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James Damore Sues Google For Allegedly Discriminating Against Conservative White Men (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The author of the controversial memo that upended Google in August is suing the company, alleging that white, male conservatives are systematically discriminated against by Google. James Damore was fired as an engineer after a manifesto questioning the benefits of diversity programs was widely passed around the company. In a new lawsuit, he and another fired engineer claim that "employees who expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Google's employment policies and its business, such as 'diversity' hiring policies, 'bias sensitivity,' or 'social justice,' were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights."

56 of 1,175 comments (clear)

  1. Finally by TimothyHollins · · Score: 5, Insightful

    About damn time. Let's see if the courts are as willing as social media platforms to allow racism and discrimination as long as it's against the "right" people.

    1. Re:Finally by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Q) How to tell if a group is a "protected class"?

      A) Does that group tend to vote Democrat? Then it is. Overwise no.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    2. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I didn't realize you had to be in a protected status to be treated right. I thought people should try to be good regardless.

    3. Re:Finally by viperidaenz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't it illegal to discriminate based on gender or race, regardless of what the gender or race is?

    4. Re:Finally by RedK · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then why are Christian bakers forced to make cakes and pay damages to couples for same-sex marriages ?

      Aren't Christian Bakers privately owned ?

      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oregon-lgbt/oregon-appeals-court-upholds-damages-in-gay-wedding-cake-case-idUSKBN1EN01V

      mmmmh ?

      --
      "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
      Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
    5. Re:Finally by reboot246 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You got it ass-backwards. I know. I lived through the 50s, 60s and 70s. I saw what really happened. The Democrat Party has always been home to the racists and sexists, and it still is today.

    6. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Leak internal company documents to the media to push your SJW agenda? Not a problem!

      Submit feedback as requested after a company training seminar? FIRED

    7. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am not "the majority." I am one individual. I may fit into a demographic category that is a majority, but to treat an individual a certain way solely for being a member of any given demographic group is the very definition of the huge no-no -isms (racism, sexism) that Western society holds ideals to eliminate.

      Being white makes you a part of the "white person" demographic, but it is what you are, not who you are or what you bring to the table.

      Being male makes you a part of the "male person" demographic, but it is what you are, not who you are or what you bring to the table.

      This is true for any person-sorting adjective for demographics you can imagine. Replace "white" with black, female, Asian, Indian, African, Portuguese, South American, transgendered, whatever. None of that matters because you are not dealing with "people," you are dealing with persons, each an individual distinct from other members of the same demographic groups with a unique complex set of life experiences and world views.

      You're not discriminating against "the majority." You're discriminating against an individual person because of things that they have no control over, and an act of discrimination is a bad act reflecting negatively on the actor...regardless of who it is against.

    8. Re:Finally by rogoshen1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, they are. It is illegal in the US to discriminate based on age, race, national origin, religion, gender, etc etc.

      All the mental gymnastics in the world will not be able to rationalize how those rules should ONLY apply to women, gays, and minorities.

    9. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Please provide references for "being fired for being an asshole." Last I checked he was fired because Google internally solicited opinions and ideas, he attempted to provided productive input wholly inside the company which was not widely available within the company, then someone inside Google who probably didn't like what he was saying "leaked" that paper to the world so Google (who was also being sued by some women at the time for conspiring to pay women less than men, go figure) would have to put out the fire by getting rid of Damore.

      The person who "leaked" his paper knew exactly what they were doing. He wasn't "being an asshole." You can't prove that he was. The leaker, however, was certainly being an asshole. Don't forget that Google specifically solicited Damore's input, he didn't just come out with "women tend to gravitate towards non-technical fields in general" out of the blue!

    10. Re:Finally by RedK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What if said bakery had no employees willing to bake the cake ? Because this is what happened here. We're not talking about a big bakery with hundreds of employees, this is a simple small business run by its 2 owners.

      They also didn't refuse services or products. They offered the couple to purchase a pre-made cake, simply stating they would not do custom work that promoted beliefs outside their religious dogma.

      I know this is hard for you to reconcile. You want businesses to be "private entities, free to discriminate" when it suits you and not when it doesn't, but that's not how the world works. When you pass a set of laws, it is blind to your side of the ideological spectrum, and applies equally to all. Even when that's not convenient to your narrative.

