Live by the sword, die by the sword. That said, firing him, like they did with Damore would have been more consistent. Because everyone is under arbitration agreements that always benefit the company, vs the courts where you might have a shot at justice, they have no incentive to do that.
As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy would not have been removed from his position and Damore would not have been fired. Instead we could have had a conversation to win hearts and minds, but today it is all about getting scalps, witch hunts and over-reaction. What we are currently doing sends people underground which radicalizes them more.
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
And hey, great news, now we have every line written by every man, woman and child automatically captured and archived forever in an easy to search dossier.
Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview. But the writing remains forever, conveniently accessible.
> Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview. But the writing remains forever, conveniently accessible.
Not all writing is equal. There is a difference between let's say a tweet that was sent in during a flamewar versus a personal blog post that has been penned in the past and stayed published until today. The function of the latter is closer to a book, in that it explicitly aims to persist and communicate thoughts through time. If one changes, they could have taken the post down. If there was regret about the contents, one could have published an update/apology etc with the post.
And the post wasn't picked from a web archive; it had stayed up until it the pushback reached career threatening levels. Yet there is still no evidence or apology in any medium that the person has actually changed their viewpoint. All we have is other people apologizing on their behalf with speculative redemption.
> All we have is other people apologizing on their behalf with speculative redemption
Yup, I'm a little disturbed that people jump to defending him to a degree that borders on reinterpreting history.
Eg:
> Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding
Ok. Is there any evidence this specific person did? Did he apologize? Did his public writing change substantially since then?
It's not like this is an embarrassing photo taken during a party the guy had forgotten about. I have trouble imagining how someone could be hired as head of diversity for Google and forget that they published a screed about how jews should confront their appetite for war or whatever.
If the only information you have about this person is this, your first reaction should not be to find excuses to dismiss the information; or if it is, you should at least look for additional information, instead of speculating about how maybe the person totally changed their mind and is totally being treated unfairly.
My friend, it is not about _this_ person specifically, but an attitude to everybody. Maybe this person did not change, maybe they did. But we need to assume good faith when we can, else we do nothing but divide people even further. Imagine yourself in a situation where you’ve probably done something stupid, realise that it is stupid and wish to be forgiven. Wouldn’t you like that someone asks you first “have you understood your mistake?” rather than assume you are the same person because they haven’t found evidence to the contrary (guilty till proven innocent).
The issue isn’t that this person didn’t make a mistake - we all agree on that. The issue is that in our culture, we don’t make room for a person to make mistakes and grow (often the only way to grow) by forgiving them and believing that they are a better person now and can contribute to society more effectively going forward.
I understand this is a tricky balance to maintain. But I sincerely believe the internet junta is unforgiving and judgemental beyond the point of any utility except making oneself feel better by “other-ising” people they don’t know, and claiming that they wouldn’t ever be like that person.
The reality is that we are all remarkably similar. We’ve just been in radically different circumstances and who knows how we would have behaved had we been in a similar situation?
I don’t mean to pick a battle with you. I understand where you are coming from. I would love to have a civil discussion with you. Have a wonderful day.
I think you are coming at this with the judgment that his statements are malicious as opposed to honest reflections of how he perceives the world. I was educated at a Hebrew Day School and I found his consideration of “self-righteous impunity” of Israel state violence to be thought provoking, given the traditions dogmatic belief in its elected grace. Yet such opinions are muffled because? Oh that’s right, the majority of people cannot handle deep thought and get scared weighing ideas which are not the consensus. This Nietzsche called the “herd morality”; to censor is practically totalitarian and inimical to the American Founding Republic which savors self-independence which breeds liberty of conscience to promote the conscience liberty in others. It’s a shame people are not educated in this country to handle ideas and therefore liberty.
Coincidentally I was talking about that time that Tom Petty toured in the 80s using the confederate flag and then many years later he apologized for doing it, no more than an hour ago with a friend of mine
People do change and also understand when they do «downright stupid things», but we have to give them a chance to arrive at that point.
If the post is still online, like the videos and photos of Tom Petty's 1985 tour, that could also be interpreted as a sign of honesty, it's also possible that the author forgot that he wrote it.
I write a lot of things that I don't remember soon after.
It happens to code as well, sometimes I ask myself «who's the genius that wrote this beautiful code» and I'm shocked when I find out it was me years ago, but most of the times I regret writing it.
You're inventing an arbitrary difference where none exists. Twitter is literally a microblogging platform. There is no legal or moral difference between a Tweet versus a post on a different blogging platform such as Medium.
More like a proper social response to bad behavior. We can't keep hiding from the truth, especially when we live in an interconnected world where other people don't have to agree to forget.
Just to remind you that your binary, i.e. inhumane, way of thinking is permanently documented here as well. I hope you regret this comment one day when the same binary approach is applied to you as well. People are expected to change today - and that's why people go in and out of jail. But in the liberal world view, everybody (except the oppressed) is evil! Even when the oppressed is a cold blooded killer, it's an excuses - they did it, because they are oppressed. And this is how the Commies executed tens of million of people - they were imperialists and enemies of Communism and there was no chance for them; they were sentences as permanently damaged goods and deserved only a bullet!
> Just to remind you that your binary, i.e. inhumane, way of thinking is permanently documented here as well. I hope you regret this comment one day when the same binary approach is applied to you as well. People are expected to change today - and that's why people go in and out of jail. But in the liberal world view, everybody (except the oppressed) is evil! Even when the oppressed is a cold blooded killer, it's an excuses - they did it, because they are oppressed. And this is how the Commies executed tens of million of people - they were imperialists and enemies of Communism and there was no chance for them; they were sentences as permanently damaged goods and deserved only a bullet!
I mean, you sound like you think you have moral clarity to denounce someone as inhumane, and I guess this is how you lead in your conversational style.
I'm talking about a technologically interconnected world where other nations and parties never have to agree to forget anything.
Either we decide to excommunicate or suppress every nation and party that chooses to remember, or we decide what it means to coexist with those who remember. The humane way to do things is to decide how we should treat each other despite flaws, not stamp out every nation or peoples in the world that seeks to remember forever.
Yes, if you sentence people as bad, because they've done something bad 15 years ago, and are binary in your judgements (people are they "good" or "bad" in certain aspects and can't transition between these two options), then, by all morals and definitions, you're inhumane not giving a chance and not willing to reassess. Everybody deserves a second chance, everybody has the right to have been wrong, and you should not judge and sentence with a bullet, but talk and see if they are the same person they presented themselves as decades ago.
Where do you find any indication of permanent moral judgment except in your own speech, where you so persistently talk about it? Aren't you the one talking about judging people in binary ways? Perhaps you are speaking from your own heart?
I'm talking about co-existence between nations with different policies, a world where the US may not agree to forget everything Germany asks of them.
> Just to remind you that your binary, i.e. inhumane, way of thinking is permanently documented here as well. I hope you regret this comment one day when the same binary approach is applied to you as well. People are expected to change today - and that's why people go in and out of jail. But in the liberal world view, everybody (except the oppressed) is evil! Even when the oppressed is a cold blooded killer, it's an excuses - they did it, because they are oppressed. And this is how the Commies executed tens of million of people - they were imperialists and enemies of Communism and there was no chance for them; they were sentences as permanently damaged goods and deserved only a bullet!
So you lead with your sense of moral and conversational clarity.
> then, by all morals and definitions, you're inhumane not giving a chance and not willing to reassess.
And so you follow with your sense of moral and conversational clarity.
The proper social response I'm talking about is graciousness and proportionality in a world where the US need not forget what Germany asks of them. I think that's the obvious moral response. What do you do when Germany chooses to remember? Rather than building a great firewall around Germany, my instincts are clear. The right way forward is to accept our humanity in its complexity.
You have left yourself zero room to discuss anything else, because you have spent your entire thread analyzing how someone is inhumane without even getting to know them, like an internet warrior or moral busybody. Every time you pick up the microphone that's the only thing you have to say.
That is what I mean by your sense of moral and conversational clarity.
When you read what he was saying, he meant "Israelis", not "Jews" in General as there are Jews everywhere in the world, but he was talking about Israel's actions.
The wise enough to not use their real name will survive. The culling of the real name begins.
This is the literal killing of the 'you have nothing to hide' meme that goes to show you have something to hide.
I am still baffled by the use of Real Names online..
As a late 70's child that got the internet when I was in my late teens it was unthinkable at that time to give anyone any personal info about you online. "Stranger Danger" and everyone online should be thought of as an axe murder was the dominant position
I am not sure when or why this shift happen to where it was common for people to not only post their full personal info but also post real time location information about where they are and what they are doing...
Facebook and other social networks (Google+ for example) played a huge role in this* by enforcing real name policies. It's more profitable to advertise to users when you know who they are, where they live, how they shop, what they eat, etc, and not just their screen name.
Past twenty years, using your own name is authoritative and great for marketers to verify and validate you. With the rise of social media, no longer do you have to know basic html, or hosting.. or be in the community of random IRC people not trusting one another.
I use my real name precisely _because_ everything I say is being recorded. It's a guard against the foolish belief that any "anonymity" is real and can be relied on.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Unfortunately, as we've seen from the many instances where utterers of comments have suffered the consequences, Cardinal Richelieu's famous quote has turned out to be truer than it ought to be—especially so in this internet age where ancient dirt is seemingly dragged up from anywhere. (This quote also tells us much about Richelieu's devious mind and I'd suggest that with this one line of his that he's told us more about himself than most six lines of many others!)
One of the problems with the internet is being heard amongst the many voices so there's a tendency for people to use hyperbole and or exaggerate for the point of emphasis and yours truly is no exception (there are some comments of mine on the net that, in hindsight, I'd like to rephrase with more eloquence). :-) Expressing one's view is especially problematic with the net, as one has to be succinct and to the point if one's to be heard at all. Thus, more often than not, expediency wins out and only the raw message is heard sans nuances and without qualifications.
That said, whether any of those scenarios is relevant in instance seems moot but I will say that generalizations of that sort aren't helpful as they're both dangerous to oneself and unfair to those about whom one has made comment. One cannot generalize as a whole about a nation, society etc. as within any group of people one will find a remarkably diverse range of views and beliefs. I have many Jewish friends and acquaintances and I can only say that I do not know of a more diverse group of people. If I were to generalize at all then the only reasonable comment I could make would be that they're all remarkably interesting individuals but each in different ways.
