James Damore Sues Google For Allegedly Discriminating Against Conservative White Men (theverge.com) 1175
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."
Finally (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.
Re:Finally (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
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
I agree, the person who leaked it should at least be reprimanded. So tell me their name.
Unless you have reason to think that Google knows, you can't conclude "no problem".
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
1. He dd not publish a manifesto. The press called it a manifesto; it's not. It's an engineering style paper describing a problem and possible solutions to the problem.
2. The paper he wrote was neither sexist nor misogynistic. After reviewing the definitions of the word sexist and misogynistic, can you specify what specifically in the paper was sexist or misogynistic?
3. I have seen no employee rule that he broke. Can you cite one?
4. He did not publish the paper. He submitted it to Google as asked for in response to training request for comments.
5. I've read the paper twice. He does precisely what was asked. It provides feedback on how to increase female participation in technology without breaking the anti-discrimination laws of California and the United States of America.
Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! (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.
Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! (Score:5, 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.
Re:I don't think it'll matter (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.
Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! (Score:4, 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.
Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! (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.
Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! (Score:5, Funny)
You sir, are dishonest. I am an atheist and my moral code is strong and established by my choices. The reason I am an atheist is that you and your religious compatriots follow the moral codes of "gods" that do not have any morals themselves.
You naked a public statement that implies I am mentally incompetent, that I and others like me "are not capable of creating the necessary philosophical and mental framework that supports the existence of a populous and culture that embraces values of personal integrity and policies based on hard data and logic."
You fail your own moral standards.
The bible is logical? I do not think so.
Re:Finally and ignorant aggrieved white person! (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.
Diversity is dysfunctional. (Score:5, 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 [boston.com] which explains our balkanized and atomized state:
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
"Discrimination" against the majority is kind of difficult...
What? No it isn't. It's simple. Here: "Thank you applicants! You're all pretty good candidates for the job, but if you're male or white we won't be hiring you." See how that works?
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
And things like that are happening, at least in England. For example, the BBC did that openly in their advertising for new hires saying the positions are open only to those “from a black, Asian or non-white ethnic minority background”.
Outrage as BBC World Service internship scheme only open to people who aren't WHITE [express.co.uk]
Re: Finally (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.
Re:Finally (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/... [wikipedia.org]
Find startups with strong female presence in that list.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
Enter apartheid South Africa...
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Haven't you heard? Meritocracy is a white male privilege! [campusreform.org]
Re:Finally (Score:4, 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.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
Are "white men" a protected class? No? Then it's legal to discriminate against them. Sorry.
Yes. A protected class includes any race and any gender. I know it really burns the snowflakes' hearts when they can't legally discriminate against white men. But, protected classes cut both ways.
Re:Finally (Score:5, 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.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
This required sufficient internal response that the CEO had to cut short a family vacation in order to handle it. In general, a CEO of that size company does not expect to personally manage damage from an engineering hire unless things are seriously wrong. IMO that alone was sufficient reason for termination.
You don't fire an employee speaking out because your company has turned into a hotbed of discrimination against white males. Google violated the law by discriminating not only against conservative opinion within the company, but also via their discrimination in hiring practices. You should try reading the complaint before spouting off: https://www.scribd.com/documen... [scribd.com]
Damore's a turkey.
You're a social "justice" idiot.
Re:I AM AN OPPRESED WHITE MAN! FEEL MY PAIN! (Score:5, Informative)
they will roll out the HR termination paperwork documenting how he was abusing other employees because they weren't white
Ha. All he did was state his opinion that Google's policies and culture were discriminatory. For that, HE was abused by the social "justice" idiots that rule the roost at Google, like this asshole:
From: Alex Hidalgo <ahidalgo@google.com>
Subject: You are a terrible person
Date: Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 10:38 PM
To: James Damore <damore@google.com>
Feel free to pass this along to HR. Keep them in the loop for all I care. May as well do it early.
You're a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you.
-Alex
https://www.scribd.com/documen... [scribd.com]
White Men are a protected class (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:White Men are a protected class (Score:5, Informative)
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...
The suit was filed in California, where political affiliation does qualify for some of the employment-related protections afforded to protected classes.
To wit:
California law prohibits employers from making rules or policies that forbid or prevent employees from participating in politics or running for public office, or that control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees. State law also prohibits employers from coercing or attempting to influence employees' political decisions by threats of discharge or loss of employment (CA Lab. Code Sec. 1101, Sec. 1102).
Re:Finally (Score:5, 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".
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it illegal to discriminate based on gender or race, regardless of what the gender or race is?