      --
      "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
      Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
    11. Re:Finally by rogoshen1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As an Oregonian, that case really pissed me off.

      A business owner, outside of a few essential things (like housing) should have the god damn right to choose to take on a client. It's a fucking bakery for Christ's sake, in western Oregon you'd have to *try* very hard to find a religious, conservative baker.

      This was simply a case of someone who got butt-hurt over the business owner having the temerity to stand up for their beliefs, and decided to try to make an example out of the bakery. Essentially the outcome was that they lost their business, and have to pay around $100k in fines because they didn't want to bake a cake.

      A sane, rational person would cowboy up, and find another bakery that would be happy to take your money. But nope, gotta make a court case out of it!

      Fuck the plaintiffs. Seriously. Fuck Them.

      How about going to a halal butcher with a pig and demand that they butcher it for you, religious beliefs be damned?

    12. Re:Finally by deong · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Everyone is equally free to die of exposure on a park bench."

      Protected classes aren't something anyone came up with to elevate one group over another. They were literally the last ditch hope at getting people who were, through accidents of birth and history, already above others to stop ruthlessly exploiting that advantage to stay above those "protected groups".

      You don't like people having legal protections from you fucking them over? Just stop fucking them over for a few decades and the laws will catch up.

    13. Re:Finally by BlueStrat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You got it ass-backwards. I know. I lived through the 50s, 60s and 70s. I saw what really happened. The Democrat Party has always been home to the racists and sexists, and it still is today.

      Another greying temporal traveler here to corroborate and verify. This is exactly, precisely the truth. It's always been the Republicans who pushed for civil rights and Democrats who opposed it.

      In the 1960s, the Democrats adopted tactics straight out of "Rules For Radicals" by Alinsky and began a propaganda campaign to accuse Republicans of everything they had done and were doing while seeking to grab the 'civil rights' flag away by introducing the "War On Poverty" with welfare, food stamps, housing, and more that was designed from the start to make the recipients dependent.

      LBJ was famously quoted at the time as saying under his breath about the Democrat entitlement programs; "I'll have those n1gg3rs voting Democrat for the next hundred years!" So far LBJ has been right and the Democrat's propaganda push to re-brand themselves has also seen a lot of success among the less-informed.

      There's a very good reason that the US liberal-Democrat controlled public school system barely teaches any history at all and much of what they do teach is revisionist BS. You listen to what they say with a different perspective when you know they were the Party of the KKK, Jim Crow, racial segregation, enslaving minorities through government entitlements, and eugenics.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    14. Re:Finally by StandardDeviant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If it was just a matter of the business owners saying "no, go away" that'd be one thing. When they organized mass harassment against the plaintiffs, that's a different matter altogether, and that part seems to be missing from much of the media coverage of the case (particularly on right-biased media sources).

    15. Re:Finally by rogoshen1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't like the double standard that gets applied to 'progressive' causes at the expense of individual freedoms. That sets a horrifying precedent, as the definition of 'progressive' shifts over time. (for some reason the Ba'ath party comes to mind here. Besides If a KKK member walked into a bakery and wanted a cake ... )

      Bear in mind this was a *bakery* in Western Oregon. Not a hotel/apartment/home rental in 1960's Alabama. All that should have happened is that the bakery gets some bad press, the couple finds a different bakery, and life goes on. If it was truly about needing a cake, they could have gone to any one of hundreds of bakeries that would take their money. But no, the SJW mob finds a new call to arms and goes nuts.

      In 30 years I wouldn't be at all surprised if standing up to pee becomes a massive faux pas as urinals become contraband.

      Fun and jokes aside; I get the Jim Crow aspect of it, I do. But I think there should be an exemption for artisans -- if you're doing bespoke work, shouldn't you get to make the decision to take on a gig?

      Thought experiment, in areas where prostitution is legal, should they have the right to refuse clients of certain race, ethnicities, genders, or body types? Where does the line get drawn?

    16. Re:Finally by Dread_ed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The guy said that an industry that is overwhelmingly staffed by, run by, and controlled by, and designed around men, and has been for decades, might be, at a fundamental level, less interesting to women. He pointed at the parts of the industry that aren't the actual job itself as the culprits.