The matter of whether some ancient and possibly intemperate remark is used against someone many years later is a troubling and vexed matter, especially so in this internet age. For starters, that person may have changed his or her mind in the intervening time. Then there's the issue of why someone has raised this matter after all that time not to mention the fact that once it's been raised and has gone viral across the net then the individual will have essentially no reasonable chance of ever defending himself or herself—whether his or her opinion is now right or wrong. Then there's the matter of Google protecting its corporate image so it's little wonder that he was dismissed (irrespective of his current beliefs or convictions). Unfortunately, that's the way things are.
There is no easy answer to this matter. Fear of speaking out stifles free speech and we're seeing more and more self-censorship on the net day by day and it's truly worrying. Moreover, if one speaks out or expresses an opinion on any controversial matter then woes betide the consequences.
In the days before the net and the sensational tabloid press there was a chance that a long-past dubious event from one's past may have gotten lost in the noise of old newspaper reports but the net has put a stop to that. Perhaps it's time to restate the age-old adage, which is to:
'Never discuss one's views on politics and religion as emotions run high and you'll surely make enemies.'
well probably they tend not to get that because once you've done time in the U.S you're screwed whether it was for stealing a candy bar, dealing drugs, or murder.
On the other hand the exception to that rule would be - I've known guys who were drug addicts, caught, go through rehabs, and become counselors and psychologists in the judicial system. Which is pretty close to the scenario under discussion.
on edit - ok only know two guys who did that, but they exist.
Take a look at the Fishmongers Hall heroes. The narwhal tusk was only a 5 foot pole, but the convicted killers put themselves in harms way to protect the public.
>What do the Jewish/POC colleagues have to say about the quality of their workplace?
I definitely wouldn't want to work at Google with this guy in management. Sorry, but I'm just not interested in having my "insatiable appetite for war" touted as an asset to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
Yeah, I don't have a very strong opinion on Damore, but the two situations are clearly not the same. One was published 14 years ago and another was published in the same week where it blew up.
They're clearly not the same because Damore said nothing anywhere near as offensive as this. He said, paraphrased, that there are fewer women in tech than men because they are less interested in it. He backed it up with a whole pile of research showing that this obviously true claim is true. And he pointed out that women are biologically different to men, so maybe that is part of the explanation, and even if it is, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to be a programmer (which is in a sense a tautology, it's a way of saying "women are different because they're women").
In particular he bent over backwards to carefully spell out that he was not claiming women are worse at programming than men, perhaps because he knew the dangerous liars he was picking a fight with would also lie about his words - which they did, immediately, across the entire media and with vigor. Damore also tried to keep these views inside the company.
Now this guy made very explicitly offensive comments broadcast to the whole world on his blog, which claims that all Jewish people are the same, that by implication they are morally inferior to people whose hearts are not filled with war, and that they should feel guilt and shame about this.
Right, so in one case, the company clearly ought to have known he was an antisemite before hiring him as Chief of Diversity. In the other, the company was hiring for a technical role and didn't bother asking about his political or social views.
Given his original point was that voices countering the radical left wouldn't be tolerated, and they proved him right, it's not obvious what he could back down from?
I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two.
Further based on the other comment to this post he was quite an activist. Fighting for rights of the racially oppressed and in minority.
He went against white people and Israel? He is not racist. He is just anti majority dominant power holder.
The quote was: "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself"
Yes, the sentiment is (possibly) anti-israel, not anti-semetic, but the wording itself implies that Jews have insatiable appetites for war. I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, but someone who is chief diversity officer at a major corporation should certainly be attuned to the difference between Jews and Israelis.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself," (…)
"If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired."
It just became “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing” in the tweets.
I think with the more fulsome context you've provided that the prior post's attempt to reduce his statement as critical of Israelis alone is a bit reductionist; his argument here extends to the diaspora that also unwaveringly support Israel in their expansionary policy.
I don't feel that position is anti-Semitic either, but I think it needs to be noted for the sake of intellectual honesty. He is critiquing a LOT of Jews here.
Even if he isn't saying all Jews are bad, it still reads something like "I'm just saying Israel is insatiably, vengefully violent and [an awful lot of] Jews support Israel...".
I'm all for charitability, but it feels like we're contorting ourselves--why would any tolerant person with a decent penchant for writing not keep a wider berth between their criticism of Israel and antisemitism? I understand that there are always going to be bad faith people who willfully misinterpret all criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but those people aside I've never found it particularly difficult to criticize Israel in a way which is unambiguously tolerant of and respectful toward Jews (and he seems like a better writer than I am).
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself" is a straight quote from the last paragaraph of the post in question, not a paraphrase or elided excerpt. https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...
The only thing I deleted is the period. "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." is the entire first sentence of the last paragraph. Again, people can read the linked original post and see for themselves.
Exactly. I'm a Jew (by heritage, though not by belief). I oppose Israel's actions WRT Palestine and related issues. The Israeli government seems to have that "insatiable appetite for war", but that's a pretty small subset of all Jews. Even the entire Israeli population is a small subset of all Jews.
I never understood that concept. The idea that Judaism is transmitted from lineage is itself only a belief of Judaism. If you don't believe in Judaism there is no reason to believe in this particular fiction. This specific feature is obviously a hack on the reproductivity of the meme. There is no Judaism gene, it's not transmittable, it's not an ethnicity.
No problem! It certainly doesn't make sense if one approaches it from a Western Christian mindset. I am not trying to imply that is how you are approaching it, rather I mention this because Judaism often gets compared to Christianity, but I think they are quite different.
It is better to think of Judaism as a tribe. Membership to this tribe is mainly given under two conditions: through matrilineal descent or through religious conversion. Some subgroups within the tribe have different membership conditions like recognizing patrilineal descent, others may not recognize conversions done by other subgroups.
Exactly this. It's a cultural thing, much like how you can be an American or a German or an African. There's no single ethnicity for any of those, but they're all cultural identities based on birth or citizenship.
But this is all very consistent. Most people noticed many years ago that the people who most loudly claim to be fighting racism are always huge racists themselves. This is so common, and so obvious, the only reason it's attracting attention at all is because somewhat unusually it's Jews who are the target today, instead of white men. If the same quote about war had been made with white men instead of Jews nobody at Google would have cared. And arguably they don't care at all because the guy is not fired, just re-assigned, which tells you everything you need to know about what that company has become.
And it's not really surprising that the target are Jews. In America this doesn't seem to be the case so much, but in Europe when the left engage in racism, it's always against their own countryfolk or Jews. Diversity programs, however they started, long ago became a left wing movement.
Frankly it's a lot more shocking when someone working in diversity does not turn out to be racist or sexist. Those are very rare people indeed. Oddly, I vaguely recalled the Google head of diversity making some sensible comments some years ago, but I don't recognize this name. It seems he's actually just "a" head of diversity, not "the" head.
In case anyone is confused by this person’s definition of racism, I enjoyed this description of the essential impossibility of “racism against whites,”[1] as well as this Sociology of Racism[2].
I'm sure people are so confused by someone using the long established English dictionary definition of racism and not the new far left interpretation of the word that now includes social power structures that conveniently allows non-whites to be racist without being called out.
you can substitute “racist” for “prejudiced” in their comment if you want, but I feel like 99% of the English speaking population would characterize what Google’s diversity officer wrote about Jewish people as racist so I don’t really see the need.
I was responding to a comment that was referring to racism against white men. I was not responding to a comment about the Google diversity officer’s language.
Given the Farhud, the Holocaust, and the persecution of Soviet Jews both remain in living memory and shape our lives today, I'd say that if you think you've got logic to prove the "essential impossibility" of antisemitism, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Anyone confused by my post should use a dictionary to refresh their memory of what this very basic and simple word means, not some random academic papers.
Ha, yes, the dictionary: the ultimate authority for explaining power dynamics in society.
I understand the draw of believing in “reverse racism.” When I was in junior high, and was targeted for being a white boy, it made sense to me. And it felt unfair. But then I gained more perspective through a better understanding of sociology and history.
The dictionary is the authority for what words mean. If someone genuinely wants to "explain" power dynamics they would do so in ways designed to communicate clearly and illuminate. If they want to manipulate and confuse they would try to redefine the meaning of common words to mean something totally different and then accuse people who speak English properly of misusing words.
By the way, sociology is nonsense, surely everyone knows that by now. Their papers are usually pseudo scientific.
Yeah, at this point, having been left-wing my whole life, I'm more surprised when a DEI activist type isn't an antisemite than when they are. "The Jews are greedy, bloodthirsty, and evil" is part of the canon for this ideology.
Even then... do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering? Or every Chinese person for their governments treatment of the Uighur/Tibet/etc?
Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.
Think of it as the downside of the Enlightenment idea that governments acquire their legitimacy solely from the support of the governed. If the people of a nation do not approve of the actions of their government, they have both the right and the responsibility to change those actions.
Or, think of it as basic ethics: no one who eats meat can be more saintly than a butcher. Everyone who benefits from citizenship in a nation gets to share responsibility for the actions of the nation.
I'm not sure of the politics in the Wiemar Republic. How many Jews supported the National Socialist party? How many of them voted for the National Socialists during the Great Depression economic crisis? (Not many, I suspect. Voting against a group is, by definition, not supporting them.) (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%2077...)
Once the National Socialists had achieved power, in 1933, German Jews protested the actions of their government, leading to the Civil Service law and further restrictions on Jewish activities. (At this time, there were many German non-Jews who probably didn't like their government's activities but benefited a great deal from those activities.) By 1935-36, Jews in Germany had essentially no power, either to support or oppose the government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany...) Thus, those who could left.
This is the illusion of democracy. There is no available democratic option in the USA that will bring about the end of US imperialistic war.
The people in the voting booths in the USA can no more be blamed for the USA's warmongering than the Americans who stayed home, abstaining, or people in the next country over. The US military is going to do what the US military is going to do, and to believe anything else is to be either ignorant of history or hopelessly naive.
No, this is illusion of apathy, believing you are powerless is what actually makes you powerless. Larger changes have happened within American society that in retrospect seem obvious to everyone.
There are many systems in which believing you are powerless leads to your own powerlessness.
Not voting in an authoritarian military dictatorship masquerading as a democracy is not one such instance, unfortunately.
There is no sufficient loudness of "wake up, sheeple!" that will get the US military to stop waging war (the continuation of which is entirely contrary to the will of the US people). It is an autonomous organization, unaccountable to any branch of the US government, as evidenced over and over again by the lack of resistance to it in the USG, and the lack of consequences for its members when it breaks the law.
