is literally an apartheid state.
| This is a demonstration of supreme ignorance.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Israel is an apartheid state
|
| Definition of apartheid: "a rigid former policy of
| segregating and economically and politically oppressing the
| nonwhite population"
|
| Arabs and Jews are both white but I am guess that in your
| analogy you are referring to segregation of those groups,
| correct me if I misinterpreted your specific version of
| propaganda.
|
| In apartheid South Africa, whites and blacks didn't live in
| the same areas and blacks couldn't vote.
|
| Taking a look at the countries around Israel, in Egypt there
| used to be 100,000 Jews, they were mostly forced out by
| president Nasser, there are less than 20 left today.
|
| There are no Jews in Saudi Arabia. During the Gulf War when
| US military forces were stationed there, the Saudis allowed
| Christian worship services but prohibited Jewish worship
| services for the military personnel, Jews had to hold
| services in ships offshore.
|
| There are no Jews in Jordan. There are less than 20 Jews in
| Syria. There are around 100 Jews in Lebanon.
|
| There are 1,900,000 Arabs in Israel, that is around 20% of
| the population. They have full voting rights, around 16% of
| the parliament in Israel are Arabs. They enjoy full civil
| rights.
|
| Describing Israel as an apartheid state is anti-Jewish, and
| it is ridiculous.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Definition of apartheid: "a rigid former policy of
| segregating and economically and politically oppressing the
| nonwhite population"
|
| I find this a very curious definition. Why should the skin
| color of the oppressed population matter? Googling it
| returns this dictionary entry[1]:
|
| > (in the Republic of South Africa) a rigid former policy
| of segregating and economically and politically oppressing
| the nonwhite population.
|
| > any system or practice that separates people according to
| color, ethnicity, caste, etc.
|
| So the definition you quoted only applies in the context of
| South Africa, in general apartheid refers to any system or
| practice that separates people according to color,
| ethnicity, caste, etc..
|
| [1]: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/apartheid
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> I find this a very curious definition
|
| The word apartheid is an Afrikaans word (Afrikaans is a
| Germanic language spoken in South Africa) that was used
| as an election slogan by a South African political party
| that implemented complete segregation and racial
| classification in South Africa in the 1950s.
|
| If you are not making a specific comparison to the former
| racial policies of South Africa, there are better words
| to use.
|
| Although I know over time, meanings change, so that words
| like anti-Semitic, racist, fascist, etc. all just become
| synonyms for "bad" or "things I don't like".
| ciisforsuckas wrote:
| and billions of dollars
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Nothing he posted was offensive.
|
| > "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself"
|
| How about that?
| literallyWTF wrote:
| As I said, Israel conflates being a Jew with the state of
| Israel. And as such, people associate Israel with Judaism.
| That's not offensive if it's by design. You can't have your
| cake and eat it to.
|
| Israel is an apartheid state.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Anyone writing something so inflammatory ought to
| approach this topic with more nuance though. If you're
| willing to write that you should also be willing to get
| it right, from a purely factual perspective.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| It doesn't matter how much Israel attempts to conflate
| Zionism with Judaism. Pre-judging all Jews because of it
| is antisemitic.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| What he posted is literately a rephrased version "The jew
| cries out in pain as he strikes you"
| mistermann wrote:
| > You can't have your cake and eat it to.
|
| With skillful public relations and political lobbying you
| can, at least to a very large degree.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Apartheid not by any definition that's accepted broadly.
| israel just formed a coalition government with the Arab
| Israelis.
| Udik wrote:
| The real apartheid in Israel is not against its Arab
| population (although by various means a good part of it
| doesn't even have citizenship). The real apartheid is
| what happens in the occupied territories, where Jews
| enjoy all the benefits and protection of their
| citizenship while Arabs are deprived of any rights.
| jcranmer wrote:
| It would not be entirely far-fetched to compare the
| status of Arab Israelis with the status of Coloureds in
| South Africa during late apartheid: Coloureds had some
| rights (including enfranchisement well before Blacks
| did), more than Blacks did, but were still pretty
| systematically discriminated against compared to Whites.
|
| In Israel right now, Arab Israelis have fewer rights than
| Jewish Israelis do--notably in land rights, where
| pre-1967 land ownership claims are only legally
| recognized if you're Jewish, not Arab. That a coalition
| government has just now been formed with an Arab Israeli
| party _for the first time in Israel 's history_, largely
| because it's the _only_ way a coalition could be formed
| that doesn 't include Netanyahu, doesn't invalidate the
| fact that legal discrimination still exists in Israel,
| let alone Israel's blatantly illegal actions vis-a-vis
| Palestine.
| xdennis wrote:
| If the said "Israelis" instead of "Jews" it would still be
| bigoted AF.
| timkam wrote:
| Yes, there is an association and a Head of Diversity should
| be smart enough to not generalize based on this association;
| it's failure to satisfy the core requirement of the
| professional role.
| zmk_ wrote:
| Everyone should know 10 years in advance to write nuanced
| posts.
| timkam wrote:
| He didn't clean it up when starting in the role, he
| damaged the (employer) brand he was expected to
| protect/develop as part of his role, he got re-assigned
| to a different role, which is arguably a reasonable
| consequence.
| ranman wrote:
| Well it was published 14 years ago. He was probably in
| college or something when he wrote it. Not giving him a
| pass or anything, just pointing out he didn't write in
| while in his current role.
| kickoman wrote:
| Sorry for offtop, but I'm refusing to believe that 2007
| was 14 years ago
| NateEag wrote:
| If he had ever changed that view you'd really hope he
| would have gone back and updated that essay.
| politician wrote:
| If he even remembered writing it. I have no idea what I
| wrote 14 years ago, whether its online, or where online
| it might be.
| NateEag wrote:
| Losing track of what I've written on my own personal blog
| seems really unlikely to me, despite havig a terrible
| memory, but I gues it's possible.
| zpeti wrote:
| Israel, a nation with a strong national identity, a small
| nation not a multinational organisation, generally governed by
| right wing governments, hugely successful in terms of
| meritocracy, good entrepreneurial spirit.
|
| 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.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Asians and Jews have both faced discrimination based on their
| academic success.
|
| What happened in the recent past to American Jews on
| university quotas and discrimination is now happening to
| Asian Americans.
|
| The issue is both cases showcase upwards mobility by
| investing in your future generations. Going against the left
| belief social mobility is dead.
| jewnotzionist wrote:
| That is, of course, true.
|
| 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.
| yonixw wrote:
| Another part of the problem is when the criticizers forget
| that Zionism got a huge boost after pogroms on Jewish
| communities across Europe.
|
| So, by criticising Zionism in a middle of a self defense
| operation in Gaza (as they see it), you look like you don't
| know its roots and look like they ignoring the Jewish right
| for self defense.
| duped wrote:
| No one is forgetting the Holocaust or historic pogroms on
| Jews in Europe when they criticize Israeli military actions
| or forced displacement.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Speaking with these people on clubhouse recently, I can
| say they absolutely believe
|
| 1) Hitler was right,
|
| but (contradictorily)
|
| 2) The Holocaust/Progroms were exaggerated,
|
| and finally
|
| 3) there was never any instances of strife in the region
| before the forming of the state (and if there was it was
| always the Irgun and nobody else ever).
|
| I'm not saying all people who criticize Israel believe
| the above but many of the people in "The Balance" room
| who criticized Israel appeared to.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > However part of the problem is that zionists within the
| state of Israel work really hard to blur this distinction.
|
| > So, by criticising Zionism in a middle of a self defense
| operation in Gaza (as they see it), you look like you don't
| know its roots and look like they ignoring the Jewish right
| for self defense.
|
| Yes, this is an excellent example of exactly that sort of
| blurring that GP was talking about, thanks.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > they ignoring the Jewish right for self defense
|
| What do the military actions of the state of Israel have to
| do with the "Jewish" right to self defense? Many Jews don't
| live in Israel and Israel contains many non-Jews.
| [deleted]
| koheripbal wrote:
| His bigotry goes beyond that. Kamau Bobb's blog posts were
| almost exclusively about White and Jewish people, and the theme
| throughout is the mistreatment by them of Black Americans.
| There is a very clear tone of distaste for white and Jewish
| people in his posts.
|
| 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...
| SEJeff wrote:
| Precisely.
|
| 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.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| I am sorry to point that out, but this argument is true about
| almost anything.
|
| 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.
| SrCodeMonkey wrote:
| Internal and external criticism is important and welcome, but
| when the only democratic country in the hostile region, that's
| constantly fighting for its existence, becomes the world's
| punching bag, you have to wonder why it is. Does UN's human
| rights council obsession with Israel [1], while turning a blind
| eye on real atrocities in murderous regimes like Iran, North
| Korea, Turkey, Russia, etc., makes sense to anyone with a
| common sense?
|
| 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...
| megous wrote:
| > It's just the desire of Jews to live in its historic
| homeland - Israel, in a peaceful coexistence with its
| neighbors.
|
| You're doing the same thing this Googler is accused of.
| Assigning some characteristic/desire to the whole class of
| people.
| SrCodeMonkey wrote:
| How so? I just gave the gist of the term Zionism, as
| described by Theodore Herzl, the father of the movement.
| The demonization of this innocent ideology is by itself a
| form of anti-Semitism, a modern one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
| megous wrote:
| Do all Jews want to live in their historic homeland?
| Aunche wrote:
| The author may have a valid point, but expressed it in a
| condescending manner. If a Jewish diversity officer wrote a
| blog post saying "If I were black, I would prioritize fixing
| black-on-black crime" as a criticism of BLM, would you give
| them the same defense?
|
| 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?