      He basically attacked the culture, not the work, and said its Patriarchy (without saying so) and should be updated. He attacked shameless self promotion as the major metric for advancement, working hours that cause burn out, working weekends, and sacrificing your entire personal life for the company. That's not being an asshole. That is trying to change a broken system for the benefit of everyone.

      The result? (Asshole alert, here it comes...)

      Progressive morons attacked him as a sexist. What complete and utter fools. If they had joined him we could have seen some real change in corporate America. Shortsighted and ignorant groupthink prevailed because someone with a stick up their butt was too stupid to understand his memo wasn't a condemnation of women, but a scathing rebuke of corporate America's stranglehold on the life of their workers. It's dangerously socialist when you break it down to its basics, and revolutionary if embraced. I was surprised at the reaction of those that call themselves left, liberal, and progressive. Apparently they would rather have horrible working conditions for everyone, provided they can scapegoat some uninvolved party, than good working conditions for everyone without someone to blame.

      It's this kind of crab mentality that gives me the confidence to say that politicization due to ideological self-identification is the most detrimental force in America. It turns otherwise rational individuals into helpless tools of their own enslavement. What is worse, they scream and cry as they drag everyone down with them. If you're going to destroy yourself and everyone else around you, would you at least shut the fuck up as you do it?

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    17. Re:Finally by jeff4747 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A business owner, outside of a few essential things (like housing) should have the god damn right to choose to take on a client

      Yeah! How DARE those negros want to eat at that lunch counter!!! Woolworth's should be able to choose to take on a client!

      Oh wait....

      How about going to a halal butcher with a pig and demand that they butcher it for you, religious beliefs be damned?

      If that butcher would not butcher a pig for anyone, then there's no problem.

      The problem arises when some services are offered to customers and forbidden to others based only on those customer's protected class.

      If you don't like it, make your business a private club that offers cake-baking services to it's members. Add a $5 "club dues" to the first order of the year from that customer. Clubs can be as racist, sexist or homophobic as they like.

    18. Re:Finally by Theaetetus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As an Oregonian, that case really pissed me off.

      A business owner, outside of a few essential things (like housing) should have the god damn right to choose to take on a client. It's a fucking bakery for Christ's sake, in western Oregon you'd have to *try* very hard to find a religious, conservative baker.

      This was simply a case of someone who got butt-hurt over the business owner having the temerity to stand up for their beliefs, and decided to try to make an example out of the bakery. Essentially the outcome was that they lost their business, and have to pay around $100k in fines because they didn't want to bake a cake.

      A sane, rational person would cowboy up, and find another bakery that would be happy to take your money. But nope, gotta make a court case out of it!

      Fuck the plaintiffs. Seriously. Fuck Them.

      Allow me to offer an analogy... Rather than a cake baker, say you owned a lunch counter. A lunch counter in a Woolworth's Department Store. And then one day, some uppity negroes come in and ask to eat lunch, despite your very clear "whites only" sign.

      You're a private businessman, and you should have the god damn right to choose whom you serve, right? You should be able to restrict service only to your Aryan friends, and if they're butt-hurt about it, fuck them. Seriously. Fuck Them.

      Would you agree with all that? It's the same situation, but lunch rather than a cake, and a battle 50 years ago instead of today. But you're on the side of discrimination, yes? I just want to be clear whether you're consistent or not.

      How about going to a halal butcher with a pig and demand that they butcher it for you, religious beliefs be damned?

      Halal butchers don't butcher pigs at all, for anyone. Cake bakers do bake cakes. The couple here didn't go to a cake baker and ask for a roast rack of lamb - they asked for a cake, selected out of a catalog of cakes that the baker provides. This would be the same as going to a halal butcher, pointing to something on the menu, and saying "I'll take number 3." And, in such a situation, if the butcher said, "my religious beliefs don't let me serve you number 3- hold on one second. Mr. Smith, your number 3 is ready! Sorry about that- I was saying that my religious beliefs don't let me serve a number 3 to you specifically," you'd probably be more than a little upset, and justifiably so.

    19. Re: Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Just cause they arent hiding it doesnt make it discrimination.

      It just proives that it is OK in our society to discriminate against whites.

      You wont fix discrimination with reverse discrimination NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY.