The CIA got busted lying to Congress about hacking into Congressional computers to delete evidence of the CIA's torture program. The torture program continues, and nobody is in jail.
> There is no available democratic option in the USA that will bring about the end of US imperialistic war.
Certainly not like turning off a light, but it's a clear fallacy that peoples actions (or inaction) don't change policy and practice.
Put it another way, if Americans aren't responsible for the actions of America, who is? What sort of answers to that don't undermine the entire concept of the country?
certainly you can avoid being partially culpable for your nation's actions - by dropping out of society, refusing to pay taxes to it, and probably supporting yourself via a life of crime.
If however you are a functioning member of a society and do things to support it you are partially to blame for the things that society does. That amount of blame is not the same for everyone - and for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning - but you do have a share.
I did not say it was a viable strategy for ending the war I said it was a viable strategy for minimizing and hopefully removing completely culpability for the actions of one's society.
on edit: as an example we can say with some surety that the one white man in 1800s American that should not be charged with culpability for slavery would be John Brown (although he probably would not feel the same way) - there are undoubtedly others but we can point with some justification at John Brown and say that guy pretty much not to blame for any of that shit.
I'm certainly not recommending that people have to do these things either, just to being clear eyed about things - you can't benefit from your society's actions and then say you don't share any blame from what it does without some extreme dropping out of the system.
I don't agree. One cannot be responsible for one's actions taken under threat of coercive violence. The violent aggressor remains responsible for the outcome in that instance.
So to be clear, as a corollary of the standards you've defined here, 1.3-1.4 billion Chinese have some level of culpability for what's going on with the Uyghurs?
I mean, I can see where you're coming from. But at this point we are really at the fringes of culpability and it's more of an issue of semantics and definitions.
as I also clearly stated earlier "...for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning"
so yes, each of those 1.3 billion probably have an atom of culpability, so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning.
I'm a citizen of Denmark, I have some share of culpability in the wrongs my country does - I do a little to minimize those wrongs (when I see them) by voting against the perpetrators but that's about it - I support the country and it is partly my fault because I am too comfortable to do what would be required to completely absolve myself of any culpability because hey, I'm pretty okay (as most people throughout history have said)
You are conflating collective blame with collective punishment, which not an unrelated term.
Collective punishment refers to the punishment communities en masse for the actions of individuals, that may be being harbored by some members of that community.
Just because something is done in a collective manner does not absolve the members of that collective from the outcome.
I'm not conflating them. I think collective blame is generally a bad thing in itself and it is the way of thinking that begets racist and tribal attitudes. It is also inaccurate.
Bernie Sanders is an American who was advocating against the Iraq War. He was clearly not culpable for it, and his causal role was to lower the probability that it would go ahead. This is an example of why it would then be wrong to blame "Americans" as a collective for the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders, a member of that collective, deserves either zero blame or negative blame (if that even exists).
I think this illustrates why it is in fact about responsibility, and thinking about it as blame gets you in confusion.
To extend your example: Bernie Sanders as a citizen, and further a politician, acquires an amount of the collective responsibility for the countries actions in the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders as an activist has more than discharged that responsibility by actively countering it.
A citizen who has done nothing to mitigate or counter the actions is left only with the share of collective responsibility; however large or small that may be, it's real.
Many people can't vote, or explicitly don't vote to avoid supporting these parties. Many more are poorly educated (intentionally). How are they responsible?
Are they expected to single-handedly (or collectively) organize and engage in a bloody civil war, thereby gaining culpability for that? Blaming people for the actions of their nation / elected officials is absurd. All a person can do is vote for the best candidate in front of them and vote at face value.
Representative democracy takes power away from people. If it were a direct democracy, then yes, I'd say sure, people bear responsibility. But it's not. It's a system designed to be manipulative and serve wealthy and powerful interests, and the only way to change it is either very, very slow, or very, very bloody.
No we should not accuse but as the citizen of such a regime I should feel responsible of its actions, I should condemn it and may be expect accusations of supporting such a regime.
It's so incredibly wrong to pick lines from a text out of context like that to attack someone. It's exactly how some people tried to sink Bernie Sander 2020 presidential campaign by referring to his "rape fantasy" essay from the 1970s. Read Kamau Bobb's blog post in full (it's only six paragraphs or so). It s about how he imagines how a progressive Jew has to struggle with reconciling his commitment to Israel with his humanist views. His thought may have been misguided, and he may not fully have understood how Jewishness and Judaism works, but they are certainly not hateful towards Jews.
He’s clearly referring to Israel, and since it’s a Jewish date, it’s reasonable to assume many / most Jews feel somewhat represented by Israel, voluntarily or not. Or at least that Israel’s actions reflect well or poorly on them in regards to non-Jews.
> I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two.
People are having a hard time distinguishing between the two because he had a hard time distinguishing between the two. Saying "If I was a {memberOf(someOrganization)}, I'd be concerned about how {adjective} I am," is calling out every member of that organization.
If he'd said "If I was an employee of Buy N Large, I'd be concerned about how much I love to destroy the environment for personal gain", that's a blanket accusation of all BNL employees being greedy anti-eco monsters.
If he'd said "if I was an exterminator, I'd be worried about how my complete and total lust for killing things is eventually going to accelerate into becoming a full fledged serial killer", that's a pretty clear indictment of all exterminators, regardless of who they actually are as individuals.
Saying "If I was a member of BLM, I'd be worried about how much I love torching businesses and assaulting bystanders" is a sweeping attack on all BLM activists, not just anyone who was looking for an excuse to loot and riot.
"If I was a dentist, I'd be worried about my insatiable bloodlust for hunting lions that were rescued and rehabilitated." I mean, come on.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."[1]
It's not "If I was an Israeli governing official" like you claim, it's "if I was a member of an ethnicity/religion." It's a little unfair of you to be so dismissive of people who interpret his words the way he wrote them.
>"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."[1]
Also, notice how he writes that self-defense is an instinct. As in, he doesn't actually think self-defense is, prima facie, morally justifiable. He actually thinks you need to sit and ask yourself, "Am I the baddie, for existing?", if you are Jewish.
There’s a post (“If I Were a Jew”) that accuses Jews in general of responding to the collective trauma of the Holocaust with “an insatiable appetite for war and killing” in pursuit of self defense rather than compassion for the oppressed. It’s naive, muddles Jewish identity with Israel, and assumes the worst about the motivations of Jews in general. Imagine how offensive it would be to make a similar argument about any other minority group that had experienced oppression in America or elsewhere.
From the post:
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.
There’s definitely more than criticism of the Israeli government here (some dog-whistle and overt antisemitism, whether the author understood that at the time or not). But I agree with the commenter - people can change and grow up. I don’t know the full story so it’s hard to really say what’s justified and what’s an overreaction.
> You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist.
AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
That’s not to say that being able to distinguish between Jews, Zionists, Israelis, and the Israeli government isn’t basic threshold knowledge that should be expected of anyone publicly commenting on Israeli policy and how it should make anyone feel based on group association, but setting expectations of people’s knowledge based on their future jobs is a bit bonkers.
>AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post).
Please update your post as you're spreading FUD.
>AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later.
He's been a DEI grifter for over a decade, including when he originally wrote his anti-semitic post.
> He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post).
Neither of those is “global head of diversity”.
> Please update your post as you're spreading FUD.
No, I’m not and I see no need to update my post. If the upthread post were updated to refer to his actual position at the time of the post, I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot, but given that it seems (like your post defending it) to be from a single-use throwaway account, I don't expect that to happen.
Exactly, they're much higher positions with more scope and reach than "head of diversity" at a software company. Thanks for agreeing with me.
>I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot
Except the premise of your post was proven categorically false. He absolutely should have known the difference between "Jews" and "Zionists" if he was a diversity advisor to the Obama administration. QED.
> Exactly, they're much higher positions with more scope and reach than "head of diversity" at a software company.
I don't agree that that’s necessarily evident from the titles alone, and reviewing the actual positions themselves is difficult, e.g., the one he was described upthread as being in at the time of the memo could not have even existed at that time, since it was in 2007 and the position was described as being in an Administration that didn't take office until 2009.
The flow of time seems problematic for the throwaway accounts in this subthread.
> Except the premise of your post was proven categorically false.
The premise of my post was that the post it responded to described an expectation of knowledge based on a specific position he held only much after the time of writing the piece. Which has not been proven false since it was and remains true.
(That the author of that post might have been able to refer to a different position that did not have that problem is a side issue.)
Nonsense! People are criticizing Israel right and left around here in the Bay Area. Spend an afternoon in Berkeley and it will dispel any illusions you might have on the matter.
It seems that many people have difficulty making this crucial distinction. That's why after every Israeli military campaign there is a spike in anti-semitic incidents all over the world. We just need more education! You are free to hurl the most libelous, disgusting and vicious accusations at Jewish people. Just make sure you call them Israeli. Because that's acceptable.
If I were to pretend to be gay, that isn’t something that I can just wash off and tell those who know me and saw me, that I was just pretending, it was just an experiment. Sure you’re not a homosexual. Having had that thought, I realized that within my inner emotional core, not only do I not agree with homosexuality, I still despise it in a way that I would not want there to be any connection between my personal character and it.
Given that such comments resurfaced during the Pride Month, I'm surprised he hasn't been fired.
A year later, California would vote to ban same-sex marriage. I won't hold their bigoted views against them, as long as they no longer hold them. If I didn't have that forgiveness, there would be half of the voting population of my state that I'd refuse to talk to.
The notion that people change and grow and sometimes learn from their mistakes and become better people seems to have gone by the wayside in recent years.
I'm curious why this is downvoted. Do people think others shouldn't become better people, or that they should never be forgiven for past transgressions they've learned something from?
Did you read the whole blog post? Right after that paragraph he talks about the dichotomy between his inner emotional struggle and his explicit thoughts.
> More importantly, it helped me identify the boundary between my intellect and my emotions. Like most white people who are questioned, I am quick to say, “I don’t have problems with homosexuals, one of my best friends is a lesbian.” For me that is sincerely true. I have managed, however, to reconcile the differences of my mind and my heart to maintain what I think is and hope will continue to be a close personal friendship. Indeed, it is through the lasting nature of that friendship that my emotional core is changing. I changed my mind a long time ago.
What frustrates me the most about this, is that we clearly have diversity teams to help encourage more diversity and inclusion AND to change the minds of people who may have been historically opposed or perhaps subconsciously discriminative.