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >Why do people feel the need to socially shame people
| publicly for an offense over a decade ago?
|
| Because they're playing a game of Moral Supremacy one-
| upsmanship. In the long run, everyone who plays this game
| must lose, because were all humans. But in the short term
| this game can be quite lucrative in terms of attention
| getting, internet points, and money.
| cdot2 wrote:
| I think this guy just doesn't like jews
| tgv wrote:
| Possibly, but the second statement points at the contrast
| between being a Jew and being an Israeli. For the "global
| lead on diversity strategy and research" of one the world's
| giant corporations, it's remarkably insensitive, of course,
| but then again, written 13 years ago.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Or he's just against jewish privilege and systemic jewish
| supremacy
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Can you quote where exactly they are "conflating the state of
| Israel and Jewish people and lumping it all together."?
|
| >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
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > People can be critical of the state of Israel
|
| 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.
| dalbasal wrote:
| There is a lot of disingenuous stuff to go around, in all
| directions.
|
| Antisemitism, antizionism and anti Israel sentiments relating
| to current events _are_ distinct in purely theoretical terms.
| One does not imply the other and they often are distinct in
| practice. IRL though, they 're very often intermingled.
|
| The banal example is the PNA president's doctoral thesis,
| that the holocaust was faked to justify zionism. Most Israel
| critics and all antizionists define/use the term "zionism"
| entirely differently to how zionists use(d) it... Very often
| these draw from, or are similar to new world order conspiracy
| theories, most famously "the protocols." Speaking of old
| tropes, The Protocols are regularly republished in Islamic
| publications today. I ran across it once in a random
| indonesian magazine, for example. This obviously has roots in
| the Israel Palestine conflict, not antisemitism. Anti
| Semitism is not part of indonesian culture.. but
| intermingling.
|
| It is true that anti-antisemitism organisations, jews,
| especially those with ancestral ties to europe can be
| paranoid about antisemitism and see it where it doesn't
| exist. It's also true that they often have a better eye, and
| recognise actual antisemitism where others don't. We know the
| old stereotypes and libels.
|
| A lot of it is contextual. The vast majority of Israelis
| (myself included) do not suspect antisemitic motives in
| Palestinians, no matter what "Jews be like X" stuff they say.
| Antisemitism doesn't mean animosity towards Jews (or
| semites). It is a specific, european cultural phenomenon that
| persisted for a long time, and still exists. Many of its
| features or ostensibly banal. I'm not american, but I think
| "why is blackface racist" is an analogy of sorts.
|
| For "proof" look at unmoderated comments sections of
| many/most anti-zionist posts. You'll find obvious, unmasked
| antisemitism very commonly.
|
| This is not apologetics, nor does it mean that criticism of
| Israel is inherently anti semitic, invalid or unacceptable.
| It also doesn't mean that people are never unjustly accused
| of antisemtitism.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > The vast majority of Israelis (myself included) do not
| suspect antisemitic motives in Palestinians
|
| Speak for yourself, I'm Israeli as well and most Israelis
| don't agree with you. There is antisemitism among
| Palestinians and there is Islamophobia among Israelis
| (though to a lesser degree in my opinion), wishing it away
| won't make it go away
| dalbasal wrote:
| I think your missing my point. Antisemitism isn't just
| not liking Jews. Of course there is hatred and bigotry,
| as we just saw in every mixed city.
|
| What I'm saying is that antisemitism is a distinct thing.
| xdennis wrote:
| Let's hear a sample so we can judge.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| I know it's fashionable to support the perceived "oppressed",
| but you really have to be at the pinnacle of ignorance to
| think it's _Israel_ , the target of ethnic cleansing, is the
| perpetrator. Palestinians are welcome in Israel with full
| rights, and they make up about 20% of the population. There
| are zero jews welcome in Palestinian territory.
|
| I don't think people who criticize Israel are anti-semetic,
| but they seem to be almost always completely ignorant of the
| situation and history of the region, so their comments are
| unintentionally offensive to anyone even vaguely familiar
| with it.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You must be on a different social media outlet than I am.
| Dah00n wrote:
| You are in a tread this very moment that shows proof of his
| opinion.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| In what way? Most people here seem to agree that it is
| perfectly possible to criticize Israel without being
| anti-semitic.
| stinos wrote:
| Most but not all apparently, though I don't think it's as
| bad as the one you reply to seems to imply. E.g. there's
| already some 'a lot of anti-Israel is also antisemitism'
| sentiment creeping in in some comments, without data to
| back that up.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Most but not all
|
| Sorry, why is it a "social media" problem if there isn't
| unanimous agreement on a certain issue in the comments?
| stinos wrote:
| I think you misunderstood me (or I don't understand what
| you are trying to say here). I was just pointing out
| concrete examples of the 'You are in a tread this very
| moment that shows proof of his opinion' since you replied
| to that by asking 'In what way?'.
| Dah00n wrote:
| We'll have to agree to disagree as I have yet to see an
| example of this on HN. In my experience 100% of
| submissions (and comments) critical of Israel gets
| spammed by people saying it is antisemitism.
| nezirus wrote:
| Yep, my experience too. Critics of Israel get called
| antisemitic too easily, moderated down here on HN too. On the
| other hand, people who defend atrocities committed by IDF get
| easy pass, openly defending stuff like: "the IDF is really
| gentle in killing civilians (collateral damage)", they nicely
| warn Palestinians "we're going to destroy your house, so
| please leave in 5 minutes", or "be silent while we bulldoze
| your house", etc.
|
| Back on topic, the blog post title is definitely offensive,
| you can't label people like that. Maybe it was a bad tongue-
| in-cheek, thinking about it, I don't think you can even say
| Israelis or citizens of Israel, since not all people have the
| same political views or support the same solution of the
| "Palestine problem".
| rriepe wrote:
| > Instead of firing him, though, Google is moving Bobb into a
| STEM-focused role.
|
| Other industries: It's who you know
|
| Tech: It's who you hate
| prezjordan wrote:
| Wow, wonder if he'll get the same support[1] from the free speech
| crowd as AGM.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1392756490138791937?s=20
| globalnewz wrote:
| as a nonbinary black person who self identifies as a holocaust
| survivor, i dont even know how to describe the pain and suffering
| reading that blog post from 2007 has caused me. this nazi should
| be killed, not reassigned to some other department where his jew
| hate will only continue to trigger holocaust flashbacks for
| others like me
| xvolter wrote:
| For anyone who is interested, the actual blog post on his website
| was deleted. It's available on the Way Back Machine:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau...
| mooseburger wrote:
| Interesting. I wasn't sure about blacks' position relative to
| jews on the oppression stack. I guess jews are actually above
| them (i.e. blacks cannot criticize jews the way they can
| whites)? Was this always the case? As I recall, Louis Farrakhan
| gets away with worse.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| It's not a competition to get to the bottom of the oppression
| ladder, i can imagine nothing more dystopian then a chart
| ranking minorities with an "opression" score or something.
| [deleted]
| jaywalk wrote:
| Louis Farrakhan can't be cancelled. He doesn't work for a
| corporation that can fire him, and he doesn't rely on the
| media to spread his message.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dougmwne wrote:
| Thank you. Everyone on this thread should read the original
| words instead of the pull quotes. I am a staunch progressive
| and am afraid to make my own comment on his words. We are
| living through a strange political moment.
| kache_ wrote:
| My whole twitter account is 100% only recruiter bait.
|
| I cycle my reddit nicks every 2 months or so.
|
| I've cleaned out everything that I've posted as a teenager
| (even though I am a sensible person)
|
| Not taking any chances. Saw the writing on the wall with
| Damore.
|
| I should probably axe this nick but I've grown fond of its
| upvotes. So whatever :P
|
| Always assume you've been dox'd.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Once we get reliable deep learning recognition of writing
| styles we are well and truly fucked.
| kazinator wrote:
| At least momentarily, until we get deep-learning-driven
| permutation of writing style.
| 13415 wrote:
| Thanks for linking that. It puts the issue in perspective. To
| be honest, I'm amazed that a blog post like that can make
| someone lose his job as a "head of diversity." Apparently,
| diversity at Google means that people should never voice
| critical opinions about the Israeli government, not even
| privately.
|
| 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.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| this isn't just criticizing israel. this is criticizing all
| jewish people as being war hawking hypocrites unable to
| remember history who don't care about anyone but themselves.
| it's clearly antisemitic. and if he wanted to make this about
| israel it should have been phrased "if i were an israeli"
| which still isn't accurate cause not everyone in israel
| suppported this
|
| maybe the lesson is if you are going to make sweeping,
| negative, generalizations about a population you are probably
| going to look like an idiot. and especially if you feel the
| need to publish them to the world
| 13415 wrote:
| While I wouldn't put it the same way he did, calling this
| "clearly antisemitic" goes way over board and is in my
| point of view unacceptable. Besides, albeit regrettable, it
| is common for Israelis to mix up their religion with
| political matters, too.
|
| The kind of ferocity with which people reject other
| people's opinions and evaluate them to the highest possible
| moral standards once they disagree with them is a special
| kind of modern savagery. We're talking about a blog post
| this guy wrote ten years ago as a private person. Maybe he
| even changed his opinion or regrets the way he phrased it
| then?
| foolfoolz wrote:
| still not fired from google. if this post was "if i were black"
| and anyone not black wrote it they would be fired
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| If I understand what you're saying, you're setting aside the
| context that [the state of Israel exists and has a
| controversial military doctrine], and reading the Google
| guy's post as specifically targeted at people who share the
| Jewish faith?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Would you accept blanket statements about black people
| being violent war-craving psychopaths if the context is the
| Ugandan expulsion of Asians?
| foolfoolz wrote:
| if i understand what you're saying, your setting aside the
| direct text from the article which targeted the jewish
| people and reading the google guys post as specifically
| being about israel?
| jefftk wrote:
| Doesn't look deleted to me?
| http://kamaubobb.blogspot.com/2007/11/if-i-were-jew.html
| koheripbal wrote:
| Looks like he migrated to his own domain and has not deleted
| his blogspot account like he did the blog on his domain.
| duxup wrote:
| >will be reassigned to a STEM research role
|
| Not fired, just reassigned.
|
| I'm ok with that as a policy. Presumably he isn't ok with those
| old statements and can move on.
|
| At the same time the folks who need to post some general
| statements about a whole group of people, religion, or whatever
| ...
|
| As far as I can remember I've never felt a reason to talk about a
| whole category of people and "insatiable appetite for war and
| killing" or "increasing insensitivity to the suffering [of]
| others".
|
| I don't get it.
| [deleted]
| libria wrote:
| > Not fired, just reassigned.
|
| 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..."