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
Damore was asked for input in a debate on diversity hiring policies. He produced a thoughtful and well researched memo in response to the quest for how to best hire people. This memo was addressed to the people within the company, specifically those on the diversity committee. The memo was not released by Damore, and he did not intend for it to leave Google.
The asshole in this case was the person or persons that released the document publicly. That person or persons created this shitstorm. Lots of people say things in private that if plastered on the internet, and taken far out of context, that could also create bad PR for a company.
Google fired the guy instead of standing up for him. Now they are getting sued for it. Good. They can't keep an internal memo to themselves so they deserve all the bad publicity they get from it.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Finally (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?
Re:Finally (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.
Re:Finally (Score:5, 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.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
The Republican Party's southern strategy consisted of embracing racism and bigotry in order to gain political power. The Democratic Party's position during this time was to *shed* its Dixiecrat racist wing by supporting civil rights.
Except that didn't happen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
You can see that more Republicans than Democrats supported the Civil Rights act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
....and after this, the Southern Democrats left the Democratic Party and migrated to the GOP.
Lee Atwater on the Southern Strategy in 1981: https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]
Re: (Score:3)
The "Southern Strategy" is usually used to describe Nixon's strategy in the 1968 and 1972 election cycles. So, yes, it hadn't happened by 1964. In the 1960s the parties had not aligned in their current way on racial issues. This was a process which began in the late 1960s and didn't really complete until the 1980s.
Re:Finally (Score:5, 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.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.nationalreview.com/... [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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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 mo
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Gotta admit, with the level of lies going on here, that is starting to sound attractive...
Republicans switched to cater to the racists. [wikipedia.org] I'm honestly not sure what the point here is, you know full well you're lying through your teeth. Do you think so little of liberals that you expect us to fall for "No, see DEMOCRATS are the racist ones!"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, at least 70% of the country is eligible for affirmative action or is member of a protected class.
White males make up about 30% of the country.
Re: (Score:3)
I didn't realize you had to be in a protected status to be treated right.
A lawsuit is not about what is "right". It is about what is legal.
Companies have broad discretion to terminate employees for almost any reason, or for no reason. However, California has a "public policy" exemption from "at will" termination. Damore was fired for expressing his opinion on what he believed to be discriminatory practices at Google, and he could try to claim he was protected by that exemption.
I think that will be an uphill battle in a California court, and I predict he will lose, or perhaps
Re:Finally (Score:5, 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.
Re:Finally (Score:5, 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 [reuters.com]
mmmmh ?
Re: (Score:3)
You're confusing two different situations.
If an employee of a privately owned bakery refused to back a cake for a gay couple, they can be fired.
The bakery can't refuse to provide products and services to a customer based on the owner's religious beliefs.
Re:Finally (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.
Re:Finally (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?
Re:Finally (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).
Re:Finally (Score:4, 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.
Re:Finally (Score:4)
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....
Yes - oh wait, that's not a good metaphor, since the baker served everyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.So a more appropriate analogy would be an atheist milk bar owner who makes burgers for everyone, but when asked, refused to pronounce a blessing to Allah over a burger when serving a burger to a customer who wanted that service. If the following transaction happens:
Customer: 'Is this meat halal?'
Owner: No, our meat is not halal.
Customer: Can you make a halal burger for me?
Owner: No, we don't have any meat that is halal.
What obligation does the owner have to find halal meat for making a burger in this case? Wouldn't the best plan be for the Muslim to take his custom to a place that advertises and makes halal burgers?
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.
Then what is the problem in this case?
There is no evidence that the baker would have sold a gay wedding themed cake to anybody, If a heterosexual, white male went to his shop and asked for a wedding cake themed appropriately for a gay wedding, the baker would have refused to make a cake styled in that fashion. Freedom of religion is not passe, it is not somehow a 'lesser right'. It is a fundamental right, enumerated in the UN DHR (and in the US constitution). People fought and died to defend that right. That implies that sometimes, protecting that right will occasionally inconvenience people.
The problem arises when some services are offered to customers and forbidden to others based only on those customer's protected class.
There is no evidence that this happened. He was asked to provide a specific service he'd never provided before, and refused to do it.
Re: (Score:3, 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 al
Re: (Score:3, 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 coupl
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
Net neutrality doesn't have squat to do with content policing. It's also allowed to shape traffic based on congestion, and also to prioritize different protocols (e.g. VOIP over HTTP). The only thing forbidden is to prioritize traffic based on endpoint. Nice try with the victim card though.