So the entire idea that this person should be removed based on a blog post 14 years ago is absurd. Are they saying therefore that people who historically demonstrated limited views on diversity are incapable of changing and advocating for change? Then why have the position in the first place.
In terms of getting people fired/removed/cancelled for remarks, yes absolutely. That may be a function of social media and the scale of communication in modern times, but either way the sensitivity of the vocal minority has definitely changed even in my relatively short life.
You say yes, but can you explain how it is different? As far as I can tell it's the same as it was a century ago. The only change is the subject matter.
Do you think you'd keep your job after saying something anti-Christian in the 1950s? Look at what happened to Sinead O'Connor in the early 90s after she spoke out against child abuse in the Catholic church.
Maybe the biggest difference is that now we write when we communicate with peers, so there's evidence of our speech. I'm not convinced the mechanism behind cancel culture itself is new at all.
> Look at what happened to Sinead O'Connor in the early 90s after she spoke out against child abuse in the Catholic church.
I don't think this is an apt comparison at all.
1. Sinead O'Connor is a celebrity, celebrities have always had more scrutiny. It doesn't seem comparable to the random employees getting fired / random HS students losing their college offers that are happening today.
2. She did not just speak out against child abuse, she held up a photo of the pope on national TV while singing "evil", and then tore it up. This was obviously an act intended to be very public and very controversial.
3. What actually happened to her other than some angry editorials? Were her performances canceled by venues?
No I'm not saying the mechanism has changed, mob rule has probably been a thing since humans organised in groups larger than 5, but the scale and level of scrutiny definitely have.
I'm not familiar with the case of celebrities or Sinead O'Connor specifically, but no celebrity in my lifetime before the advent of this new wave of cancel culture has been completely cancelled the way they are today (even Michael Jackson, who had serious allegations of child molestation, had an O2 concert scheduled shortly before his death).
Even for the average person, if you lost your job due to anti-mob comments in the 50s that didn't bar you from ever finding a job again (which is the case for some today), and this is without even touching on the way some people have had their entire twitter history crawled and pulled apart from a time when they were generally very different people.
As I said, this is probably a function of social media in the modern era more than anything else.
I think people would be blacklisted in exactly the same way in the 50s; this is all fairly well documented in relevant writings from the period.
I think we're in agreement that social media and specifically giving people access to publishing has changed the duration and discoverability of the speech.
Ah I didn't realise the Hollywood blacklist had been that serious! It's definitely not in my lifetime though, I wasn't around in the 50s. I'm also not sure that's a good example; you're talking about what could be termed a national security threat vs. something like saying you don't agree with unisex bathrooms. As I said, the scale is way out of whack.
I'd definitely be interested to see comparisons that are more like-for-like though, if they exist. I'm not familiar with "Time of the Toad", although from a brief look it seems to also deal with Cold War era issues? Again, this isn't a like-for-like comparison.
Not to mention if you uttered something even vaguely socialist/communist sounding a few decades ago, you would be fired from your All-American job, be socially ostracized, and have the FBI on your tail before you can say "Stalin is bad".
You didn't even have to utter anything. During McCarthyism (aka the second red scare), false allegations of communist sympathies was an easy way to eliminate competition for particularly immoral opportunists, especially in entertainment. The obvious weaponization was probably why the whole thing was eventually shut down by the courts.
I regret that I have only one upvote for the Sinead O'Connor reference. This isn't new, the only thing that's new is that people are broadcasting their opinions far and wide for everyone to find/see/hear.
Alternatively, we just may just hear about more examples which increases our perception of prevalence (similar, maybe, to the perception of increased violent crime in the 90’s while violent crime was actually reducing).
How would you say this differs from the communist-era stuff that the USA went through? I suppose the new wave of social media isn't (?) as existential to USA security, but the fear tactics and other-ing mechanisms seem quite similar.
"...the sensitivity of the vocal minority has definitely changed even in my relatively short life."
I realize that you didn't mean this statement the way I am reading it, but I'm having a hard time not reading this as a reference to the time when the minority was less vocal and knew its place.
I think so, because the sheer amount of material many people have written is larger, the hunt for it is more intense, and the ability to form rapid mobs for two-minute hates is much greater. What will institutions do? https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs...
In context I assumed GP was talking more about the witch-hunt mentality. At scale now, I agree -- witch hunts are overall more accessible and so are undertaken more freely.
14 years is such a long time. I am not the same person I was a year ago. There is no excuse to what he did, but what if he is a different person altogether now.
I agree that the scalp collecting is horrible, but at the same time I am not sure a simple conversation can make prejudice go away that easily.
You're also right that we don't want to drive people "underground". But the head of diversity needs to have a perspective on diversity that is actually.. diverse and inclusive.
Arguing that there is equivalence between Damore's politically incorrect but truthful statements and antisemitism is "repugnant". They may have offended in equal amounts, judging by reactions. But if you find Damore distasteful then you've already been radicalized and your taste ruined.
A major reason why today's politicians are so bland and uninspiring is because they have been groomed to never say anything controversial or contentious. Trawling through adults adolescence photos and shaming/blaming them for some youthful indiscretion is another aspect of this societal disaster.
The anti war candidate Tulsi Gabbard in the recent US election is an example of someone relentlessly ridiculed and destroyed despite the absence of anything controversial in her background and is a dismal example of the way politics works today.
Now we have the pretentious corporate diversity industry insisting no one in their orbit has any opinions that might offend. Hopeless.
I don't understand your point. Are you suggesting 'political correctness' - a relatively new term and phenomenon largely enabled by the internet - was something installed by society and is a good thing, and that a vote to 'dismantle' it would be a bad thing?
> It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.
> Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.
Politicians say a lot of controversial and contentious things. Just that they are contentious for the different people. People that it is now OK to offend. Corporations offend a lot of people - when Coca Cola makes training that tells their employees to "try to be less white", I am sure there are plenty of folks who find it offensive. When on CRT training people are told that certain race is evil from birth, it surely is offensive to many people. It's just that they are OK with offending those people, because they think they have enough power now to ignore their opinion.
Only the purest of the pure can lead a diversity effort. And it doesn’t count unless you were pure from the beginning. Growing to overcome past problems is not sufficient.
>Growing to overcome past problems is not sufficient.
Their assumption is moreso that we cant grow to overcome past problems. So the only way to build themselves up is to tear others down.
Thats why the popular "anti-racism" philosophy is so antithetical to and ignorant of the lives and philosophies of many of the greatest civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and MLK.
Could you point me to the paragraph in question? I've read the article a few times now, and I don't see
A) anyone described as anti-racist or
B) anything saying people who do racist things cannot grow.
Sorry! Somehow I managed to paste completely the wrong link, and now it is too late for me to edit my previous comment. I realise now that scrolling down on that website automatically loads new articles and updates the address bar.
Here[0] is the article I had meant to link to.
Ah man… I really feel bad that you read the wrong article a few times after I unwittingly mislead you. I'm genuinely sorry about that.
Ah, thanks for the corrected link, I appreciate it. I hate when websites do that, it's super confusing.
I actually agree with her here, but I don't think that's the same as saying that racist people can't get better:
> While citizens can work on addressing racism, they can never be free of it, she said.
“We don’t arrive and now we are not racist,” DiAngelo said.
In her view (and mine), becoming "not racist" isn't really a thing that happens and then you're done, and you don't have to worry about not being racist anymore. Rather, it's an ongoing effort, the same way being a kind person or a hard worker is. In this understanding, "all white people are racist" is not a condemnation of white people or an attempt to cast white people as inherently bad or irredeemable. Rather, it's meant as a wake-up call - "Yes, all white people, even you, believe racist things and sometimes act in racist ways." If you want to be anti-racist, it is important to recognize these things within yourself and improve them, in the same way that you work to improve the world outside you.
Since this is a different definitional understanding (semantics?) than the person who says "I'm not racist," it can be a tricky point to communicate properly without being misunderstood or taken out of context.
I don't agree with all of DiAngelo's points or writing, but on this core one, I think she's not too far off the mark.
I mean sorry, but no amount of context to "all white people are racist" is going to make people see the nuance.
It's a stupid statement no matter the explanation.
And honestly even the intent at bwst is advocating purity over practice, her point will waste a lot of resources on people who are more or less on board with said idea of anti-racism but are flawed.
I'm going to have to start asking for better sources on antiracism than a white woman who makes a career out of corporate "diversity training." Like, of course that's her entire thesis.
White fragility is a very useful concept, for sure. But the way DiAngelo uses it seems to be more focused on making white people hem and haw and feel guilty for even trying instead of doing mutual aid, reading theory, forming community, anything actually helpful or useful.
If I wanted to set up a strawman, that's exactly what I'd do.
In case anyone finds this, I should probably clarify that my beef is with DiAngelo specifically rather than with CRT in general. I think that what she puts forth leads to unhelpful, performative activism, and I think she characterizes Black people erroneously as a monolith. In my opinion, the end result is white people getting bounced off of important work by one excessively moralizing book with a profit motive. For this and other reasons White Fragility is being taken off of some antiracism reading lists.
I'll probably read her new book that's coming out soon, but my prior assumption is that it's more of the same. I hope to be proven wrong.
I remain unconvinced that CRT is at all constructive and I find it peculiar that you recognise it as erroneous to characterise black people as a monolith when this is exactly what CRT does.
My perspective aligns neatly with that describe here[0].
As Trevor Phillips would say[1], Critical Race Theory is exactly the idea I would invent if I were a racist.
Could you expand on that? Are Phillips’ (a decorated former MP, and the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, and also a black man) positions on racism invalid in your view? Is he unqualified? Are you better qualified? Or do you just find his views heretical?
Oh absolutely, and that was never my claim. That is however the implicit claim of Critical Race Theorists. It’s a racist claim, which is why I’m challenging your support for it now.
> That is however the implicit claim of Critical Race Theorists.
You have provided evidence that it is the implicit claim of exactly one critical race theorist.
> which is why I'm challenging your support for it now.
This is a strawman. I began this discussion by pointing out that this very claim is counterproductive, which is why I'm not a fan of DiAngelo's work. Reasoning in the abstract about marginalized groups and the systemic issues they tend to face is not the same as asserting that they individually have all the same views or background.
It's worse than that, only the purest of the pure can be employed. Look at Apple's recent mob firing of Antonio García Martínez. Who made the mistake of writing a best selling and critically acclaimed book just 5 years ago. Featured as one of NPR's best books of the year, recommended by NYT, Washington Post, etc. But now it's suddenly a fireable offense.