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Not just Jewish, but also gay people. His other blog posts
| talk about how he is completely disgusted by homosexuality
| and wants nothing to do with it.
| ehsankia wrote:
| It was a post from 14 years he's apologized for. I'm sure
| everyone has plenty of beliefs from 14 years ago that no
| longer fits their current beliefs.
| capableweb wrote:
| But if Google thought he was now benign, wouldn't he just
| remain at the post? Moving him to a different department
| seems to indicate that Google think he did wrong, but not
| that much wrong as to fire him. I'm not sure how to
| reconcile that.
| duxup wrote:
| Isn't there space in the sense that "this role isn't
| right for you because you did a thing" and "let's try
| here"?
| datavirtue wrote:
| They want him to quit.
| [deleted]
| annexrichmond wrote:
| True, but it seems like most aren't given a second chance
| like he was.
| duxup wrote:
| I think there is some leeway in the sense that
|
| "If you're going to work with other people, some of them will
| probably at some time possibly, or you might even know about,
| something bad they said that might apply to you."
|
| At that point the question is how that gets worked out. If
| the other person has since apologized, and it was a long time
| ago, then I don't think it's too much to ask that other folks
| maintain a professional relationship / work with such people.
| megamindbrian2 wrote:
| Have you people ever met a Jew? They literally idolized "never
| again" which is what this guy's is talking about. They
| literally live by the principal that this guy was removed from
| his position over. And questioning any Jewish philosophy is
| labeled anti-Semitic and condemned. Write a story about being
| "God's chosen people" doesn't make you righteous, it just makes
| you last to do it.
| pxc wrote:
| > Have you people ever met a Jew?
|
| yes.
|
| My Jewish friends are anti-war and anti-imperialist.
| duxup wrote:
| I've met Jews.
|
| I didn't get the impression that they have an "insatiable
| appetite for war and killing".
|
| Would you say the Jews I met have an "insatiable appetite for
| war and killing"?
| nojokes wrote:
| I have met Jews (Israelis to be more precise), Russians and
| Americans. All have been very nice people.
|
| But I think it could be said about all of them as nations
| to have to some degree "insatiable appetite for war and
| killing" considering their recent history.
|
| Naturally the Russians would label me a russophobe for
| saying that. Not sure what Americans would label me.
|
| I also understand the position Israelis are in and I
| understand their actions. But they have made a critical
| mistake from the beginning and what they continue to make -
| not giving a fair compensation to the people they displace.
|
| I think most problems would not exists today if that had
| been followed from the beginning. Perhaps I am mistaken, so
| please enlighten me.
|
| I also envy Israelis that they can be in such position.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| People != nations. Conflating the two is bad because you
| start blaming people for the sins of their nation and
| that is how you get to dehumanization.
| pxc wrote:
| Also it's in the interest of the Zionist state to
| identify 'Israel' with 'Jews'
|
| If you're opposed to Zionism or the state of Israel, you
| shouldn't grant them that identification.
|
| If you assume or assert that all Jews support Israel's
| settler-colonial project, you're also playing into the
| state of Israel's rhetorical strategies that conflate the
| survival and military supremacy of the Zionist state with
| Jewish safety, opposition of Zionism with hatred toward
| Jews, etc.
|
| Failing to distinguish between the people group and the
| nation-state that claims to represent or serve them is
| not only rude or dehumanizing or sloppy in this case, but
| counterproductive for anti-Zionism as a cause. Anti-
| imperialism is not served by racism.
| nojokes wrote:
| I completely agree. Nations are aggregate of people and
| in addition are not always in full control of the state
| that represents them.
|
| But would US have started latest wars without popular
| support of Americans?
|
| To some degree everyone is guilty.
|
| Regardless I agree based on the comments about the
| culprit other options that his opinions add racist
| overtone and perhaps his words should be evaluated in the
| larger context.
| grumple wrote:
| Can you name a nation that doesn't have an appetite for
| war and killing?
| nojokes wrote:
| Historically most (if not all?) of the nations had to
| have some appetite for war and killing - otherwise they
| would not have become nations.
| grumple wrote:
| So why did you call out Israel, the US, and Russia and
| not the others?
|
| I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I'm just
| curious as to what makes them special. There are many
| other nations involved in larger-scale conflicts _right
| now_. There are many others that have been involved in
| more conflicts globally historically. Many that have and
| do oppress and murder on a regular basis. I will say the
| US and Russia do get involved too much in outside
| conflicts, but Israel 's ongoing conflict is paralleled
| in many other nations right now.
| nojokes wrote:
| Because I said historically and some nations have been
| forced to counter invasion or other form of repression to
| become an independent nation.
|
| I actually did not call out any country. I just included
| US and Russia as examples of more known countries that
| have started recent more known military conflicts.
|
| My motivation was to point out that "insatiable appetite
| for war and killing" is by itself nothing more than a
| political statement.
| ant6n wrote:
| I've met Jews.
|
| I've learned to avoid discussing the Israel/Palestine
| conflict, because often the discussions turn very awkward
| quickly, and previously reasonable people who appear to
| have humanist views suddenly don't sound so reasonable
| anymore. It's a complicated subject especially for people
| connected to the issues.
|
| There are a lot of dark feelings all around the issue, that
| could get a lot of people fired if they talked about them
| openly.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| The stereotyping in this comment is so blatantly racist that
| I'm surprised you even posted it.
| joejoeshabadoo5 wrote:
| I have met plenty, and there is a great joke that comes to
| mind. What is worse than the holocaust? 6 million Jews.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| Reassigned? Lol. He was already on the roof.
| underseacables wrote:
| The left's obsession with cancel culture and conducting
| archeological digs on past comments, tweets, etc is coming back
| to bite them. I think removing this guy was the right thing to
| do, BUT I also think a major company like Google needs to set an
| example: Something someone tweeted more than ten years ago should
| no longer be relevant and should be ignored. However until that
| standard is set as example by a major company, we are going to
| see this dig up and burn for some time.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sorry, but if you think it was the right thing to do to remove
| him, then you agree with the methods, you're just showing your
| hand at not liking the things that most people are "cancelled"
| over.
|
| Your entire comment is a contradiction.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I don't see the contradiction. He's arguing that this is the
| tit, in response to the left's tat (as in tit for tat).
|
| The left either needs to:
|
| 1. Play by their own rules (in this case, fire the guy)
|
| 2. Stop doing it to their political opponents
| whimsicalism wrote:
| These are rules that you've invented, not every
| "cancellation" results in a firing even for people posting
| actually racist stuff. Indeed, there are plenty of people
| with racist posts who are routinely not fired by these
| companies.
|
| The contradiction is pretty clear - the guy is decrying
| these tactics, but still saying this person should be fired
| using exactly those same tactics.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Interesting that your comment implies that the blog post
| in question wasn't "actually racist".
|
| To me that speaks volumes.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I can see where you got that implication, it wasn't the
| intention of my comment - the last few line of the blog
| post are obviously anti-semitic.
|
| I probably should have used the word "really" rather than
| "actually", as I was trying to contrast the minor
| response with the harm of the offense, not contrast other
| racist things with this racist thing.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| It's not a contradiction in the slightest. It's possible to
| disagree with a belief/norm system while still respecting
| those that adhere to it as reasonable moral entities. This is
| the foundation of Enlightenment pluralism: you can coexist
| peacefully with those that have different worldviews,
| managing the behavior of each group only when it affects
| others (eg, you can pray to whomever you want, but you can't
| burn witches at the stake). But if they don't adhere to their
| own belief system when inconvenient, then absolute normative
| judgments about their behavior become appropriate (like the
| one you're making in the quote below).
|
| > you're just showing your hand at not liking the things that
| most people are "cancelled" over.
|
| Honestly, it feels like you're projecting here a little.
| Seeing a demand for consistency as hypocrisy only makes sense
| if moral consistency isn't a term in your moral calculus.
|
| Given this, perhaps an example that's coded in the opposite
| direction politically will make it clearer. Imagine a critic
| of legacy admissions in prestigious universities that pay lip
| service to meritocracy and equal opportunity. Now imagine
| that critic getting even more incensed when a university
| decides to reverse their usual racial preferences and refuses
| to admit black legacy candidates. Would this critic be a
| hypocrite? Does it make any sense to say, "it's a
| contradiction to complain about legacy admissions and also
| complain about avoiding specific legacy admissions"?
|
| Obviously not. They set the rules, and they're refusing to
| play by them. This is a different, and stronger, complaint
| than simply not liking the stated rules.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Google is not threatened by "cancel culture". What are people
| going to do? Get them banned on Twitter? Won't happen, and
| that's the extent of the possible damage.
|
| 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?
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| The religious right was also wrong. The 90s were abhorrent.
| But that doesn't excuse current behaviour from the left
| today.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'm curious - is it ever okay to fire someone based on
| something they posted on their blog?
| burkaman wrote:
| You think it was the right thing to do, but they should stop
| doing it?
| oliwarner wrote:
| Something they wrote and then hosted without retraction for 14
| years.
|
| 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.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Notably, Kamau Bobb removed ALL of his blog posts over from his
| personal website. It looks like some people on Twitter began
| looking through all of his blog posts and finding controversial
| opinions.
|
| 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.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think the 1619 project is.. not great history and it is
| unfortunate that it has gotten such accolades, but how is it
| racist?
| ravedave5 wrote:
| If this guy were a CTO or something sure. He was chief
| diversity officer though, there's gotta be a higher standard
| there.
| steelframe wrote:
| In 1998 I was running around Italy telling people that Joseph
| Smith translated magic transdimensional golden plates that a
| disembodied Native American spirit materialized for him.
|
| Six years later I became an atheist. I've been an atheist for
| 17 years now.
|
| As someone who has personally undergone an extreme change in
| disposition on something so fundamental with respect to how
| one views the cosmos, what you did or said 14 years ago is
| only relevant to me insofar as what your transformation story
| has been.
|
| More than anything though, I want to know what person you
| have become today. Bonus points if you _used_ to think the
| opposite of what you think today, because you 've managed to
| really grok that state of mind and figured out how to get out
| of it.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Do we have any reason to believe the guy has transformed?
|
| Just from reading your one-line description of mormonism, I
| can tell you are 100% completely genuine. What's the
| equivalent for Bobb?
|
| Just saying "I regret having posted that" isn't quite the
| same. Maybe wearing a yamika for a few years would do it, I
| don't know.
| [deleted]
| jsiepkes wrote:
| True, but then again this was 14 years ago. People can
| change.
|
| Steve jobs had just launched the first iPhone when he made
| that blog post. That feels like a life time ago.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Depends how old you are. Feels like yesterday to me.
| ryandrake wrote:
| How far is it OK and relevant to look back for dirt in
| someone's posting history? 20 years? 30? Rants to their
| college newspaper? High school yearbook? Today's sensitivity
| yardstick is much less forgiving than it was in decades past.