Re:Jerks are not a protected class. (Score:5, 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.
Re:Jerks are not a protected class. (Score:5, 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.
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Correct. A lot of people don't seem to realize that your free speech rights don't extend to using your workplace as the venue for your free speech. If Damore had posted this on his personal blog, rather than within the company, and was then terminated, he'd have a much better case.
While I think damore is an idiot, (Score:3)
Re:While I think damore is an idiot, (Score:4, 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.
Re:While I think damore is an idiot, (Score:5, Informative)
but widely disemminating such a document massively increased the chance of a leak
Except he did not "widely diseminate such a document". He had a "training seminar" and was asked for feedback, which he provided on an internal board reserved for such discussions internally.
AKA : he did nothing wrong at all. Google got bad press because they force everyone into "diversity training" and then don't like it when people don't think "skin color" or "gender" is a good attribute to base hirings on and lets them know the "seminar" was simply bad.
Did you even read the memo ?
Re:While I think damore is an idiot, (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 ?
Re:While I think damore is an idiot, (Score:5, 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.
Re:While I think damore is an idiot, (Score:5, 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.
Re:While I think damore is an idiot, (Score:5, 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.
The many problems with his California firing (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a number of different lists but a pretty good example of why James Damore has a decent chance at legal victory is here [businessinsider.com].
If he Google were anywhere else but California he probably would not be able to win. But then again, if Google were any place other than California he would not have been fired...
Re:We don't actually know why he was fired (Score:4, Interesting)
California explicitly protects based on political affiliation.
https://www.employmentattorneyla.com/blog/2017/06/what-are-californias-protected-classes-in-employment.shtml
Conservative isn't a political affiliation though, it's a political belief. He's not claiming that Google fired him for being a registered Republican (I think he actually claimed to be Independent?), but that they fired him because of his conservative beliefs.
I probably would have done the autism angle (Score:3, Interesting)
I work with a generally older male crowd, and some of them are quite vocal about their views on gender. Some are borderline MRA/MGTOW types, having been taken to the cleaners in divorces, etc. None are old enough to be adults back in the 50s when barely any married woman worked outside the home, but certainly some are old enough to look upon that time with nostalgia. The major thing that separates these guys from Mr. Damore is that they don't use company resources to promote their views, and their views don't really affect the work of others. I have to listen to them, but in reality they're no different than your traditional conservative white male talk radio-quoting types. They still do their jobs and don't anger anyone enough to make them complain.
The thing that's different with Google is that I'm sure their legal counsel just told the executives to make the problem go away immediately. No company wants to deal with the expense of a lawsuit and the reputation hit of getting dragged into court because one of their employees is acting like a jerk. I know the company I work for would show me the door in 15 seconds if I personally caused any reputational damage, regardless of how internal the forum was, or how the information was leaked.
What I wonder is why the Aspergers/autism angle wasn't used instead. That's a legitimate protected class. I work with a lot of tech company employees, and outside of the SV startup brogrammer world, there are _a lot_ of non-neurotypical types working for vendors. Once you get below the product managers and feature designer types, the ones doing the super-low level stuff like writing kernel modules and device drivers aren't exactly extroverts. Going after Google for discriminating against disabled people is a lot less clickbait-y than "conservative white males."
Re:I probably would have done the autism angle (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.
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Maybe because he's not being clickbait-y, he was responding internally to a request for his feedback
What's interesting is that I've never heard this claim until today and suddenlt it's ALL OVER this thread. Do you have a link?
Sounds like they need an union! (Score:3)
Sounds like they need an union! at the very least you can talk about employment policies with out getting canned for it.
Re:Sounds like they need an union! (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, Really bad summary (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.
do not settle (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, do not settle for non-disclosure agrrement, not even if they offer you a billion dollars.
Harmeet Dhillon is Damore's attorney (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Santa Clara Superior Court's website, Damore's lead attorney is Harmeet Kaur Dhillon.
Dhillon's Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] says she is the former vice chairman of the California Republican Party, and the National Committeewoman of the Republican National Committee for California. An article from the San Francisco Daily Journal posted on Dhillon's website [dhillonlaw.com] says she is a former American Civil Liberties board member.
On March 9, the Wall Street Jounal reported [wsj.com] that she was being considered to run the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Department of Justice. She apparently interviewed with both Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump, but was not offered or did not accept the job.
DuckDuckGoing her leads to lots of articles about her politics and personal life, but nothing about how many cases she has won. I bet Google will be represented by attorneys who have spent more time litigating and less time politicking.