“An irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.... A must-read.” New York Times
“Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book — which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read.” New York Times
“Reckless and rollicking... perceptive and funny and brave.... The resulting view of the Valley’s craziness, self-importance and greed isn’t pretty. But it’s one that most of us have never seen before and aren’t likely to forget.” Washington Post
“Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.”
“PMMess, as we’ll call her, was composed of alternating Bézier curves from top to bottom: convex, then concave, and then convex again, in a vertical undulation you couldn’t take your eyes off of. Unlike most women at Facebook (or in the Bay Area, really) she knew how to dress; forties-style, form-fitting dresses from neck to knee were her mainstay.”
“Out of nowhere British Trader informs me she is once again pregnant; the calendar math takes us right back to my move- out imbroglio in December, our last tryst after a breakup desert of nonintimacy. After a brief debate, British Trader confirms her desire to keep the child, whatever my thoughts on the matter. It occurred to me that perhaps this most recent experiment in fertility—and the first—had been planned on British Trader’s part, her back up against the menopause wall, a professional woman with every means at her disposal except a willing male partner—in which case I had been snookered into fatherhood via warm smiles and pliant thighs, the oldest tricks in the book.”
“To make an analogy, a capped note is like having to seduce five women one after the other, while an equity round is having to convince five women to do a sixsome with you. The latter is exponentially harder than the former.*
* The women analogy breaks down in that, unlike with women, the more investors you seduce into your moresome, the more likely others are to join. This is an expression of the lemming-like nature of tech investors, most of whom scarcely merit the title.”
Out of context excerpts from a 500 page book written in the style of Hunter S. Thompson is not compelling evidence to anyone but the mob and those seeking to be offended. People who have actually read the book don't find them to be so problematic, including the reviewers at New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, Techcrunch and others who gave the book a big thumbs up.
if you hang around long enough, you can watch the woke eat the woke. what is "pure" changes, and some who have delighted in getting scalps in the past will have theirs taken by someone else once the goalposts change.
i'm thinking there is a decent chance trans-racialism will eventually become woke
The sadly-deceased Mark Fisher wrote a piece called "Exiting the Vampire Castle" about at least a portion of this problem.
Essentially, you gain "cred" by publicly taking down a more powerful figure than yourself. It's the problem of diablerie in Vampire: The Masquerade in that, once accepted, you create a set of rewards and initiatives that foster a constant churn of figures eager to snipe at those above them, to drain them of their woke cred and get at least a little for yourself in an act called "critique." Of course, there's only so much blood/cred to go around so figures rise and fall as these very public lives are examined for any kind of transgression: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." Twitter and Tumblr are not exactly structured for careful, nuanced thought and so produce an endless stream of hot takes which, when gone cold, can be mined for evidence.
And so the revolutionaries are declared counter-revolutionaries and come to be the next layer of corpses in the mass graves they have dug, Khmer Rouge style.
I find the best solution is to simply never use a social media account attached to your real identity.
Innocent comments taken out of context or a general changing of accepted speech can turn a decade old bit of text into damning evidence of bigotry, racism, or any other ism.
The problem with autodelete or timed content is with caching services. There are a number of sites that allow you to see deleted comments. If a social media service is large enough, I imagine the same will be created.
Once something is on the internet, it is always on the internet.
The first five paragraphs are all comments on how it must be difficult for a progressive Jew to simultaneously support progressive values and Israel
> If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired.
It's only in the last paragraph that the author goes to a different place and starts blaming Jews directly.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it as it doesn't make much sense to me.
> I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it as it doesn't make much sense to me.
Quite possibly not much. As someone who has hundreds of blog posts under his belt from a similar time period, a lot of it is just about churning out posts. Start with a thesis, write five or more paragraphs with little planning, do a quick scan for errors, then hit publish. I suspect we're looking at someone who's having their career heavily affected by a quick piece they dashed off in 30 minutes or less a decade and a half ago without even thinking about it too much at the time.
My blog is no longer up and running, and maybe that's now a good thing.
Now would someone coming from his ideology have the same reasoned approached to being young and dumb?
Or even well educated but ill-informed about some subjects.
Or part of an organization/group/etc that has some negative public positions or legacy but is not the uniform agreement among the entire group or evolved entirely over the years?
I personally see every election as choosing between lesser evils. Yet some groups see voting for any party as full agreement with everything the political party says and has done.
There is so much context and grey area that modern diversity or social justice groups are (or act?) completely ignorant of. So does it make it rational to put them to their own garbage public trials, or give them a pass like mature rational individuals - also to a certain degree filled with it's own grey areas?
Now that is so inside baseball I'm struggling to imagine how you'd ever get anyone to care about it. First you'd have to spend an hour explaining what userboxes are, by which point everyone would already be bored to tears.
I'm subject to pretty regular trolling because I got blocked once for being overly aggressive and editwarry about removing some rule violating images.
Actually the inside baseball plays in the trolls favor because they go dig up some quotes and false accusations from some histrionic commenter calling me a malicious vandal and what not, which anyone on WP at the time took in the context of the speaker (e.g. not worth much), and then try passing it off as some kind of official finding.
It's pretty nuts. Basically the only thing that protect anyone is either having something more substantive to whine about when targeted, to have no online history, or to just never be targeted.
After the bombs on Lebanon I was mainly angry at myself. I overheard the news during dinner - "Beirut has been bombed" - and kept eating. Somehow growing up I ended up in a mental state where bombs being dropped on Beirut was 'normal'. It bothered me to no end: it would have been a completely different reaction if I heard "Paris has been bombed".
I ended up taking up an international cooperation job in Beirut, worked there for about three years. I danced, drank, worked, ate, drove around and enjoyed time with people that to this date consider very close friends.
I wish this part would get more attention. People say and do stupid shit when they're highly emotional & vulnerable. Everybody has "wrong" feelings and thoughts now and then. You wouldn't be human if you didn't. Sometimes people vent those thoughts/feelings, and that can hurt other people's feelings. We should obviously deal with that and take responsibility for that, but then the other side needs to accept that apology so both can reconcile. Otherwise everybody stays hurt.
Please stop taking this thread, and other HN threads, further into flamewar. This comment is a noticeable step in the hellish direction, and that's not cool. We're trying for a different sort of conversation here: thoughtful and curious. I realize it's much harder to maintain that state when the topic is divisive and strong emotions come up, but that's what the site guidelines ask everyone to do:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Also, we've had to ask you about this many times in the past. That's not good.
Thank you for sharing the full post. It indeed does have a different tone when taken as a whole. It's far too common for people to dig out half a sentence from hundreds of blog posts you've written over a decade ago, intentionally omitting everything else.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.
This is the only line in the blog post that can be construed as antisemitic rather than a criticism of Israel. It would not be antisemitic if he had stated the opinion: "Israel has an insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of itself."
I used to be involved in the Palestine Liberation movement and we always complained about people conflating Jews with Israel. Just because someone criticizes Israel does not mean they are antisemitic. Those who support Israel use the conflation to further their cause. In this sentence, the author does it on his own and screwed himself.
Yep, and it's clearly echoing the second sentence of the piece, "the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired."
Perhaps it's a deliberate conflation of Jews and Israel, or perhaps it's thoughtless writing when trying to echo & rephrase the opening/title.
He wasn’t fired, and the entire point of that job is to provide leadership on that topic. You can’t be a figurehead against racism after having publicly been racist.
This is how I read it as well, although some are less charitable with how they interpret actions in the moment -- people mis speak all the time and are heavily criticized for it. As another commentor suggested, this was probably not a carefully thought through thesis but more of a thought piece put together in a short time frame and meant more as an expression than some hill to die on. My charitable reading is that the last section (and title) perhaps carry the piece too far away from nationalist Jew and into ethnic Jew which aren't quite the same. Perhaps if the Author had thought through their goal and audience more thoroughly they might have re-worded it. Hard to tell. I think it is otherwise a thought provoking piece.
Replace the word "Jews" with "men" and gauge the reaction of those in the modern diversity movement. Either it's ok to say "not all <group>", or it isn't.
The reason it doesn't make sense is that I think everyone (even his defenders) are misreading the offending sentence.
"If I were a Jew" is meant to inform his "concern" not his "appetite".
The insatiable appetite for violent self-defense is obviously universal (he mentions Palestinian animus). What is unique to Jewish identity are the lessons of the Holocaust, which he thinks would make him more afraid of allowing instincts of self-defense to overwhelm sensitivity to the suffering of others. It's perfectly consonant with his previous paragraphs.
Right-wing media isolated the sentence from context and framed it as saying Jewish people have an insatiable appetite for violence. The phrasing was ambiguous enough to plausibly support that interpretation, and people saw what they were primed to detect. Helps that he chose not to publicly defend himself, and media generally don't like to scrutinize claims of bigotry/racism. Reminds me a bit of the Shirley Sherrod firing.
I hope the current progressive correct-thinkers realize the takes they make today have to hold up over a decade from now, otherwise the next wave is going to cancel them.
One of the most striking things when reading about the French Revolution is seeing some of the original key agitators for Revolution being eventually denounced as insufficiently revolutionary, and some of them even being killed for being considered counter-revolutionary.
Extreme violence against leadership figures makes conflicts end sooner because leadership is incentivized not to be a target. True believers die in the tumult, compromisers rise up and rebalance.
A Napoleonesque figure appearing soon. On Twitter, probably.
Only half joking. After a certain time, most people get tired and afraid of constant paranoid vigilantism and start searching for protection. Any protection.
And whoever gained positions of power from the previous tumult, will seek immunity from further revolutionary tumult, which is easiest to achieve by suppressing the worst Robespierres and ossifying the new structures.
From an outside perspective, it is striking how much the woke wave is waning compared to 2020. Trump is gone from Twitter, so a constant irritant has been removed, and people are starting to having a bit of a hangover. Plus the new rulers of the nest need a bit of calm for political business as usual.
>From an outside perspective, it is striking how much the woke wave is waning compared to 2020. Trump is gone from Twitter, so a constant irritant has been removed, and people are starting to having a bit of a hangover.
The ongoing self-recrimination in the media over the mass insta-dismissing a year ago of all COVID19 lab leak discussion—despite zero new evidence[1]—being one prominent example of the above, of course.