| It's getting to the point where it is safest to just not
| participate at all, in case something you say today becomes
| taboo in 30 years.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Both US parties try and "cancel" things they don't like. It's
| not related to one party or the other. [0] Also, "cancel
| culture" isn't some new concept. Humans have rebuked and
| ostracized each other forever.
|
| [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.
| IE6 wrote:
| It's not but right now it's a common talking point that only
| the left practices "cancel culture" so you will see it
| surfacing in many discussions online.
| davemel37 wrote:
| Here's the thing I don't get.
|
| If a groups behavior doesn't match your expectations based on
| your perspective of their history but you dont have the benefit
| of their lived experiences, wouldn't that be a tell-tale sign to
| try to recognize you MUST not have an understanding of the topic
| or enough information to formulate an opinion?
| megous wrote:
| Some people learn also by sharing their current thoughts and
| learning from how other people react. One way to gain
| perspective about your ideas is to communicate them.
|
| 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.
| Dah00n wrote:
| One of the reasons I use HN is because of the No Political or
| Ideological fights rule (because I know I can't stop commenting
| from time to time even though I'd rather live a life without this
| crap). I wish rules were here to be enforced, not as guidelines
| hardly anyone follow.
| kube-system wrote:
| You don't have to start a fight to discuss something. Just
| treat politically-adjacent discussion it as if it were a
| classroom situation.
| distribot wrote:
| This isn't political though, it's social. Unless political to
| you means anything related to the way society is structured and
| people relate to each other.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Since it include both political and ideological fights in the
| guidelines it doesn't really matter. It definitely fits this
| thread. Added ideological to OP.
| old_fart_dev wrote:
| This is absolutely political, in that any conversation about
| Israel's foreign or domestic policy ends up an argument
| falling along political lines.
|
| There's several posts already excusing the blog post because
| it aligns politically with the poster's own views (in this
| case, that all Jews have collective guilt for Israel's
| policy.)
| duckfang wrote:
| _EVERYTHING_ is political, when involving more than 1 person.
|
| 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.
| erect wrote:
| HN has a "no-politics" rule? That's absolute hilarious. This
| place is nothing but politics.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| HN doesn't prohibit ideological or political discussion.
| There's been _plenty_ of that over the past five years. Over
| its entire lifetime.
|
| 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
| [deleted]
| rattray wrote:
| HN title should mention that the blog post in question was from
| 2007.
| donatj wrote:
| What I have learned in recent years is how shockingly accepting
| of antisemitism people apparently are on both sides of aisle.
| Growing up in a prominently Jewish neighborhood in Minnesota I
| never really encountered it until maybe ten years ago.
|
| The fact that he was just shifted rather than fired in this
| political environment speaks volumes.
| Dah00n wrote:
| How so? The norm in human society is to accept that people can
| grow and learn with time. The fact someone can be fired or
| shifted because of something like this said 14 years ago speaks
| volumes of the power of cancel culture and says nothing about
| antisemitism.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| The fact that he felt qualified to lead a diversity team
| (whatever that might mean), with the knowledge that he
| authored such an article speaks volumes about _his_ moral
| compass and lack of conscience.
| geodel wrote:
| I'd say he'd be proud of his comments and really surprised
| what is this sudden noise all about.
| mooseburger wrote:
| It's really about Israel's actions. Can't really expect the
| Holocaust to buy an eternal Get out of Jail free card for
| Israel.
| NateEag wrote:
| And Jewish != Israeli.
|
| How is that hard to understand?
| Udik wrote:
| Easy, but then don't pretend that people calling Israel
| criminal are antisemitic.
|
| (Also, let's not pretend there aren't a lot of non Israeli
| Jews defending Israel whatever it does).
| NateEag wrote:
| Yup, I don't do that.
|
| The author of the post under discussion made statements
| about Israel and about Jews.
|
| It's the blanket statements about Jewish people that I'd
| call anti-semitic.
| Udik wrote:
| > It's the blanket statements about Jewish people that
| I'd call anti-semitic.
|
| I find those inappropriate too- I think he might have
| gotten carried too far in making his point. However, on
| one hand I think it's an understandable slip: after all,
| Israel calls itself the Jewish homeland and often tries
| to extend criticism it receives to all Jews (by calling
| it antisemitic). This with little objection from Jews
| elsewhere. On the other hand, "antisemitic" is a very
| strong accusation: are we sure there aren't middle
| grounds, such as calling something inappropriate or
| incorrect, without associating it straight away with one
| of the worst mass murders in history?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > However, on one hand I think it's an understandable
| slip: after all, Israel calls itself the Jewish homeland
| and often tries to extend criticism it receives to all
| Jews (by calling it antisemitic)
|
| "Some racists justify racism by equating their racism
| with their race and calling criticizing of their racism
| an attack on their race" doesn't even begin to justify,
| excuse, or mitigate racism against that race. That's what
| _all_ racists of _all_ races do, and if we accept that as
| a justification for racism all racists will be justified
| by other racists.
| Udik wrote:
| But again, "racist" is a very grave accusation, are you
| sure that a single inappropriate sentence (missing
| possibly just a qualifier, " _Israeli_ Jew ") at the end
| of a more articulated argument is enough to qualify
| someone as a racist?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But again, "racist" is a very grave accusation, are you
| sure that a single inappropriate sentence (missing
| possibly just a qualifier, "Israeli Jew") at the end of a
| more articulated argument is enough to qualify someone as
| a racist?
|
| I didn't describe someone as racist, I described an
| argument as racist (the difference is the same as that
| between a dumb idea and an idea from a dumb person.)
|
| And the argument would be racist even with "Israeli Jew".
| It would be possible to rewrite it while retaining some
| of the ideas in it and not be racist, but it would be a
| major revision that I don't think anyone would view as
| cosmetic.
| antisemtexism wrote:
| Doesn't stop them trying. They've already successfully
| managed to broaden the definition of antisemitism to include
| criticism of Israel. To the point where nowadays, if someone
| is accused of it, you have to check if it's antisemitism or
| "antisemitism".
|
| It's the boy who cried wolf, but embodied in a nation state.
| nso wrote:
| Reading his blog post it seems to me like he is commenting on
| Israeli state politics and the extremists within its borders
| rather than "any" jew. Yes he uses the word jew in a general
| way, which of course is unfortunate as Israel does not solely
| consist of 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.
| GranularRecipe wrote:
| Anti-Zionists deny being anti-Semites, claiming they make a
| clear distinction between Israel as a political entity and
| Jewish people in general, and are only against the former.
|
| Bobb conflated Israeli politics with Jewishness and thus
| making the latter responsible for the actions of the former.
|
| The fact that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state does
| not mean that all Jews see themselves as Israelis or are pro-
| Israel.
|
| It is like criticising Arabs for the actions of Saudi-Arabia,
| or any other Arab (or Muslim) country, which is unfortunately
| an recurring theme in the West and justifiably regarded as a
| form of racism (Islamophobia).
| geodel wrote:
| Yup. Just do "STEM research" and it will be fine. For others
| who do not even express views, forget inappropriate views
| "Silence is violence".
| theossuary wrote:
| I'm trying to understand what he did that was so wrong? He
| (correctly imo) called out Israel for its violent tendencies.
| The only mistake he made that I can see is he conflated Israel
| with the Jewish people generally. But Israel has a massive
| propaganda campaign leading people to do exactly that (an
| attack on Israel the country is an attack on Jewish people in
| general).
|
| 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.
| adamrezich wrote:
| in a culture where all white people are guilty for slavery,
| this mindset makes sense to me
| munificent wrote:
| I get where you're coming from and it took me (a white
| person from the US) a long time to wrap my head around what
| most progressives talking about responsibility and the US's
| history of slavery were really trying to say. Let me try to
| explain with an analogy.
|
| Your grandfather dies. In his will, he leaves you his
| house, which has been in your family several generation.
| It's a nice place, better than the crappy apartment you
| live in, and it's yours now by all rights, so you move in.
|
| When you do, you discover to your delight that you water
| bill is zero dollars every month. What a nice bonus! Free
| water from the tap!
|
| One day, when poking around the basement, you discover the
| secret to this mystery. Apparently one of your ancestors
| many years ago dug a secret tunnel over to the neighbor's
| house put a T on their water main, and ran a pipe back to
| your house. Your water isn't free. Your neighbors have been
| paying for it the whole time.
|
| In fact, they have even _known_ this and been trying to
| tell you. But, you know, you were so busy getting settled
| in and dealing with all the stuff in your own life that
| their discussion about "water equality" never really
| registered for you. It's not that you didn't care (you love
| equality), you just didn't think it had anything to do with
| you.
|
| So what is your moral position today?
|
| It is _not_ one of _guilt_. You didn 't put that sneaky
| pipe in. And while, yes, you certainly took some showers
| with free water, at the time you honestly didn't realize
| that anyone was paying for it. There was no malice on your
| part.
|
| You could argue that since it's your neighbors who are
| suffering from the jacked up water bill, they should be the
| ones to pay to cut that pipe and remove it. After all, you
| didn't cause the problem, and you don't have any personal
| incentive to fix it. You aren't _trying_ to steal their
| water, it 's just the way your plumbing happens to be set
| up.
|
| At the same time, your neighbors are actually poorer than
| you, in large part because they have been paying your water
| bill the whole time. It feels pretty selfish to expect them
| to foot the plumbing bill to get it fixed.
|
| So I think that you bear a _responsibility_ to fix the
| plumbing because you now own the house. And you have some
| moral obligation in the sense that those who are most able
| to do a thing bear some obligation to their community to do
| that thing. If we 're all in this together, then we give
| back to society in the ways we best can. Since you can more
| easily afford to the fix the plumbing (all those months of
| free water let you save up some cash), you should be the
| one to do so.
|
| Now, granted, there are certainly some progressives (of all
| races) who take the history of slavery in a guilt/shame
| direction. If you're white, you're just supposed to feel
| bad. We should all be walking around in hairshirts as a
| penance for the sins of our fathers. There is a real weird
| Catholic guilt vibe in some progressive circles today.
|
| But I think for most, it's not that. And the most
| charitable interpretation of people saying that whites
| today bear responsibility for slavery is just what my
| example here says: we have some ownership over the
| institutions that benefited from slavery, and we have a
| greater capacity to amend that problem, thus responsibility
| to do that falls on our shoulders.