    20. Re:Finally by Uberbah · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You got it ass-backwards. I know. I lived through the 50s, 60s and 70s. I saw what really happened. The Democrat Party has always been home to the racists and sexists, and it still is today.

      Then you know full well both parties traded places and all the racist sexists are now in the Republic Party. Don't compound the willful dumbfuckery by bringing up Byrd when he spent the rest of his adult live repudiating the KKK, whereas Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms went to their graves as unreconstructed Dixiecrats.

    21. Re: Finally by Bartles · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So I guess a sign at a business establishment that says "whites only" isn't discrimination because they arent hiding it. You lefties are lefties because you failed in the logic department.

    22. Re:Finally by barakn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No shit, Sherlock. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The OP, however, distinctly referred to "the 70s," not 1964. The racist Dixiecrats abandoned the Democrats AFTER the Civil Rights Act, not before. Apparently the only method you have of pretending there wasn't a great shift of racists to the Republican party was by IGNORING THE LAST 5 DECADES OF HISTORY.

      Take a closer look at the wiki article you linked to. You'll see that both Democrats and Republicans voted heavily in favor of it, the Republicans just a bit more so. The real division is not in party, but in location. Southern (as in from one of the 12 secessionist states during the Civil War) Democrats and Republicans almost uniformly voted against it, whereas Northerners (from all other states) voted overwhelmingly for it. Also note that the South had far more Democrats than Republicans at that point, a situation largely reversed by the Reagan era. If you think that racism evaporated from the South as a wave of Republicans took control of it, you're stupider than I thought.

      --
      "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
    23. Re:Finally by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As others have pointed out, no.

      But white males aren't even the majority. Males are normally slightly in the majority of births, but are outnumbered by females overall because they have a higher death rate.

      In California, white females are almost certainly the majority.

    24. Re:Finally by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2, Insightful

      IMO, a significant part of the kerfuffle was caused by the misunderstanding of how he used "neurotic", which appeared to be intended as an academic, psychological description, but was instead simply seen as an insult to women (I took it that way myself until someone pointed out the context). As soon as I saw that phrase, I knew he'd be fired. It sort of reminds me of people who were fired for using the term "niggardly." The final nail in the coffin was that he dared point out that men and women were inherently and fundamentally different, which is obvious to many, but is deemed insensitive and politically incorrect to point out.

      What's interesting to me is that many people like me could easily predict the resulting drama from this. Damore even pointed out in his manifesto that women tend to react more emotionally to situations, which is exactly what you don't want to tell someone who is prone to reacting emotionally because... well, they're likely to react emotionally to what you just said and become angry or defensive. Trying to counter emotion with logic is a fool's game that has almost no chance at success. Your best weapon is empathy, with logic employed very gently and gradually over time.

      Ignored in all of this piling on of Damore's "attack" on women is the more positive attributes he mentioned which many of us also recognize and acknowledge. For example, women are often more competent in socialization skills, which is hugely important in coordinating and running team full of men who are often less than stellar at communicating effectively with others. I don't think it's a coincidence that HR is often staffed by women, and most of my team producers have been women as well. Both of those jobs require good communication and interpersonal skills.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    25. Re:Finally by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Funny thing about the term "snowflake". It was coined by that book/movie Fight Club

      No, it wasn't coined, just popularized by the novel/movie. It was coined much earlier than that and it's meaning has changed over the years. In it's current usage as "someone who thinks everyone, but most especially themselves, is special and unique like a snowflake, and just as fragile", it actually started from the people who promoted the "everyone is special and deserves a trophy" mindset via "Every child is special and unique like snowflakes".

      --
      There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
    26. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      According to his own account, the course told him not to say stuff like that... So he decided to say stuff like that on a widely distributed mailing list.

      No, he said that stuff on the dedicated mailing list dealing with exactly what was asked of him. You can't even get the basic subject matter right.

  2. Re:While I think damore is an idiot, by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google was not only wrong to fire him, but Google's CEO Sundar Pichai should be fired for being inept.

    Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his politics, he caused google to get a lot of negative press (yes so did the leaker, but widely disemminating such a document massively increased the chance of a leak).

    Google as a corporate entity don't seem to care for much any more these days except the almighty dollar. Don't be evil! Lol! If you hurt the bottom line you're gone.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  3. Re:News just in by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This reminds me of the days when Democrats in the Jim Crow south claimed it was only the 'Uppity' negroes who had problems with their legally imposed discrimination.