[1] I don't mean to imply that I don't believe in the theory. On the contrary, I was amazed and alarmed to see how a year ago even stating that SARS-CoV-2 being accidentally leaked from the Wuhan labs was not impossible was censored by social media as "disinformation" and denounced by regular media as already having been "debunked", as opposed to a reasonable hypothesis worthy of exploration. My point is that, as far as I know, there is zero new evidence available today to support the reasonableness of said hypothesis versus a year ago. The only difference is that Trump is no longer in the White House.
>My point is that, as far as I know, there is zero new evidence available today to support the reasonableness of said hypothesis versus a year ago. The only difference is that Trump is no longer in the White House.
The major difference I see now is that a number of major US media networks reported that the US intelligence community views lab leak as a feasible scenario now, one of their two main ones.
The only line is to scrub everything you have ever written with your real name off the internet. Someone will get offended by your writing and, eventually, you will lose your job and be exiled.
She also called her comments "deeply insensitive". How bent out of shape are you going to get over what a 17 year old says? "Sorry you're offended" is much closer to accurate. I'm nothing like 17 year old me and if you asked me to take present day responsibility for that person I would tell you to toss off.
How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today?
>> Today I was reminded of some past insensitive tweets, and I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended. I have since deleted those tweets as they do not reflect my views or who I am today.
> So yes
>> "Sorry you're offended" is much closer to accurate.
> is correct.
It is not though. In her twit she actually admitted that she was offensive, while “Sorry you’re offended” should be read as “I am sorry to hurt your feelings but I stand my ground”
> In her twit she actually admitted that she was offensive, while “Sorry you’re offended” should be read as “I am sorry to hurt your feelings but I stand my ground”
"“Sorry you’re offended”" a priori concedes that what was said is offensive because it acknowledges that the recipient was offended.
I explain in detail why they are effectively the same here
> How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today?
Not that much. For sure I made some mistakes, as I continue to do, but I'd stand by what I did at 17. I didn't (for example) write down plainly racist statements and then publish them on the internet. I didn't do anything comparable to that.
Do you believe racism is an incurable ill, or in any way related to ones lived experiences and education? I have met (and still know) plenty of people that are varying degrees of racist, and the majority of it involves some pretty fundamental ignorance. In some cases people are outright indoctrinated into racism. I have no idea if this particular person was desrving of cancellation or forgiveness, but I can personally imagine someone at 17 writing racist sentiments, and genuinely repenting and growing out of that. I can imagine someone at 25, or 35 doing the same. I can appreciate it is hard to imagine that a person can change their world view, yet it certainly happens all the time.
I agree with this but don't believe it relates to the grandparent's comment, which implied that we should accept shameful behaviour from 17 year olds because it is an innate part of being 17 years old. I object to that idea.
(Is suffering indoctrination shameful? And, as you say, that is not unique to 17 year olds.)
The top few articles I googled quoted her as saying: “I’ve apologised for my past racist and homophobic tweets and will reiterate that there’s no excuse for perpetuating those awful stereotypes in any way.
“I am so sorry to have used such hurtful and inexcusable language. At any point in my life, it’s totally unacceptable.” Backlash against her initial comments seem to be that she characterized her tweets as insensitive rather than using the word racist, which seems important but certainly pedantic.
> Today I was reminded of some past insensitive tweets, and I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended. I have since deleted those tweets as they do not reflect my views or who I am today.
"some past insensitive tweets" as a euphemism for racist tweets
"I am deeply sorry *to anyone I offended.*" (my emphasis with asterisks) => sorry if you were offended
So when it first came out, she gave the least amount of effort necessary to make it go away. Only when it threatened her plum new job did she offer anything simulating genuine remorse.
I see. I don't agree, but to make sure I understand -- she should have said "racist" tweets instead of "insensitive tweets" right? I think that is a reasonable ask. However how should she have worded the appology? It sounds like you take issue with "sorry to anyone I offended"? I am familiar with "sorry you were offended" but would not have interpreted her wording in that way -- e.g. the former is a direct apology and admittance of wrongdoing towards another on her part, while "sorry you were offended" is a typical avoidance of apology. Genuinely I would like to understand. To fully state my interpretation, I would guess she was genuinely sorry but was unaware of the most suitable way to appologize for it.
> she should have said "racist" tweets instead of "insensitive tweets" right? I think that is a reasonable ask.
yes
> However how should she have worded the appology?
"I am deeply sorry" would have been good. Or, "I am deeply sorry for < some variation of "what I said" or "my racist tweets">".
I'm don't agree with
> the former is a direct apology and admittance of wrongdoing towards another on her part
When I read "sorry to anyone I offended", it is not an unconditional apology. She is not apologizing for what she did. She is apologizing *to those she offended*.
Which is to say she is apologizing not for what she did but for the offense she caused.
There is a crucial difference there. The former is taking responsibility for what she said. The latter, at best, makes no comment on whether or not what she said was wrong; at worst, makes a comment that what she did was not wrong but that she is only sorry because people took umbrage with it. From her words alone, we know she thinks what she said was "insensitive" and that she is apologizing to those that are "offended". If she's only acknowledging that her words are insensitive, it makes that sense she's apologizing directly to and only to those that she offended, which is why she would qualify her apology as such. This is not a statement that acknowledges that her words, in and of themselves, were wrong.
In that regard, she may not be avoiding an apology in the absolute terms, but more importantly, as in all other cases where people only apologize for the offense, she is not (at the very least directly) acknowledging that what she did was intrinsically wrong, she is merely responding to the outrage.
So you might say
> I would guess she was genuinely sorry
and you could be right, but when I read what she wrote, that does not come across.
This
> the former is a direct apology and admittance of wrongdoing towards another on her part
does not come across at all when I read
> I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended.
To get that kind of interpretation, I would have to do some mind reading instead of taking her words for what they are.
To be fair, we don't know who made the decision to reassign him. It might have been a HR decision in preemptive fear of bad press instead of an actual demand by any group.
Also, solidarity for palestinians is pretty widespread among progressives and left-wings in general. I think a push to cancel him for this entry would more likely come from right-wing, pro-Israel groups if anything.
His old posts are more than just solidarity with Palestinians or criticism of the Israeli government (which obviously should never get anyone fired).
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others.
It’s really hard to read stuff like that and not feel attacked as a Jewish person. I know it’s an old post and people change, but I don’t want people walking away from this thread thinking someone lost their job for merely being critical of Israel. That just feeds the cycle of distrust and makes it harder to discuss.
I think the point is that the blog post is not really a big issue if you're an average engineer, but as head of DEI it's not a great look, hence the re-assignment.
He was not canceled by progressives. Equating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism is generally an anti-progressive stance in the US. This is progressive principles being morphed into a weapon to be used against progressives.
If progressive people create a weapon known as cancellation, then they absolutely deserve it when the same weapon is used against them. They created the new normal.
banannaise's point is that the rhetorical weapons used by the left to bludgeon its enemies can and are being used by others. As esyir said, "It's hard to feel any sympathy when that chicken comes home to roost".
And that is why I stopped calling myself a progressive years ago. In my youth I thought progressive meant trying to continually better yourself and your community. Now the focus seems to be on cancelling any viewpoint that conflicts with yours. The new trend of digging further and further back in the past makes it even more counter to my previous beliefs of the word
I just don't understand this viewpoint as it completely ignores the history of humanity. "Cancel culture" has been used for many centuries to silence dissenters. Take a look at Galieleo as an example. He was excommunicated or "canceled" by religious organizations that held the primary means of power. He was even forced to recant his positions by these groups.
Is the cancellation of Galileo by the Church a good example? A way a civilized society should function?
If not, if we consider historical examples like these as failures of past societies, then things "not being any different than today" suggests our society is also failing.
My response was around "cancel culture" being a new phenomenon, as posed by the parent comment. I am not suggesting that this is a good or bad behavior, just that it has existed for a long time and nothing is new about it.
So, yes, in the context of my post the Galileo example is a good example IMO.
The scale. In the past you had to watch what you said about those who had the power to hurt you. Now you can have your life derailed by people you've never met and never will, who's only power is being popular in some community you may have never heard of (and may not even exist until years from now).
I will address this in the spirit with which it was intended.
Cancellation, back then, was largely top-down, driven by kings and popes. The current form of cancellation emerges from below, pressuring larger organizations to fire people and denounce them. And as I have mentioned elsewhere in this, those calling for cancellation derive increased status when their attempts succeed.
It's a bit more equivalent to witch hunt mania than papal disapproval.
It is not different than today. I think instead of the word changing I just grew up and had a reality check. Progressive means following culturally approved thoughts, when in my youth I thought it meant pushing boundaries and trying to better the world (even if it meant the occasional wrong think to get a different perspective)
The causal connection here being, of course, "someone's watching me at all times, judging". Such heavy self-censorship, wed to brutal paranoia, necessarily leads to an erosion of "self", a loss of personal culpability. Submission to a higher power – conveniently represented by its clergy.
It's the same playbook, repeated across millennia and societies. The Soviets in 1930s-40s played it out too, with chilling adroitness. They didn't call themselves religious (quite the opposite), but you can easily know the pattern by its fruits.
Somewhat tangential, but who is the right kind of person for a diversity job? What does a job well done look like? Changes in hiring? Changes in company culture?
I'm skeptical of roles with a "my job is to care about X" kind of definition. That includes, for example, "customer advocate" and similar, especially someplace as complicated as google. I don't think they can have much success beyond the surface level.
EDIT: lets maintain a presumption of good faith. Assuming that you actually care about diversity...
The purpose of the role is to be able to show that you have a diversity officer. Whether or not that actually helps diversity, or helps at all--is secondary.
It kind of is. He talks more about things like corporate lawyers etc which fit the name "goon" more, but I think the more general point is people you have to employ because other companies employ them. What category would you put it under?
Diversity training may help change people's attitudes, but you're right on the nose about actually hurting.
The real reason enterprises spend money on Diversity Training is because it provides Faragher-Ellerth protection from damage claims— even if racist conduct within the company has been accepted by the court.
By having diversity training, corporations ensure that victims of racism do not receive financial restitution.
"Diversity and inclusion" as a separate function is mostly an exercise in giving the rest of the company cover. In my experience the people in these orgs have very little power to do anything, they just recieve the complaints, empathize, and then nothing happens.
As an example, I went to our head of D&I with a complaint about HR violating human rights law in our jurisdiction. They said "oh that sucks" and I never spoke to them again. I could have gone to a tribunal and argued about it, but instead I ignored HR, and shortly after left the company because I kept having to fight them about what seemed like baseline "inclusion" stuff. The D&I staff were mostly busy making promotional materials about the few successful marginalized people at the organization, despite our terrible stats.