|
| The most compassionate way to look at this is as an
| _opportunity_. What a great thing it is to be in a position
| to help address one of the most grievious injustices in the
| United States.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I reject this way of thinking because it groups second
| generation Irish immigrants with those who inherited
| wealth from the days of slavery.
|
| I get that you're trying to be charitable but there
| really isn't a valid defence for an ideology that tries
| to slap a label onto heterogeneous groups of people with
| nothing in common beyond their skin tone. It is a racist
| way of thinking and should be called out as such.
| fwip wrote:
| Whiteness is a social construct, you're absolutely right.
| It's one that our society and institutions consistently
| reward, though.
|
| Maybe the Irish person is the first guy's roommate or
| spouse - they didn't directly inherit the free water from
| their direct ancestors, but they're still getting free
| water from next door.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I reject this way of thinking because it groups second
| generation Irish immigrants with those who inherited
| wealth from the days of slavery._
|
| I understand that this is an extremely sensitive topic
| that can make it hard to reason about. People never feel
| good when accusations--false or not!--start flying. And
| once those kind of intense feelings get involved, it's
| hard to lower your defenses and try to read what people
| say charitably.
|
| The point of my comment was entirely that it is _not_
| about guilt. _None_ of us living today bear
| responsibility for historical slavery in the US, even
| those whose ancestors owned slaves. How can I be
| considered at fault for something that happened literally
| before I existed? How could I have caused that?
|
| _(Edit: I realize now that my analogy where the house is
| inherited obscures that. I think the analogy would work
| better if I said you won the house in a lottery.)_
|
| What we carry is not _guilt from the past_ but
| _responsibility for today_. Because of that history of
| slavery, many institutions today still unfairly benefit
| white people. (In my analogy, the pipe continues to
| deliver water long after the person who unfairly plumbed
| it has died.) Because of those benefits, white people
| today have more power as a group generally than Black
| people do.
|
| It is today's unearned benefits and the greater capacity
| to remedy them that places responsibility on white people
| in the US, not any bloodline that traces back to
| slaveowners.
|
| We should fix racism today because it's wrong and because
| we can. We bear a moral obligation to people living today
| to give them the more just world they deserve.
| fitzie wrote:
| we can hardly define racism fairness and justice today
| let alone "fix" it. as for change, I'm happy to support
| any change that empowers people, treats people
| compassionately, and removes discrimination. that is
| unlike the solutions I see put forward by the so called
| anti-racists.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| "many institutions today still unfairly benefit white
| people."
|
| When it comes to the criminal justice system, I'm mostly
| there with you. Although, it is wrong to call it pro-
| white, and the pro-white narrative comes from the
| ideology that I was criticizing. It is anti-black and
| anti-poor. The reason it is not merely pro-white is that
| the system treats Asians, Hindus, etc, well even though
| they're not white and even though there's not many
| officers from these demographics.
|
| Beyond that, I struggle to believe it, but perhaps you
| can fill me in if I'm missing something.
|
| As an example, in what way are institutions biased in
| favor of poor rural white people?
|
| Their entire culture hates them (music, movies, media)
| and they are quotad out of universities and flashy career
| paths. To add salt on the wound their manufacturing jobs
| are shipped overseas.
|
| This reality on the ground is the near opposite of any
| kind of institutional privilege of the sort you're
| talking about. In some cases (e.g soft quotas) this is
| demonstrable institutional racism working _against_ white
| people.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Although, it is wrong to call it pro-white, and the
| pro-white narrative comes from the ideology that I was
| criticizing. It is anti-black and anti-poor._
|
| I think it's both pro-white and anti-black. When you dig
| back through US history, you see plenty of evidence of
| both a belief system that whites are the best (and thus
| deserve to have power over other races) as well as that
| blacks are particularly deserving of their lowest status.
| Other races and ethnicities form a more complex middle
| ground. In many places and times there simply weren't a
| great enough quantity of those members of those groups
| for any well-defined cultural claim to be made.
|
| I don't think your average 19th century Virginia farmer
| had a strong opinion one way or the other about the
| relatively inferiority of, say, the Sami people because
| they'd never even heard of one. Whites in almost all
| parts of the US by necessity had to incorporate blackness
| into their culture because--thanks almost entirely to the
| slave trade--blacks were so present in much of the
| country and were enshrined in its laws and institutions.
|
| _> As an example, in what way are institutions biased in
| favor of poor rural white people?_
|
| "Poor", "rural", and "white" are three ways to slice
| demographics and the way they interact can sometimes
| illuminate and sometimes obscure.
|
| I think most of what you're seeing is that it generally
| sucks to be poor and rural, full stop. In 1910, there
| were about 13 million US farm workers. Today there are
| about 3 million. In 1979, there were close to 20 million
| manufacturing jobs. Today it's around 12 million.
|
| This disproportionally hurts whites because black people
| have historically concentrated in urban areas (often
| driven by trying to escape anti-black racism). So it's
| easy to have a vivid image of how much it sucks for some
| opioid addicted country-music blaring coal-rolling white
| dude living in a trailer in Appalachia compared to some
| hip black guy riding the subway in NYC listening to
| billionaire Kanye's latest album.
|
| But that's comparing different cohorts. The real question
| is what is it like for a poor, rural, _black_ person?
| Black people make up only 3% of the population of West
| Virginia, but _28%_ of its prison population. (Whites are
| 93% of the state, but 65% of prisoners.)
|
| Meanwhile in NYC, black people are 16% of the state
| population but 53% of its prison population. The median
| household income for white people is $80,300, for black
| people it's $42,600.
|
| So, yes, I agree that poor rural folks have gotten the
| short end of the stick since neoliberalism took over. And
| their perception of relative worsening is something that
| we should look at. (I think it's one of the primary
| drivers of the Tea Party, Trumpism, the alt-right, etc.)
| While their anger at black people is misplaced and wrong,
| I can empathize with where it's coming from. It hurts to
| feel that others are moving ahead while you yourself are
| not.
|
| But at the same time, it has _always_ been hard to be
| black in the US and it 's _still_ hard. Here 's a fun
| (spoiler: not fucking fun at all) guessing game to play
| if you don't already know the answer: When was the last
| lynching in the United States?
|
| If you were naive, you might guess the late 1800s when
| Jim Crow laws were rife and the country was still coming
| to grips with emancipation. Maybe you'd guess the 1930s
| when the KKK was flourishing. You would hope it wasn't
| the 1950s when economic prosperity and blacks and whites
| fighting together in WWII should have brought us
| together. Hopefully no later than the 1960s when the
| Civil Rights Act was signed.
|
| Actually, it was 1981. His name was Michael Donald. He
| was 19 years old and was chosen _at random_ by KKK
| members angry about an unrelated murder trial "to show
| Klan strength in Alabama".
|
| He was killed by poor rural whites who were _this close_
| to getting away with it completely until the FBI got
| involved.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| "When you dig back through US history, you see plenty of
| evidence of both a belief system that whites are the
| best"
|
| I'm referring to the criminal justice system today. Is
| there reason to think it's more pro-White than pro-Asian
| or pro-Hindu?
|
| I only see evidence that the system today is anti-Black
| and anti-poor.
|
| I accept the historical examples you've given of pro-
| white attitudes, but I'm hoping to discuss today's
| reality since that's the point of contention.
| "I think most of what you're seeing is that it generally
| sucks to be poor and rural, full stop"
|
| You're right that this is most of it. But I believe there
| is unique institutional racism specifically directed
| towards poor rural _white_ people in particular.
|
| The soft quota they face in employment and education and
| the hatred and derision uniquely directed towards them in
| particular (and towards no other group) from all cultural
| institutions.
|
| The white quota in the workforce, for example, is there
| to be filled by inner city whites with the right pedigree
| and right social values. The white quota in higher
| education makes it difficult for rural whites without the
| same early educational opportunities to have a chance,
| whereas a black rural person (even if they're a recent
| immigrant) will have an easier time, all else equal, for
| no other reason than they have the right skin color.
|
| From my perspective, this is evidence of institutional
| discrimination, but it runs in the opposite direction to
| what's claimed. "Meanwhile in NYC, black
| people are 16% of the state population but 53% of its
| prison population."
|
| I don't see this as evidence for institutional bias that
| exists today that's pro-white.
|
| Hindus do better than Whites in general. Is the system
| pro-Hindu?
|
| Nigerians immigrants do well. Is the system pro-Nigerian?
|
| Differential outcomes are not evidence that today's
| system is pro-white.
|
| There's certainly a historical legacy of slavery and
| discrimination that helped to create these inequalities.
| But it's not evidence for much beyond that if we're
| discussing the institutions of today.
| nprigo wrote:
| I've been a lurker for years. This comment made me
| register just so I can say bravo! What a well articulated
| sentiment.
| adamrezich wrote:
| it's impossible to "fix racism" until people stop
| profiting from trying to "fix racism." nobody tries to
| actually fix anything regarding racism, politicians etc.
| use it as a talking point. 99.99% of the country isn't
| racist and doesn't like racism and wants it gone,
| everyone's on board, but somehow nothing ever improves,
| and, in fact, it sure _seems_ like things just get worse.
| profit motives need to go, no idea how to accomplish this
| though.
| munificent wrote:
| _> it 's impossible to "fix racism" until people stop
| profiting from trying to "fix racism."_
|
| Would you say that it's impossible to fix climate change
| until people stop profitinng from trying to fix climate
| change? Is it impossible to fix infant mortality while
| doctors profit from saving infants' lives?
|
| There is something to what you're saying. There's a
| process that goes like:
|
| 1. People who dislike X want to fix X.
|
| 2. In order to put a lot of time into fixing X, they seek
| out work that pays them to do it.
|
| 3. In the process of that work, they build up a lot of
| expertise.
|
| 4. Now they have a natural incentive for X not to be
| fixed so that they can continue to make money from their
| expertise.
|
| This is a real thing. A perverse incentive that arises
| basically in all cases where bad things require deep
| expertise to fix.
|
| I see very little evidence that this incentive is
| powerful enough to dwarf the massive desire to fix X for
| most problems.
|
| Most oncologists are not out there blowing cigarette
| smoke into people's faces to ensure their job security.
| Dentists are not plying kids with candy. Most people
| fighting against racism are not so callous as to
| completely undermine their own deeply held convictions
| just to keep themselves employed.
|
| _> in fact, it sure seems like things just get worse._
|
| Things _looking_ worse is often a sign of them getting
| better. You never saw news articles about the environment
| in the mid-1900s when pollution and industrialization was
| at its worth. It didn 't become visible until people
| cared enough and had enough power to _make_ it visible.