    Guess who lost that battle.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  4. Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's such a relief to know that this same sort of delusional blathering is still being dished out by lefty shills. Because it's exactly what cost the Democrats nearly a thousand legislative seats, most of the governorships, both houses of congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and millions of two-time Obama voters who'd had enough of the completely fake histrionics. Even destroy-Trump-all-the-time networks like CNN have moved on past your deprecated talking points about phony felony collusion that isn't even a thing and never happened, and are now trying their hardest to talk up psychological reasons for removal from office, because that's all they've got. Please, though, carry on. Because if we want to watch the Dems fall on their faces in 2018 exactly like they did in 2016, it's voices like yours that are going to get it done. Thanks!

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  5. Re:Let's see.... by Tokolosh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Exactly. Any woman in my organization who complained would find herself on the street.

    --
    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
  6. Jerks are not a protected class. by Brannon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    He wasn't fired for being white, he wasn't even fired for his political views, he was fired for spouting off at work and thus causing a lot of internal strife. You can believe whatever you want, but you can't say whatever you want at work.

    1. Re:Jerks are not a protected class. by poptix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As opposed to all the other groups protests (discrimination, wage gap, "unwelcome advances", etc) that gave everyone at work the warm fuzzies and a general feeling of unity.

      --
      Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
    2. Re:Jerks are not a protected class. by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm getting tired of reading this bullshit. Yeah, you'd have a case if it wasn't for google ASKING for everyone's opinion on how the workplace could be made better (whatever you want to define as better).

      Damore said "Stop acting like we're all the same. Women have things to contribute, so adapt the workplace to their needs instead of molding it for a virtual template of a unisex humanoid that does not exist".

      He pointed out what was, in his opinion, a mistake the company made and how they could go about fixing it. Only problem was reality doesn't fit Google's alternate facts.

      It's a-okay for a car company to want to run according to other laws than those of physics however when you then notice that your sales could be better and ask for input and an engineer points this out, you either go "Well, guess we can't work according to cartoon physics any longer" or you go "Dude, thanks so much for wanting to help but that really doesn't fit into our dogma. Please consider either keeping this opinion to yourself in the future or we'll be glad to help you find other employment".

      Yeah, yeah... they're not required by law to act like that but god damnit, it's the respectful thing to do. Then again, respect and ethics are not things US culture is known for comprehending.

  7. Re:Donald Trump - White Affirmative Action by k6mfw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, a black democrat named Barack Obama

    Actually he was half black if need to be specific... There was a discussion on CSPAN3 or 2 of a book author talked about Obama and how he "walked in thin ice" about racism during his Presidency. Author said Obama was highly educated, married once and still is, two daughters doing well in school. Also well spoken, did appropriate sports like play golf, etc. If Obama was like Trump, he would have never been elected.

    --
    mfwright@batnet.com
  8. White Men are a protected class by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Conservative is not. As one of those snowflakes I would like it to be, but those sort of worker protections have been shot down by (ironically) white, conservative men...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  9. Re:I probably would have done the autism angle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I want to know is if the person that leaked his private internal company document (that **he submitted at the request of google for feedback after a diversity training seminar**) was also fired? Because that's the person that turned it into a PR nightmare.

  10. do not settle by mapkinase · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please, do not settle for non-disclosure agrrement, not even if they offer you a billion dollars.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  11. Re:While I think damore is an idiot, by RedK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He caused google to get bad press.

    No, he did not. The leaker did. And then I dare argue not even the leaker. The memo itself is tame and sound. The progressive (aka regressive) press that libeled the memo to hell and pretended it was saying things it did not say at all is what caused Google bad press.

    If anything, it's Salon's, The Verge's, Vox's and other progressive-leaning blogs and trashy "news" outlets that caused Google to get bad press. And if you want to argue "journalistic" freedom, well fine, then it's back to the leaker.

    James Damore was provided a "training seminar" (the quotes are important, because the forced diversity propaganda speech he was forced to listen to was no seminar, and it certainly wasn't training) and provided feedback, as asked, on the company internal forums, which serve this purpose.

    Do you still need further clarification of the events ?