Re:Harmeet Dhillon is Damore's attorney (Score:4, Informative)
"after a manifesto ..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's see.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Any woman in my organization who complained would find herself on the street.
Re:Let's see.... (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/... [wikipedia.org]
And if Google were illegally discriminating and Damore pointed this out, which he did, it would be illegal to fire him
https://www.workplacefairness.... [workplacefairness.org]
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... [archive.org]
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.
Re:Let's see.... (Score:5, Informative)
Well no, he didn't. What he said is that there are differences on average between men and women and those differences can explain why a job is not exactly 50:50 male and female even in the absence of discrimination. He also pointed out that those differences are an average for a group and pointed out there's a lot of overlap. So saying 'women on average are more X than men' doesn't mean that 'each individual woman is more X than any man'. When the fake news media reported on his report they accused him of saying that 'men can code/women can't code', but he very carefully explained this was not what he was saying. And he even drew a nice diagram of two overlapping normal distributions to illustrate this point.
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Note, I'm not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are "just." 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. Many of these differences are small and there's significant overlap between men and women, so you can't say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
He pointed out that Google's policies now discriminate against men and that there were non discriminatory ways to get more women to work there.
But why not try reading what he actually wrote rather than what other people - who have an agenda - said he wrote. I even linked to a copy of his memo so you can verify he said all the things I said he said, and carefully explained he was not saying what you accused him of saying.
Re: How is this marked troll? (Score:4, 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.
Re:Um ... (Score:5, Informative)
I remember people claiming that DaMore was a liberal or democrat, but I guess that's clarified now.
Re:Um ... (Score:4, Informative)
I remember people claiming that DaMore was a liberal or democrat, but I guess that's clarified now.
He probably is. His memo was pretty liberal leaning after all and there is a very large difference from classic Liberals (pro free speech, pro meritocracy) and Progressives (anti-speech that hurts feelings, pro-affirmative action and quotas).
However, he was portrayed as conservative by media and probably perceived as such by his employer. As you know, classic liberals these days are being labeled conservatives simply for holding the belief that gender disparity in some occupations could be entirely the result of freewill and biological differences that may promote different interests that lead to different career paths.
Should have been a protected class (Score:5, Funny)
But was instantiated incorrectly.
Maybe it will end better than you think (Score:3)
Why does he need to worry about working again, after Google pays him $2 million to go away? Any time a firing is that hasty you know process mistakes were made that his lawyers can exploit.
I'd be more worried about your ability to get hired on at startups he helps fund in the future.
Re: (Score:3)
Umm, $2MM doesn't go that far, really. That's not retirement-level don't-need-to-work money, and certainly not angel money except for *very* small businesses. Since a very high percentage of startups don't provide any ROI, it's possible to burn through $2MM *really* fast and end up broke.
The only people I'm aware of who have been able to not work after an IPO or inheritance generally have portfolio net work about $5MM, which, at worst-case investment (3% annual expectation) gens $150k in annual income. S
Re: (Score:3)
This is when it is handy to have a struggling actor with your same name. He paid for a lot of SEO.
I happen to think that there are fewer women in tech jobs, because there are fewer women who want tech jobs, but I am not stupid enough to say it out loud.
There can be plenty of reasons women don't want the jobs that have nothing to do with "girls can't do that job"-style thinking. For example, the mountain of mansplaining and coworkers like James Damore.
Re:Donald Trump - White Affirmative Action (Score:5, 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.
Re:Donald Trump - White Affirmative Action (Score:4, 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.
Re: (Score:3)
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Do your own thing after you clock out. Till then; keep the peace.
Re: (Score:3)
Turns out they are in California.
Re: (Score:3)
Damore is not a good person. He's an extremist who knows how to couch his arguments in a cloak of faux-rationality. Those of us on the left have been trying to warn those of you susceptible to his arguments that he's not actually being honest. Maybe we shouldn't care, but I really don't actually want anyone fooled by this nonsense.
And those of us on the old left are trying to warn you that you're susceptible to indoctrination into extremism when you paint moderate folks as extremists and endorse violence against them because you happen to disagree with their viewpoint.
Maybe we shouldn't care, but you guys are now legitimately advocating physical assault and violence against opinions, even mild and moderate opinions, simply because then don't toe the line with extreme identity politics.
Re:Stop fucking talking about him already (Score:5, Funny)
This is Slashdot, it's what we do.
Re:Sorry, but.... (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't voice his opinion publicly. He voiced his opinion in a private company blog after Google asked him for his opinion. Then someone leaked it.