|
| The "me too" movement isn't about sexual abuse becoming
| more prevalent, it's about victims finally having enough
| power to be able to shine a light on it. If we weren't
| hearing about Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Bill
| Cosby, that wouldn't mean they weren't still abusing. It
| would mean they were continuing to abuse with inpunity.
| adamrezich wrote:
| people want to fight for change, but if they got the
| change they wanted, then there would be nothing more to
| fight for. politicians and other powerful people (I
| realize I'm speaking very generally here) recognize this
| and use it to create a perpetual motion grifting machine.
| people enthusiastically donate money to causes and the
| money ends up largely going nowhere near the people it's
| supposed to help. we elect the First Black President of
| the United States of America, thinking that surely, at
| some point in his eight years of Presidency, he'll do
| something to directly help black Americans... and then
| nothing happens, and, well, maybe the next guy will do
| it. I'm 30 and I've seen this cycle repeat for at least
| the half of my life I've been vaguely conscious about
| politics. at some point we have to recognize that the
| politician-promised solutions that are always around the
| corner are not in fact ever coming, and we need to hold
| them thusly accountable. until then, there is no grift
| more personally profitable than paying lip service to the
| desire to fix major societal problems, then doing jack
| shit about them for elected term after elected term, only
| to go right back to the useless lip service around re-
| election time. we need some kind of serious political
| movement that holds elected officials to task for what
| they claim to want to accomplish. until this happens,
| we're going to be stuck in the same endless cycle of not-
| getting-shit-done forever, with people re-electing the
| same people over and over again solely based on how good
| their ideas sound when vocalized.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| I think the main issue isn't that people don't recognize
| that discrimination exists, they're just annoyed at who
| it's being targeted at and how it [not] working.
|
| One main thing is that white people as a whole need to
| atone for slavery, even though the vast vast majority
| (poor southerners, northerners, immigrants from after the
| civil war) had nothing to do with it. And secondly, that
| race is used to only talk about the issues facing black
| people, not whites. Poor white people (in WV, the South,
| etc.) are just as poor as black people, yet get no help
| in things like university admissions or job placements.
|
| And for Asians (inc. Indians), they (disclaimer: I am of
| Asian descent) also receive material disadvantages (I
| have zero chance of getting into an Ivy League, nor will
| I ever receive assistance programs for minorities) so
| that black people have a level playing field. Positive
| discrimination works, but not in its current form.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > in a culture where all white people are guilty for
| slavery, this mindset makes sense to me
|
| Not all white people are guilty of slavery, and virtually
| no one thinks that they are.
|
| Essentially all _American_ white people _continue to
| materially benefit from_ a long history of systematic
| racism in America [0], including slavery, state-mandated
| and state-tolerated post-slavery subjugation and
| segregation. Heck, many _living_ white Americans are
| _direct beneficiaries_ of overt discrimination in public
| programs, not to mention systematic, coordinated private
| discrimination.
|
| People who oppose acknowledging the latter point like to
| set up the former as a convenient strawman.
|
| [0] which is not to say all are in a good absolute
| position, or even not structurally disadvantaged on
| balance; systematic racial discrimination isn't the only
| structural bias in American society.
| noofen wrote:
| > Essentially all American white people continue to
| materially benefit from a long history of systematic
| racism in America [0], including slavery, state-mandated
| and state-tolerated post-slavery subjugation and
| segregation. Heck, many living white Americans are direct
| beneficiaries of overt discrimination in public programs,
| not to mention systematic, coordinated private
| discrimination.
|
| I come from a family of poor farmers in the South. I've
| done some genealogical digging, and thus far I've found
| three 16-24 year old members of my family who died in the
| Confederate war. We never owned slaves; service was
| mandatory back then, either through law or social
| pressure.
|
| Approximately ~600-700,000 people died in the Civil War.
| This country has made sacrifices for African Americans
| and racial equality, more than any other country on
| Earth. It will never be enough.
|
| No matter how much they give, apologize, change the
| rules, white Americans will never shed their "original
| sin." Because of my white skin, I "continue to materially
| benefit" from "systemic racism," and yet, where are these
| benefits? I come from a place riddled with opiate addicts
| and alcoholism. Most of the younger people don't make it
| out, they have to score much higher than African
| Americans applying to the same colleges (as do Asians).
|
| Everyone was on board with MLK's dream of equal
| opportunity for all. Racial discrimination was clearly a
| bad idea. But, in the last 10 years or so, some people
| have realized that "racism" is perhaps the most powerful
| bludgeoning tool in the US. Now, MLK is outdated, the new
| movement is about racial revenge.
| fwip wrote:
| In America, it's better to be born white and poor than
| black and poor. Data from field after field backs this up
| - economics, healthcare, policing, housing, to name a
| few.
|
| Further, I don't think you can exactly call losing the
| Civil War "making sacrifices for racial equality." If
| I've got my boot on somebody's neck, and I won't take it
| off until pushed off by force, my skinned knee isn't a
| sacrifice that I made so that my victim can get up.
| [deleted]
| benlivengood wrote:
| > Because of my white skin, I "continue to materially
| benefit" from "systemic racism," and yet, where are these
| benefits?
|
| Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely
| to be stopped or harassed by police, less likely to be
| denied a job or mortgage. Those are some of the major
| systemic privileges White people have that Black people
| don't in the U.S. The statistics are pretty stark.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely
| to be stopped or harassed by police
|
| Truly life changing benefits.
| monocasa wrote:
| Another example: an otherwise identical resume with the
| first name changed from Tyrone to Brad results in 3x as
| many job application callbacks.
|
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
| tester756 wrote:
| Is it same thing as making fun of names? that probably
| every country does - e.g saying "average Joe"?
|
| if yes, then how is this associated with racism?
| monocasa wrote:
| Read the paper, as it's not just those two names. Black
| names are undeniably discriminated against at the
| earliest points of the employment process.
|
| This is something I like to bring up, since it's a great
| example of a microcosm of discrimination that it's easy
| to not think about. There's a black saying that blacks
| have to work twice as hard to get half as far, and the
| data seems to be remarkably close to that assessment.
| noofen wrote:
| The statistics are pretty stark if you start with the
| incorrect assumption that "all men are created equal."
| This is, quite simply, not the case, and will never be
| the case. Of course, hell will freeze over before anyone
| accepts that "horrific" truth.
|
| I'm sure you recognize different dog breeds, and possibly
| know that certain dog breeds are known to act a certain
| way. This is due to generations and generations of
| artificial-selection in breeding. Herding breeds were
| designed for herding, German Shepherds were designed for
| herding and protection, Shitzus were designed for
| companionship.
|
| You probably wouldn't expect to see a Shitzu herding
| sheep. That does not, in any way, make Shitzu's "less
| than" a herding breed, they're just built for a different
| function. Shitzus evolved in environments where
| companionship was prioritized over herding, obviously.
|
| And yet, when it comes to humans, we _choose not_ to
| acknowledge this fact: geography influences evolutionary
| pressures, and evolutionary pressures influence the
| humans that evolved there. You see this in culture too.
| Cultures evolve just like the humans that belong to them
| do, and it 's a big soupy mess of genetics influencing
| behavior/culture, and behavior/culture influencing
| genetics.
|
| Expecting African Americans to act like neurotic white
| protestants is fundamentally racist, you're trying to
| shove a square peg in a round hole. Human diversity is
| real, except it goes beyond skin color. On average,
| racial groups exhibit similar behavior, across
| socioeconomic spectrums. Racial groups _evolved_ in
| similar geographic regions, they are _optimized_ for
| survival in those regions, around those people.
|
| "All men are created equal" is perhaps the most harmful
| lie ever told.
| neartheplain wrote:
| >Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely
| to be stopped or harassed by police
|
| Communities which experience more crime tend to interact
| more with law enforcement. The perpetrators of those
| crimes, who generally come from the same communities as
| their victims, tend to get arrested and incarcerated in
| proportion to their rate of criminality. Most murder in
| the US is committed by black men [1], and mainly
| concentrated in a handful of poor urban areas: St. Louis,
| Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, etc. The National Crime
| Victimization Survey (NCVS) [2][3], widely seen as the
| gold standard for data on criminal victimization,
| confirms that violent crime is simply a larger problem in
| America's urabn black communities compared to the white,
| Asian, and Hispanic communities. Rates of arrest,
| conviction, and incarceration reflect this.
|
| It is no longer the 1960s. Body cameras and smartphones
| are everywhere. Racism has been taboo for decades. Police
| know that if they unjustly shoot or abuse a black person,
| there's a good chance their careers and lives as free
| citizens will be over. The notion that law enforcement
| arrests and incarcertates more black people mainly due to
| racial antipathy, rather than that community's starkly
| higher rate of criminal violence, is not supported by
| evidence.
|
| Tracing back through history, the forces which led to the
| present situation such as slavery, Jim Crow, segregation,
| and redlining were undoubtedly racist and systemic.
| However, these systemic forces are now gone. They have
| even been replaced in many areas by systemic counter-
| forces, such as in university admissions [4], law school
| admissions [5], med school admissions [6], access to
| government debt relief [7], and access to the COVID
| vaccine [8]. The problems which bedevil many black
| Americans today- disproportionate poverty, broken
| families, drug addiction, all resultant criminality-
| would appear to be the results of historical inequities,
| not ongoing systemic racism.
|
| [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
|
| [2] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ncvs.html
|
| [3] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf
|
| [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/affirmative-
| action-50-...
|
| [5] https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/do-underrepresented-
| minorit...
|
| [6] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-
| graphic...
|
| [7] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/wisconsin-dairy-
| farmer-sue...
|
| [8] https://khn.org/news/article/vermont-gives-blacks-
| and-other-...
| mcguire wrote:
| Flippantly, it's entirely possible for someone to be both
| paranoid _and_ to have enemies.
|
| People who are poor, and especially those that live in
| rural areas, face serious difficulties. But minority
| Americans face those same problems, _plus_ racism.
|
| " _Everyone was on board with MLK 's dream of equal
| opportunity for all. Racial discrimination was clearly a
| bad idea._"
|
| Everyone? Clearly a bad idea? I could rustle you up a big
| stack of people who disagree. Weirdly, many of them are
| poor and rural---you'd think they would see the common
| cause and join together, but no. On the other hand,
| there's the old joke about everyone having to have
| someone to look down on; they may be white trash, but at
| least they're not black.