    --
    "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
    Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
  12. Re:Donald Trump - White Affirmative Action by BronsCon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Obama showed just how good our minority population has made itself to overcome the systemic racism in our society

    Uhm... Perhaps you should start be denouncing the criminals and gangbangers who are of your own race, like most other races do? And I mean you, personally, not black people in general. Your minority population still makes up the majority of perpetrators of violent crimes against other members of your minority population. Speak out against that and put an end to it, then you'll have made yourself (again, you personally) "good". I know many black people who recognize this fact and speak out against it; those are good people. You, on the other hand, stand under the umbrella of someone else's accomplishment and claim you've overcome racism? No, Obama overcame racism, black men and women who decry the violent and ignorant actions of lesser individuals have overcome racism, but what have you done to better yourself?

    I know I'm gonna get flamed hard for this and likely be downmodded into oblivion but, you know what? I don't care. What I'm saying needs to be said. Here it is: RACE ONLY MATTERS AS MUCH AS YOU LET IT MATTER.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  13. "after a manifesto ..." by recrudescence · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was not a "manifesto", let alone an anti-diversity one. That's what it was called in the media. Big difference.

  14. Re:While I think damore is an idiot, by RedK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny, the group of white nationalists which usually echos those sentiments seems to think skin colour and gender is an excellent attribute to justify not hiring people

    Because white nationalists are as bigoted as progressives. Identity politics is cancer, from both sides.

    You know, a wise man once said :

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

    Maybe one day we'll be rid of Identity Politics.

    --
    "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
    Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
  15. Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by Dzimas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It astounds me that American politics has devolved into confused name-calling and an almost complete inability to form coherent and rational arguments. Let's bring things back to reality; both major American political parties expound right wing, authoritarian viewpoints and philosophies. The only thing that differs is the degree.

    Faced with that reality, it's bewildering that half of the US population supports the elephant party, while strongly believing that donkey party followers are complete loons (and vice-versa). That's simply not a sane conclusion. Just because someone votes a certain way doesn't automatically make them a blithering idiot, nor does it mean that they're not allowed to disagree with some of the policies put forward by the legislators they vote into office.

    It's also pretty clear to anyone with a reasonable grasp of the English language that President Trump is prone to frequent odd outbursts and declarations that are sometimes completely incoherent and provably false. That should be cause for significant concern, whether you're conservative or liberal.

  16. Re:While I think damore is an idiot, by RedK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Reading the memo will only make you dumber,

    If you read it, you wouldn't pretend things like :

    His opinion being that google shouldn't recruit women because they might have on average less aptitude than men for some tasks.

    The actual quote :

    Note, Iâ(TM)m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
    differences are âoejust.â Iâ(TM)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 donâ(TM)t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences
    are small and thereâ(TM)s significant overlap between men and women, so you canâ(TM)t say anything
    about an individual given these population level distributions.

    So yes, you can disagree, you can argue the science he used and the studies he cited are wrong, or that he misunderstood them, but trying to depict the memo as vile while not having read it is malicious.

    --
    "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
    Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
  17. Re:While I think damore is an idiot, by Freischutz · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Funny, the group of white nationalists which usually echos those sentiments seems to think skin colour and gender is an excellent attribute to justify not hiring people

    Because white nationalists are as bigoted as progressives. Identity politics is cancer, from both sides.

    Then why are you quoting from their playbook?

    You know, a wise man once said :

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

    Maybe one day we'll be rid of Identity Politics.

    Noble sentiment, and I hope it will some day be realised. However, as long as conservative white males, the most privileged group of people on the planet, can feel themselves persecuted, discriminated against and trodden upon by people whose prospects of getting work and being as well paid for it as white males are is limited simply because of their gender and/or the colour of their skin then I'm not going to be to holding my breath. In the mean time, I'm going to have limited sympathy for any fellow white male because he objects to diversity in a company whose business model it is to not give a hoot about the skin colour, gender, religion or any other personal trait of their customers.

  18. Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by Dread_ed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Donald Trump's unhinged tantrums on Twitter are game theory. Tit for tat.

    He is merely feeding back to the American public exactly what they are putting out.

    Like your post. It is unhinged, ridiculous on its face (and increasingly so after any level of consideration), and a testament to the absolute insanity that partisanship foments. To me it looks identical to the Twitter account of Donald Trump in tone and intellect.