Good point. But a serious company in which everyone is a nice person could still have D&I specialists like a training expert in charge of improving the masses or a statistician/manager in charge of monitoring and reports.
It starts with an acknowledgement that the company has a problem with X. That's actually incredibly hard, because there's nobody in the company willing to say "I'm anti-X". If they did, you'd just fire them and call it a job well done.
Instead, you need to realize that the problem with X is that it's no individual's fault, but the cumulative effect of a lot of little things. Each of those little things is easily dismissed as irrelevant. The job of the X Officer is to care about all of those things at once.
That doesn't make their job easy. Simple changes rarely fix the problem -- if they could, you'd have already done them. They require large changes that often seem antiproductive, especially when you've defined "productive" in ways that you're convinced are objective but just happen to systematically be anti-X.
A common example: coding tests. "We don't exclude women. It's just that men happen to be more on both ends of bell curves, so it's just too bad that far more men pass this test than women. The test is objective, after all." Except that the test doesn't really test what you do for a living. So why insist on it? Is it because you're sexist, or just lazy? I'm tempted to call it the latter, but if it's pointed out by an "X Officer", they'll be accused of affirmative action, misanthropy, etc.
A diversity officer will lose more battles than they win, so it's hard to say what a job well done looks like. In a lot of ways they're doing their job well just by making people actually oppose them out loud. Their best victories look like things other people consider discriminatory against them, because the things that discriminate against them are intolerable while the things that discriminate against other people are just things that happen.
The hope is that collectively they'll put enough people in enough positions of authority to be able to gradually diminish the constant throb of small injustices that collectively have brought about an overwhelming white maleness to all authority positions. Even a large company is only a tiny fraction of society, so it takes the full cumulative effect over decades to actually achieve genuine success.
I hope that answers your question. It's not an easy thing to describe, and it's easy to dismiss the problems they're trying to fix and not worth solving.
My question was more tactical than anything. Coding tests and hiring are a good example. Is a general purpose "diversity officer" likely to understand hiring, coding tests and such to improve on this?
An understanding of abstract issues, like bell curves and bias in testing generally is one thing. Getting into the nitty gritty, dealing with objections and finding alternatives is another. Don't you need someone that understands coding tests, coding, technical hiring and such to make a difference? A nondiscriminatory hiring method is objectively better, even if you don't care about diversity.
A person in authority, but removed from the actual task at hand seems like a recipe for box ticking, to me. I believe it could work for blatant, simple misogyny. For deeper issues like hiring process, don't we need subject experts?
Leaving workplace diversity aside, say the issue is application design. An application doesn't work well for people of different cultural or educational backgrounds? Don't we need someone with both an understanding of UIs and an understanding of those needs? I don't see how authority can lead someplace good. People who have never dealt with UIs have terrible ideas about how to improve them.
>I hope that answers your question. It's not an easy thing to describe, and it's easy to dismiss the problems they're trying to fix and not worth solving.
I appreciate you wading in. Most of the other comments have been quite depressing. I think what we need is more presumption of good will, and to try and carry less baggage from previous experience. People can be wrong but not bad people. They can come around. There are multiple routes to getting where we want to go. That's not to say no one is ill willed.
Lastly, I think not seeing a solution often leads to not seeing the problem... even though it's logically backwards. I also think that a deep awareness of problems leads to seeing solutions. I don't think you can use authority alone and force people to find solutions to problems they don't care about, or believe in. The problem they'll actually try to solve is "how do I me this person leave me alone."
Can you explain what this mythic “throb of injustice” is that keeps the white man in power?
What I experience today is:
* government policy that is openly racist against white and asian men (affirmative action)
* Racist “diversity” campaigns today that are veils for “we want less white men but can’t straight up say that.”
* Hate from people of color, since the narrative is my “white male privilege” is the only reason for any success in my life. Every other major contributor to it is sidelined.
I have also still not found someone able to explain why white male leadership is a problem when it well reflects the entry workforce 40 years ago. Current diversity metrics for new grads will feed up management chains in 40 years and so on.
These are tangible policies and sentiment I can point to that directly and overtly discriminate against me because of my identity. Your comment tries to paint a rosy picture of doing so. There is no thought to my economic background, how hard I’ve worked, etc. Just you’re a white privileged man so you deserve less opportunity for leadership positions.
It seems incredibly and overtly racist to me, but I’m open to changing my mind.
I'm ok with that as a policy. Presumably he isn't ok with those old statements and can move on.
At the same time the folks who need to post some general statements about a whole group of people, religion, or whatever ...
As far as I can remember I've never felt a reason to talk about a whole category of people and "insatiable appetite for war and killing“ or "increasing insensitivity to the suffering [of] others".
I don't even get how that's gonna work. Inevitably, he'll work alongside/under/oversee Jewish colleagues. That'll be an awkward Hangouts meeting. "Oh hey there's the guy that thinks I'm violent, I wonder if he'll judge my work/team interaction impartially..."
Most are almost never put in a position where things they've done or said over a decade ago is put under a spotlight. You have to be in a specific position, and have people specific want to take you down in the first place. Why do you think this specific post from 14 years ago happens to have been brought up now?
But if Google thought he was now benign, wouldn't he just remain at the post? Moving him to a different department seems to indicate that Google think he did wrong, but not that much wrong as to fire him. I'm not sure how to reconcile that.
It's just a bad look specifically for the head of DEI, who's whole job is to promote diversity. If it was any other position they probably wouldn't have cared.
"If you're going to work with other people, some of them will probably at some time possibly, or you might even know about, something bad they said that might apply to you."
At that point the question is how that gets worked out. If the other person has since apologized, and it was a long time ago, then I don't think it's too much to ask that other folks maintain a professional relationship / work with such people.
You can't make inflammatory generalizations about ethnic groups on HN.
Also, "Have you people ever met a Jew" followed by weird grievances and generalizations is enough over the line that I'm banning this account. We don't need this here—as evidenced by the flamewar that it started.
I’ve learned to avoid discussing the Israel/Palestine conflict, because often the discussions turn very awkward quickly, and previously reasonable people who appear to have humanist views suddenly don’t sound so reasonable anymore. It’s a complicated subject especially for people connected to the issues.
There are a lot of dark feelings all around the issue, that could get a lot of people fired if they talked about them openly.
Also it's in the interest of the Zionist state to identify 'Israel' with 'Jews'
If you're opposed to Zionism or the state of Israel, you shouldn't grant them that identification.
If you assume or assert that all Jews support Israel's settler-colonial project, you're also playing into the state of Israel's rhetorical strategies that conflate the survival and military supremacy of the Zionist state with Jewish safety, opposition of Zionism with hatred toward Jews, etc.
Failing to distinguish between the people group and the nation-state that claims to represent or serve them is not only rude or dehumanizing or sloppy in this case, but counterproductive for anti-Zionism as a cause. Anti-imperialism is not served by racism.
I completely agree. Nations are aggregate of people and in addition are not always in full control of the state that represents them.
But would US have started latest wars without popular support of Americans?
To some degree everyone is guilty.
Regardless I agree based on the comments about the culprit other options that his opinions add racist overtone and perhaps his words should be evaluated in the larger context.
So why did you call out Israel, the US, and Russia and not the others?
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I'm just curious as to what makes them special. There are many other nations involved in larger-scale conflicts right now. There are many others that have been involved in more conflicts globally historically. Many that have and do oppress and murder on a regular basis. I will say the US and Russia do get involved too much in outside conflicts, but Israel's ongoing conflict is paralleled in many other nations right now.
Because I said historically and some nations have been forced to counter invasion or other form of repression to become an independent nation.
I actually did not call out any country. I just included US and Russia as examples of more known countries that have started recent more known military conflicts.
My motivation was to point out that "insatiable appetite for war and killing" is by itself nothing more than a political statement.
He is black, and there is a double-standard -- but don't dare call that racist. It's all absurd, but it's actually good to see examples of "you become the thing you hate". Hate is a horrible, corrosive emotion. We see it a _lot_ these days -- people who become emotionally entangled and lost in their activism against racism (the mob encourages this mindset, as in that state, critical thinking is turned off). They then become hateful and racist themselves.
These incidents can hopefully (but doubtfully) cause some reflection about "why the hell do we even have 'diversity officers' in a software company? Maybe we're getting results opposite of what we sought. After all, we created the role with the silly title just to virtue-signal, in the first place."
I think you're spreading FUD. People get reassigned instead of fired pretty regularly in response to PR. Please cite sources instead of making conjecture that this was due to race. At least leftists come with sources to back up their claims of racial discrimination, however flimsy the evidence is, it actually exists.
Notice a pattern here? I wasn't talking about cops and teachers who have unions with political clout. Cops have done a hell of a lot worse then go on racist rants just to be reassigned. It's not apples to apples.
But just to be over the top obnoxiously clear. I'm talking about the private sector.
The reason a disproportionate number of these articles are regarding public sector employees is because public institutions are publicly accountable, and therefore generally must respond to a controversy. A private sector firm is under no obligation to state how it is resolving a matter with an employee and may find it advantageous in terms of public image and legal liability to simply not comment if the employee has not been terminated. Having said that, here are a couple of private individuals.
Feel free to additionally move the goalposts as you wish, but the point remains that the insinuation that some HN'ers are making that the only possible reason he isn't facing forthwith termination is his race doesn't seem inarguably the case.
"Following a video post on Instagram in which the hunky Guardians of the Galaxy star insisted followers turn up the volume on their devices rather than simply read the subtitles in order to get the full experience, members of the deaf community pointed out that such a remark is exclusionary and, simply put, offensive to suggest that only those who can hear are able to experience something to its fullest potential."
Equating that post to the link's anti-Semitic remarks seems like a stretch.
No idea who the other guy is but yes, you might have found an example. I have no doubt there are some out there. I could point you to the short novel length list of times it went the other way though.
I think there are a few noteworthy components to this:
* Kamau's post conflates Jews with Israel, which is simultaneously a common, innocent mistake and a rhetorical strategy used by Zionists and the far right. Having read the actual post[1], I'm inclined to believe that Kamau falls for the aforementioned strategy.
* One of the Twitter accounts linked in the article, "StopAntisemitism," is a Zionist organization. They've been outspoken in their attempts to conflate Israel (and Israel's Jews) with Judaism as a whole, and to generally delegitimize the faith and politics of the millions of diaspora Jews who reject Zionism and do not support Israel.