| monocasa wrote:
| Like a lot of poor farmers rent or share farm equipment
| today, poor farmers overwhelmingly rented slaves at
| critical points in the growing cycle in antebellum rural
| South. Slaves were expensive, about $100k each in today's
| money, so poor farmers rented them just like any farm
| equipment today can be rented by those that don't have
| the capital to buy outright. Use of slaves was
| ubiquitous, even among those who didn't outright own the
| slaves.
|
| And I would dig into MLK's thoughts on economic justice a
| bit more. The white washed view ignores his belief that
| equality couldn't be achieved even within the bounds of
| capitalism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/0
| 1/21/economic-e...
|
| And I say this all as another poor white boy from the
| deep south.
| noofen wrote:
| What would MLK say about billionaires using identity
| politics to distract the working class from any kind of
| solidarity? That's what I believe is happening here. A
| lot of identity politics started after Occupy Wall
| Street.
|
| A racially divided nation is profitable, and it's much
| harder for workers to organize.
| monocasa wrote:
| He had choice words for white moderate push back against
| change for racial equality, even if it's ugly in the
| moment to said white moderates.
|
| > I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian
| and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the
| past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the
| white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable
| conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his
| stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's
| Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate,
| who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who
| prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension
| to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who
| constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek,
| but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action";
| who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable
| for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical
| concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to
| wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow
| understanding from people of good will is more
| frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of
| ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering
| than outright rejection.
|
| > I had hoped that the white moderate would understand
| that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing
| justice and that when they fail in this purpose they
| become the dangerously structured dams that block the
| flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white
| moderate would understand that the present tension in the
| South is a necessary phase of the transition from an
| obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively
| accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive
| peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and
| worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in
| nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension.
| We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is
| already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can
| be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be
| cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with
| all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and
| light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension
| its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience
| and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
|
| As for connections to Occupy Wall Street, my view as some
| one connected to the scenes is that they're orthogonal,
| and instead both rise from the beginnings of a
| generational shift in existing power structures.
| noofen wrote:
| > "One unfortunate thing about Black Power is that it
| gives priority to race precisely at a time when the
| impact of automation and other forces have made the
| economic question fundamental for blacks and whites
| alike. In this context a slogan 'Power for Poor People'
| would be much more appropriate than the slogan 'Black
| Power'."
|
| Martin Luther King, _Where Do We Go from Here_ , 1967
| monocasa wrote:
| In the context of 1967, he's talking about taking to the
| streets and creating a separate black nation in a concept
| called "black separatism". Nothing about that is against
| the idea of a company making sure that they have a
| diverse set of employees across the structure of the
| company, if we can stay on topic. Nothing about it rails
| against "identity politics". He's not saying, if you read
| the whole book (which you should, it's fantastic), that
| the black struggle doesn't require a different set of
| tactics from the poor white struggle. Only that there
| exists some overlap that would be served by making sure
| that every person in America makes a good living (in
| addition to other separate struggles). Particularly since
| black separatism in a lot of cases meant leaving the US
| and the society that was built using quite a bit of
| under(or simply un)paid labor and the wealth that belongs
| to all here.
|
| I'll give you that anyone saying that _only_ corporate
| identity politics can solve racial issues in America is
| blowing smoke up your ass, but honest looks at why
| companies as their employees become richer trend white
| and male is an important component of the fight for
| racial equality.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > A lot of identity politics started after Occupy Wall
| Street.
|
| still kinda nuts to me that this isn't widely
| acknowledged.
| yyyk wrote:
| >called out Israel for its violent tendencies.
|
| Compare Israel to its close neighbourhood, the US or even
| France and the UK. Israel exists in the ME, what's the West's
| excuse for fighting in different continents? And his text
| goes much further than that.
|
| >If that blogpost was the same, but said Israel, instead of
| the Jewish people; would there be any issue with it today?
|
| It would be grossly inaccurate, but saying dumb stuff
| wouldn't be enough to get people to call for his removal.
|
| >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.
|
| It's not a particular surprise that people who are drawn to
| attack Jews attack Israel too. Maybe if critics of Israel
| took pains to separate themselves from the antisemites rather
| than excusing them, more people would see a difference
| between critics and actual antisemites. If instead their only
| resort would be to argue bad faith, well, people would see
| that too.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >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?
|
| As always in these sorts of things (and life in general,
| really), judge for yourself https://web.archive.org/web/20210
| 602000424/https://www.kamau... . The final paragraph begins
|
| >If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Israel's attempts to equate itself and its current policies
| with the Jewish race and identity are definitely a reason (an
| additional reason, on top of many others) to be disgusted at
| the governing regime of the State of Israel and its
| government, but they aren't an excuse, even a little bit, for
| the bigotry against Jews _qua_ Jews for Israeli policy
| (indeed, that is _rewarding_ the violent bigotry of the
| Israeli regime, which actively seeks the protection of
| whataboutism that being able to paint opposition to its
| apartheid and _lebensraum_ policies as anti-Semitic
| provides.)
|
| The Israeli government, Israeli Jews, Israelis, and Jews are
| different groups, and the actions of the first don't justify
| hatred of any of the latter groups, all of which include
| fierce opponents of pretty much any action you might blame
| thw first for.
| theossuary wrote:
| I think you and I are on the same wavelength, and I
| appreciate your take on this issue. It's tricky looking
| from the outside in with all of the misinformation though
| (hence my mention of the Israeli propaganda). And I
| definitely agree, nothing justifies antisemitism (to be
| honest, I really don't understand it either). I hate to be
| critical in these situations because I don't want to lend
| credence to those who'll jump in and pretend I'm on their
| Jewish hate train.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I was expecting the typical criticism of Israeli government =
| antisemitism junk but that's definitely not what this was. It's
| not like the guy wrote this in the 50s. It was obviously a little
| eye-raising in 2007 as well. I think Google made the right call
| here.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Posting is a sickness.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Note that "diversity head" does not mean "head of the company's
| diversity efforts" here - that's a different person, Melonie
| Parker. It's not super clear to me what this guy's role actually
| was.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Google announced it's removing its global lead on diversity
| strategy and research from his post after it was discovered he'd
| made antisemitic comments in a past blog post.
|
| That post is not anti-semitic, it's anti-Zionism.
| xputer wrote:
| "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." Excuse me?
| If this is not clearly antisemitic, I wonder what is.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| secondo wrote:
| Who did he upset for this to blow up _now_, 14 years after the
| fact and almost 3 years in his role at Google?
| globular-toast wrote:
| I wonder if someone went digging for dirt or if they had been
| saving it for a rainy day.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Because no one googled for his old blog posts?
| [deleted]
| andrewla wrote:
| The post is now deleted, but is available at
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau...
|
| Repeated here for clarity:
|
| > 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.
|
| > Suffering and oppression typically give rise to sympathy and
| compassion among the oppressed. I can look upon the sufferer and
| know that, "there but for the Grace of God, go I." During this
| period I might well reflect on the redemptive qualities of
| suffering that my people have learned through a ghastly set of
| lessons. I would not have to reflect alone, I could read the
| lessons explicitly from Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, or Chaim Potok.
| I would conclude that my Jewish faith and the history of my
| people render me closer to human compassion; closer to the
| instinct to offer healing to hurt, patience to anxiety and
| understanding to confusion.
|
| > I don't know how I would reconcile that identity with the
| behavior of fundamentalist Jewish extremists or of Israel as a
| nation. The details would confuse me. I wouldn't understand those
| who suggest that bombing Lebanon, slaughtering Lebanese people
| and largely destroying Beirut in retaliation for the capture of a
| few soldiers is justified. I wouldn't understand the notion of
| collective punishment, cutting off gas, electricity and water
| from residents in Gaza because they are attacking Israel who is
| fighting against them. It would be unconscionable to me to watch
| Israeli tanks donning the Star of David rumbling through Ramallah
| destroying buildings and breaking the glass.
|
| > I would be confused in concept too. My faith would lead me to
| believe that Israel is the homeland of my people. My intellect
| would convince me that it cannot be that simple. The faith and
| reason of the Palestinians or of Muslims cannot simply be
| baseless. I would have to believe that the degree of animus,
| vengeance and violence that they now carry is not rooted in their
| identity, but rather in their experience; in the sordid nation
| shuffling and rebuilding that took place after World War II. It
| must be rooted in their hurt, in their sense of displacement,
| abandonment and hopelessness.
|
| > My reflections on Kristallnacht would lead me to feel that
| these are precisely the human sentiments that I as Jew would
| understand; that I ought to understand and feel compelled to help
| alleviate. It cannot be that the sum total of a history of
| suffering and slaughter places such a premium on my identity that
| I would be willing to damn others in defense of it.
|
| > 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.
|
| > kamau
| throwawaycuriou wrote:
| Thanks for the full context. Much of the reaction here is due
| to his mistake of placing 'If I were a Jew' when based on the
| rest of the essay I'd estimate he meant to say 'If I were
| Israeli'. Had he done so the tea shop would still have all its
| crockery intact.
| shagmin wrote:
| After reading the post this is the same impression I get. His
| views don't seem that different from someone like Noam
| Chomsky, just not articulated as well.
| old_fart_dev wrote:
| Absolutely on the nose. I'd go a step further - if he had
| said "If I were Isreael", then he's imagining being policy
| maker directly responsible, instead of merely being a
| citizen.
|
| It's not empathy to put one's self in someone else's shoes,
| but then dismiss the viewpoint that comes with wearing those
| shoes. This is simply another version of the "No true
| Scotsman" fallacy.
|
| Moreover, using collective guilt as an underpinning of any
| political stance is garbage. It's not enough to say racists
| and racist policies are bad - white people are collectively
| guilty, regardless of their own personal behavior and
| history. It's not enough to say Israel's out of line with
| their policies - all Jews are collectively guilty. So on and
| so forth. And it's alienating and insulting to anyone
| sympathetic policy-wise, but don't want to be lumped in with
| bad actors.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| I don't get that Google said there was also some LGBT angle, but
| the article doesn't seem to mention those details.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Other comments ITT mention that he had some rather homophobic
| blog posts alongside the anti-Semitic ones.
| [deleted]
| asidiali wrote:
| The Information War has truly taken its toll.
|
| We are no longer able to discern truth from falsehood, and as a
| result are scared into polarization by the nature of our
| surroundings. We no longer morally stand strong against the pull
| of power as we may have once did.