    In many ways this fits the description I have heard about "the government you deserve." When the electorate learns maturity, restraint, and civility we will get mature, restrained, and civil governance.

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  19. Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by Z80a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is no such thing as "reverse racism", racism is racism, and judging people by the color of their skin is always wrong, even if your purpose is to help the person.
    There are no such thing as good racism, as you're always reducing the person to his physical features.

  20. Yes it did happen by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    see here.. Ben Shapiro is quite possibly the least credible source you could have sited. You can probably email the professor sited (or buy/read his books) if you want more sources.

    And it happened between today and the _1860s_, not the 1960s. If you only go back 70 years yeah, you won't find evidence, because you didn't go back far enough. But that was the point, wasn't it?

    Also, nice straw man. Whether the Ds & Rs switched sides has nothing to do with the reality of the Southern Strategy. The evidence for which comes from Republican strategists who came clean out of guilt. And that's before we start talking about stuff like how our (heavily supported by Republicans) Drug War is basically a round about way to enforce racial segregation or how all those civil war statues the party's so busy defending were put up in the eras of Jim Crow laws.

    Seriously, you can't be this naive. You have to know this stuff. You're either being willfully ignorant to preserve a world view that makes you feel good about yourself or your hoping to join 'ole Benny S. in the popular pass time of making money off the working class by selling them political viewpoints that solve nothing but do separate the working class (there's that Southern Strategy rearin' it's ugly head again).

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  21. Re: Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's only gerrymandering when the republicans do it. When the dems do, it's not gerrymandering.

  22. Re:While I think damore is an idiot, by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Having read it, the only difference I can see is that my summary of it is shorter and more direct.

    Your summary: Google should avoid hiring women because they may be less apt at X.
    His argument: Due to biological differences Google won't find equally many women to do X.

    Let me try to make the argument even blunter, imagine you want employees that are over six feet tall for some reason. There are obviously women taller than that and men shorter than that, but you will find the pool is highly skewed against men. What he's saying is that great, you can hire every woman over six feet tall you can find, but you can't expect them to be half the employees because they're not half the workforce and everybody wants those that tick the diversity boxes.

    The only way you can force an artificial balance in an unbalanced pool is to pay them more so all the tall women come work for you while everyone else is skewed even more or lower demands so that women actually don't have to be so tall as men. Either way they get special treatment for their diversity, not their actual work output. And that this is unfair both to the women who did pass the same qualifications as everyone else and the men who got bumped down the list.

    Of course he wasn't talking about something as unalterable as height, he was talking about qualified tech workers. And that if Google wants more women in tech, they should spend their money on bringing up more qualified female candidates not make special rules for females. And his theory was that you still wouldn't get equal representation because men and women think differently and have different interests and values and that Google shouldn't begin with the answer being 50:50 and construe that everything that's not must be the result of gender discrimination of some form.

    Of course this offended a bunch of SJW activists that think sex is a social construct and that boys would play with dolls and wear pink tutus while girls would play with cars and toy soldiers if nobody boxed them into gender roles. There's no doubt that in many companies and workplaces there has been a lot of resistance and bigotry against those that go against traditional gender roles and I hope we'll get past that as individuals. But seemingly no matter how far equality goes there still seem to be rather large statistical differences in the career paths we choose.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  23. Re:While I think damore is an idiot, by Mashiki · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And that means he's a terrible engineer, since he doesn't understand that "if X, then Y" doesn't also mean "Y, therefore X." That alone would be reason to fire him, because you sure as fark can't trust his code.

    This is the part where you're wrong. He understood those hypothesis correctly, even evolutionary psychology professors who's work is directly in that field that he got the core of the idea correct among other facts. His belief is generally correct, that his evolutionary factors were effectively correct as well.

    In other words, he was an engineer who saw something applied what he saw in his field, put it together, surprised a bunch of neurologists, and psychologists in "getting it pretty much right" and were just as astounded when google fired him for being right. Welcome to the absolute shitshow of the left, and hiring based on not ability, not skill, but with something you can make up, or are born with. Do you not understand why libertarians are abandoning any ties with the left, and saying "fuck it" and going right? And the left's response is "IT'S NOT US, IT'S U!"