|
| The ensuing discussions are more often than not, nothing more
| than desperate attempts of talking past one another.
|
| Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Palestinian, Israeli, human. We all
| deserve peace and love.
|
| I want Palestinians to have a home. I want Israelis to have a
| home as well. It's a complex issue. And because there is not
| necessarily an easy answer, we more easily fall victim to the
| tide of fear and frustration on a global scale.
|
| Existence is suffering. May we all find a way to survive.
| paganel wrote:
| Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state, is one of the
| most militaristic states in the world. So in fact we do know that
| the only present Jewish state has a "propensity for war", not
| sure how this is seen as controversial. Of course, I think pretty
| much the same thing about the US government and about its
| citizens, the Americans, after all they're the ones supporting
| said militaristic propensity.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > is one of the most militaristic states in the world
|
| Just for fun? Or does Israel face real security concerns?
| 8note wrote:
| Every country faces real security concerns when they're
| trying to settle land somebody already lives on.
|
| Nazi Germany was one of the most militaristic states in the
| world as well, and they too had real security concerns for
| the same reasons
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I'm glad you have it all figured out...
| Udik wrote:
| "Security concerns" are not enough to judge the situation.
| Mobsters surround themselves of armed guards as much as the
| investigators trying to capture them. Nations that start wars
| need to protect themselves from counter-attacks and
| retaliation. Israel is in blatant violation of international
| law and handsomely profiting from it: 10% of its population
| lives on land that doesn't belong to the state and that by
| international agreements has to be returned to its legitimate
| owners.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Israel is a thing and Jews are another. There are more jews in
| America than Israel. If you want to criticize Israel, that
| would be easier to present than a criticism of Jews. If you
| think Judaism is a violent and warlike faith, it is better to
| criticize it than to criticize generally the descendants of
| people who might have practiced it, or the state that doesn't
| even hold it as the state religion.
| bushbaba wrote:
| It's surrounded by countries who tried to kill all Israelis be
| them Jewish or Arab multiple times.
|
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| Ah, yes, because Israel doesn't bomb schools, hospitals, or
| libraries... Damn hamas and their stones! Why can't they be
| more advanced with their killings like the Israelis and just
| level entire buildings full of children?
|
| What's the body count on Israeli children killed by hamas vs
| Israel killing Palestinian children? I'm pretty sure it's
| lopsided.
| anm89 wrote:
| This is the only instance relating to offensive social media I've
| ever heard of where someone got reassigned and not fired
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _This is the only instance relating to offensive social media I
| 've ever heard of where someone got reassigned and not fired_
|
| Yes it's very strange isn't it, I wonder what the reason could
| be
| tasogare wrote:
| Diversity. As a "divers" he cannot be fired, that would be
| bad PR.
| eplanit wrote:
| He is black, and there is a double-standard -- but don't dare
| call that racist. It's all absurd, but it's actually good to
| see examples of "you become the thing you hate". Hate is a
| horrible, corrosive emotion. We see it a _lot_ these days --
| people who become emotionally entangled and lost in their
| activism against racism (the mob encourages this mindset, as in
| that state, critical thinking is turned off). They then become
| hateful and racist themselves.
|
| 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."
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I think you're spreading FUD. People get reassigned instead
| of fired pretty regularly in response to PR. Please cite
| sources instead of making conjecture that this was due to
| race. At least leftists come with sources to back up their
| claims of racial discrimination, however flimsy the evidence
| is, it actually exists.
| throw1103 wrote:
| Should you really be fired for things you said 13 years ago?
|
| Also we didn't see the entire context..
| janeroe wrote:
| > Should you really be fired for things you said 13 years
| ago?
|
| I think, you shouldn't. Unless you're a head of diversity.
| Then you must be.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| Those are the rules the cancel mob came up with.
|
| Live by the sword, die by the sword.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Also we didn't see the entire context..
|
| The original post is at https://web.archive.org/web/202106020
| 00424/https://www.kamau... , including the final paragraph,
| which begins
|
| >If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable
| appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
| xputer wrote:
| I think their point is more that people probably shouldn't
| get fired for saying something offensive as easily as it is
| done nowadays.
| zuminator wrote:
| Examples of people getting reassigned and not fired:
|
| 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...
| anm89 wrote:
| Notice a pattern here? I wasn't talking about cops and
| teachers who have unions with political clout. Cops have done
| a hell of a lot worse then go on racist rants just to be
| reassigned. It's not apples to apples.
|
| But just to be over the top obnoxiously clear. I'm talking
| about the private sector.
| zuminator wrote:
| The reason a disproportionate number of these articles are
| regarding public sector employees is because public
| institutions are publicly accountable, and therefore
| generally must respond to a controversy. A private sector
| firm is under no obligation to state how it is resolving a
| matter with an employee and may find it advantageous in
| terms of public image and legal liability to simply not
| comment if the employee has not been terminated. Having
| said that, here are a couple of private individuals.
|
| Jerry Saltz got away with just an apology after homophobic
| tweets:
| https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/1024338014871474176
|
| Chris Pratt apologizes after making offensive Instagram
| post, no major further repurcussions:
|
| https://www.sammichespsychmeds.com/chris-pratt-signs-
| apology...
|
| Feel free to additionally move the goalposts as you wish,
| but the point remains that the insinuation that some HN'ers
| are making that the only possible reason he isn't facing
| forthwith termination is his race doesn't seem inarguably
| the case.
| anm89 wrote:
| Chris Pratt isn't an employee. He can't be fired.
|
| No idea who the other guy is but yes, you might have
| found an example. I have no doubt there are some out
| there. I could point you to the short novel length list
| of times it went the other way though.
| neartheplain wrote:
| "Following a video post on Instagram in which the hunky
| Guardians of the Galaxy star insisted followers turn up
| the volume on their devices rather than simply read the
| subtitles in order to get the full experience, members of
| the deaf community pointed out that such a remark is
| exclusionary and, simply put, offensive to suggest that
| only those who can hear are able to experience something
| to its fullest potential."
|
| Equating that post to the link's anti-Semitic remarks
| seems like a stretch.
| fullshark wrote:
| Ahh the power of unions
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _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_
|
| EDIT: since this is heavily downvoted, I will remove the original
| text, as I feel I badly miscommunicated. It is obvious to me now
| that the words I selected really did not represent my intent. I
| did not intend to challenge the parent's assertion, but I
| completely understand why it would have been read as such.
|
| Rest assured I understand why the quoted statement in the
| tabloids is perceived as antisemitic, and I didn't mean to imply
| otherwise! I was searching for some alternate explanation for why
| he wrote that specific phrase, because it was so beyond the pale
| and unlike the formulation he had used elsewhere in the post.
|
| Please chalk this up to lessons learned on my part. Here's a link
| to the full version of the blog post where the excerpts may be
| read in context. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...
| world_peace42 wrote:
| Which charitable person would conclude that was a typo? I have
| a feeling people like you would say the same thing if he wrote
| "I hate Jews" in capital letters.
| flir wrote:
| It's obviously intended to be anti-semitic, but I don't
| understand what it means, either. They're all English words,
| but I can't parse them in that order.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Looks like you just answered your own question.
| stefan_ wrote:
| He typod Israeli as Jew? Geez, quite the common mistake these
| days.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Equally wrong and one-sided
| justanotherguy0 wrote:
| https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2021/6/2/22455622/an...
|
| we don't know why
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| I'm interested in understanding it too
|
| 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
| cheese_van wrote:
| I've lived in various ME countries, as well as Israel. I've tried
| to understand the core issue and frankly, failed. Both arguments
| about this historical conflict between Israel and the
| Palestinians seem as close to being morally equivalent as I could
| imagine. I have sympathies but I keep them to myself. I don't
| feel as though I have a right to take a particular side: I am not
| existentially threatened on a daily basis as both peoples feel
| they are. I have no history of being both threatened and
| abandoned by the world as both side feel. I have no experience of
| living as a people whose every political choice is one of zero-
| sum cultural survival. Who lives, who dies? Who prospers, who
| does not? I have no moral expertise on this subject to pick a
| team.
|
| So on this topic, when pressed, I say I have no right to comment.
| The irony of course, is that in many circles, one is attacked for
| being too bewildered to form an opinion.
|
| It's daft.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > I've tried to understand the core issue and frankly, failed
|
| 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.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| ...and how exactly are they supposed to "get back their
| rightful land"?
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Same way the Zionists stole it.
| extra88 wrote:
| You're mixing up history. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was made
| in _1916_. The Ottoman Empire was no more long before WWII.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| I meant WWI. I'll edit my post. The point remains however.
| tobesure wrote:
| >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
|
| The issue is far more complex than that. The land in Sheik
| Jarrah, for example, the center of the most recent conflict,
| was sold to Jews in the 1800s, and these evictions occurred
| because Palestinians (unironically also settlers in this
| case) did not pay obligated rent for decades.
|
| Further, this anti-settler/anti-colonizer justification is
| inconsistently applied. The Al Asqa mosque is built on the
| ruins of a Jewish temple - so how long must a group of people
| occupy an area before they are no longer considered
| "settlers" or "occupiers" within the modern progressive
| framework?
| drewwwwww wrote:
| look to see who is using 5th generation multi role attack
| fighters and who is using rockets made from the water pipes of
| the buildings destroyed by the air assault.
|
| 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
| kevstev wrote:
| Thanks for summing up how I feel about this so succinctly. I
| have tried to understand the history and the issues between
| these two groups and there is honestly there is so much that
| each side can victim claim for and be pointed out as an
| aggressor on its really hard to make any judgement on a
| particular side being right or wrong. And with the history on
| this going back thousands of years and my admittedly complete
| lack of understanding of cultural context on both sides (and to
| be honest its so complex I am not sure anyone can understand
| this unless you have been living it) I just freely admit I am
| too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion- which is still
| quite problematic- despite having never been to the Middle
| East, I live in NYC and have lots of Jewish friends who claim
| that anything less than supporting Israel is anti-semitism.
|
| 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.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I think it's a mistake to understand this (or most) conflicts
| in terms of an argument about ideology, or history. Those play
| a role, but it isn't a philosophical debate. It's a war.
|
| 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.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| He's right, though.
| yownie wrote:
| From the blog post:
|
| >"Suffering and oppression typically give rise to sympathy and
| compassion among the oppressed"
|
| Is there any evidence this is true however?
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