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  24. Re: How is this marked troll? by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then you end up with a company full of white male sex offenders. I say we allow it; if they're all working there, they're not intermixing with the general population and other, more same companies are better off for it.

    You've never worked a day in your life, in a female dominated office have you? The shit that men say is tame, sexual harassment against men is rampant as well. Here's an example: When was the last time you head a group of guys standing around talking about how best to knock a women up, so she can get married and have an easy-train to alimony. I head the exact opposite from women, and worse. Everything from lying to be on BC, to stop taking it, to putting holes in condoms, to digging through the trash after sex for one. If you really want to hear about my own personal experiences ranging from both a fortune 500 company and in government offices? Reply, I'll be happy to give you examples.

    The problem is for men, there's no real recourse except to put up with it. If HR hates you for bringing it up, they will schedule you in with the person harassing you, if they really hate you, they'll put you both in, early, before everyone else shows up, or make you stay late. Just like there are no real domestic violence shelters for men, and there's a big need for them. The fact that feminists who claim it's all about equality fight so hard against having male DV shelters should tell you exactly what type of equality they're fighting for.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  25. Re: Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by loufoque · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This "lunatic ranting" is the typical view from the rest of the world the left is actually left (and no, that's not far-left).
    Maybe you should look into what the world outside of the USA is like.

  26. Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by dj245 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's also pretty clear to anyone with a reasonable grasp of the English language that President Trump is prone to frequent odd outbursts and declarations that are sometimes completely incoherent and provably false. That should be cause for significant concern, whether you're conservative or liberal.

    I oppose Trump but I wonder if some of the things he says aren't just trickery to keep people talking about his chosen topic. Every time he misstates a number or fact, that becomes another piece of news. In fact, it often becomes the News of the Day. It brings attention to the topic, and the news organizations dogpile on either supporting or proving it incorrect.

    His detractors aren't going to change their opinion of Trump over the misstatement, his supporters likely won't, and Trump's chosen issue becomes the issue of the day, blocking out many other current events. It is a highly effective distraction technique. There were plenty of such distractions when the tax bill was going through congress, and any time negative news about Trump is circulating.

    On the other hand, he might be completely crazy and any positive effects of that are simply coincidental.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  27. Re:I don't think it'll matter by dj245 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Then there's the Democratic Socialists. The Bernie Bros. I don't see these guys getting anywhere. Nobody wants to pay for something else's medical care. Nobody want to pay for their schools. Sure, you can argue that such things benefit everyone (e.g. we could pay our national debt off in 10 years with the money single payer healthcare would save, look it up). But it still doesn't _feel_ right. Especially with a good chunk of the country bigoted against _somebody_. We're balkanized. We're not Americans. We're White Americans. Black Americans. Gay Americans. Christian Americans. But we're not Americans.

    You are correct about Americans being fragmented. We had a lot more overt racism and demonization of different groups back in the 1950s but at least the American Dream, national pride, and national unity was a coherent idea shared by most people (even if it was not completely true).

    On the topic of socialist policies, I DO want to pay for education of others. The children of today will be taking care of me when I'm old, and it is in my direct interest that they are not complete idiots. On the other hand, every time the government gets involved in paying private enterprises for things, costs skyrocket as people game the system. Expanding college education by subsidies or direct payments is a prime example. Health insurance is another.

    The most cost-effective government services are those run without significant subcontracting, such as the Postal service, National Parks, etc. Government should provide services either directly without significant subcontracting, or not at all. The problem with this is that private companies are well entrenched, lobby for subsidies, and oppose government-run services that compete with them. Local government-run internet services are a prime example.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  28. Re:I'll be darned by Comrade+Ogilvy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is really quite funny how completely out of touch most of the Google critics are when it comes to the chances of success at trial. What are the odds the CEO did (1) "Hey, fire this guy for what he said.", versus (2) "A few of these things he said seem to me might they violate existing policies. Please have HR review it and get back to me in writing with what they determine"?

    In the second case, Damore's suit is simply doomed. It requires very little bureaucratic skill to take down a blabbermouth and be 100% in compliance with the law.

    It is unfortunate Damore could not have written in a more succinct and focused style, because he did write a few uncomfortable and controversial arguments that were well worth discussing. Pity. But Damore himself has to own that. White male privilege is insufficient to protect him from the consequences of his own actions, in today's world.