I am a Jew, and I thought that Kamau's blog post was tone-deaf. But it's also over a decade old, and its chief fault is that it falls for a rhetorical conflation that countless organizations have dedicated extraordinary resources too (that Jews are fundamentally foreigners, that we all belong in Israel, that to be an anti-Zionist is to be an anti-Semite). I don't think he deserves blame for falling for that dirty trick.
But it's not a rhetorical strategy just used by Zionists and the far right. Zionists, as you say, wish to conflate Jews with Israel, so that any criticism of the latter will appear to be an attack on the former. Anti-Semites wish to conflate Israel with all Jews so that criticism of the former can be made to be an attack on the latter.
> They've been outspoken in their attempts to conflate Israel (and Israel's Jews) with Judaism as a whole
But let's not pretend that the connection between Israel and US Jews is simply a prejudice. Here's an article from the Times of Israel quoting a recent Pew research:
"More than 80% of American Jews said caring about Israel was an important or essential part of what being Jewish means to them." [1]
If this is how important is Israel to American Jews identity ("important or essential part of what being Jewish means to them") then it makes sense to ask them, as a group, how do they reconcile this identity with the violent actions of Israel.
The actual poll[1] paints a substantially different picture: less than half of American Jews polled said that Israel was "essential" to them; the 80% figure comes from a separate group that explicitly said "important, but not essential."
That could mean any number of things. For example: I have family members in Israel. Their health and happiness is important to me. Does that make caring about Israel's affairs important to me? It would probably depend on how the question was framed. But it would be incorrect to conflate that with support for the Israeli state.
Other important numbers from the poll:
* Only a minority of American Jews (34%) oppose the BDS movement, and believe (33%) that the Israeli government's peace effort is "sincere"
* Only 32% believe the core doctrine of Zionism, i.e. that Israel was is the land of the Jews by birthright.
In other words: I don't think it's correct to conflate the American Jewish identity with any positive or dispositive interest in Israel. We're a big group, and our national identity is overwhelmingly American. Asking us to reconcile our ethnoreligious identity with an unrelated national identity is bewildering at best, and insulting (cf. canards about Jewish loyalty) at worst.
Being reassigned as opposed to fired is quite the privilege.
Everyone in the comments is viewing it as completely different than the Damore fiasco because this racist blog post was written in 2007, but are we forgetting that Antonio Martinez wrote Chaos Monkeys 5 years ago and was fired for it now? [1]
What's the difference between:
1) Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naïve despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit
2) If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing
I think it's absurd that the former is worth firing and the latter isn't. Google has a reputation to be a more 'progressive' company than Apple; is that just code for undertones of anti-semitism?
You are misrepresenting Kamau Bobb's blog post by cherry-picking a single sentence from it. This is the first paragraph of his post:
> If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired. This reconciliation would be particularly difficult now, in November, 79 years after Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass. The anniversary of this dreadfully monumental day in my history would bring me pause. It would force me to reflect on the legacy of extraordinary human suffering. I might wonder how the vicious eruption of cruelty in the mid-twentieth century has influenced the shape of my identity as a Jewish person and our collective identity as Jewish people.
He is imagining a dichotomy; commitment to Israel and to humanist values. "If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented." This does not sound like anti-Semitism to me.
I'm choosing a specific sentence that has been highlighted as unacceptable and is meant to disgust. I'm sure there is much more to the book Chaos Monkeys than "SF women weak," yet he was fired for that comment within his book, with no care given to context.
Have I defended the firing of the author of the book Chaos Monkeys? Is it permissible to believe that no one should be fired for what amounts to political views?
Will be interesting to see how Google handles other old examples of people writing things perceived to be offensive. Apple clearly has taken the opposite approach, with the firing of Antonio Garcia Martinez. While the google employee's comments are clearly anti Semitic, one can hope he has changed since then and give him another chance. We are too quick to condemn people for life due to their past mistakes. With that said though, a diversity role is probably not going to be an ideal spot for him going forward and re-assigning him is good.
Plenty of time... the totalitarian principle of QM notwithstanding, not everything not forbidden is compulsory at a macro level; academia is not a deterministic machine for yielding studies given the appearance of a phenomenon. Otherwise I'd ask you to provide some studies quantifying "plenty of time".
I feel 13 years should at least be producing nonfiction essays or something that passes for journalism. It took 4 years for 5000 trump books to come out. 13 years for the upending of racism towards being against the whites should be plenty, too.
Regarding Garcia Martinez, I am still surprised "straight male" is such a disadvantage that being POC doesn't buy enough oppression points to allow you to criticize white women. Then again, maybe it's more that being Hispanic specifically isn't enough. I have a hard time imagining a black man getting fired for the same comments.
One of the reasons I use HN is because of the No Political or Ideological fights rule (because I know I can't stop commenting from time to time even though I'd rather live a life without this crap). I wish rules were here to be enforced, not as guidelines hardly anyone follow.
This isn’t political though, it’s social. Unless political to you means anything related to the way society is structured and people relate to each other.
This is absolutely political, in that any conversation about Israel's foreign or domestic policy ends up an argument falling along political lines.
There's several posts already excusing the blog post because it aligns politically with the poster's own views (in this case, that all Jews have collective guilt for Israel's policy.)
Since it include both political and ideological fights in the guidelines it doesn't really matter. It definitely fits this thread. Added ideological to OP.
EVERYTHING is political, when involving more than 1 person.
The DMCA is political, and is the basis in which most orgs allow public comment. Copyright is political. Patents are political. Cryptocurrency is explicitly political WRT being against governments. Most startups are political, in the way many break laws that the incumbents have to follow.
The people who "dont want to involve with politics" are primarily the ones whose needs are met, and don't care about others' needs. I would claim it's for selfish reasons.
Something says to me that if he said "Europeans" instead, it would be ok. Of course, it is hard for me to back up this claim, other than with the anecdotal data that such comments are common on (liberal) Twitter and the like. In a world with so many protected classes, this former head of diversity made the really foolish mistake of not making a remark at the expense of one of the lesser protected classes, instead.
Edit: found in a related comment that he did make such a comment, and that those such comments are precisely the ones not really mentioned or cared about in the media...
This guy is the head of diversity. His job description involves him ideally having a) having a certain open state of mind b)the trust of the people he is dealing with. So this blog post disqualifies him since it demonstrates he lacks trait a) and he will most likely be lacking b) in the future making him totally useless at his job. So this is not a punishment, just a consequence of past misdeeds. If this man had been born white, the consequence would have most likely been that he would have never received this role in the first place. So i don't see how this is different in any way
This guy expressed views that would reasonably call into question whether or not he would do the position he was in. Merely the appearance of such views might make it impossible for him to be able to e.g. get the respect of communities he might have to work with as part of his role.
For many other positions I would agree with you, but not a position like this.
7 billion people in the world. I don't think the global lead on diversity strategy role should be going to someone who wrote an elaborate essay in which he was clearly anti-Semitic. He graduated university in 1994 - it's not like he was a kid when he was writing these words.
Who else has he helped discriminate against based on their ethnicity or views?
You can't be openly racist in your private life, and have it not be a problem in your professional life managing and hiring people at a job. The idea that you think it shouldn't is weird. If I think that social netowrks are garbage that should be regulated out of existence and their operators jailed (in my private life, on my blog), should it affect my job at Facebook?
What if I believe in my public private life that Russia should rise up and destroy the west for its decadence and weakness - should it affect my job in the CIA?
All I'm saying is that the charge of "antisemitism" is too heavy and the author's post didn't sound that way to me, but since I'm not Jewish, I'm not going to press this point this further at the risk of sounding too insensitive or privileged.
If you'd like a Jewish perspective on this, here's a comment made by someone who claims to be Jewish that basically echoes my sentiments -- that the author of that blog post was naive and got carried away in his rhetoric, instead of being an actual antisemite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27385448
"mild criticism" mixed in with generalizing Jewish people, regardless of country, in the last paragraph?
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others.
Usually the argument I see online is that criticism of Israel isn't necessarily anti-semitic.
But this is just straight up criticism of Jews, based on the actions of Israel. He's saying that Jews in general should atone for their inherent bloodlust.
That's not "harsh", he's picked a bad thing that some members of a group did and tried to apply it to all members of that group. In other cases we would say that's sexist or racist, and here it's anti-semitic.
It's weird how people are judged by what they wrote/said without anyone asking them for clarification for what they meant?
I feel like with "Jew" in the excerpt he means Israeli, which is more like a political view. Basically saying if you support Israel you have an insatiable appetite for war. And honestly there always is some vagueness regarding the word jew, it can refer to religion, race, sometimes an ideology or a country.
It could be a racist comment though, but I think it's good to give people the opportunity to clarify rather than chace any utterance they make. No one can express themselves with exactitude Everytime they speak or write a blog, it wasn't a book.
Thank you. Everyone on this thread should read the original words instead of the pull quotes. I am a staunch progressive and am afraid to make my own comment on his words. We are living through a strange political moment.
If I understand what you're saying, you're setting aside the context that [the state of Israel exists and has a controversial military doctrine], and reading the Google guy's post as specifically targeted at people who share the Jewish faith?
if i understand what you’re saying, your setting aside the direct text from the article which targeted the jewish people and reading the google guys post as specifically being about israel?
The fact that he ends the essay with "If I were a Jew..." and not "If I were an Israeli..." makes it pretty clear to me which group he is referring to. Especially considering the author's other comments praising bigots like Louis Farrakhan
Though not every anti-Israeli is anti-Jewish, fact is, most ardent ones are anti-Jewish.
BTW. Anti-Jewish bigotry [ethnic Arab racism and/or religious Islamic intolerance] by Arab Muslim Goliath middle east against the 'other'... is the root cause of "conflict" at least since the Ottomans banned the FALASTIN periofical for racism in 1914. Then the hate mongering by ex Mufti al-Husseini (invertor of the cry 'itbakh al-Yahud' and years later the: 'Kill the J..s wherever they are") in the 1920s pogroms --especially against non-Zionist pious Jews, as in 1921 and 1929-- through his and Ahmad Shukeiri aiding Hitler in WW2. [Yes, that Shukairy who justified the Holocaust in 1946; in 1956 still said Palestine is nothing but southern Syria, first PLO chairman; has invented the apartheid slander in oct. 1961, infamous for his genocidal plans as in "none of them will survive," pre-1967].
____
"Jews Urge Arabs To Shun Bigotry..."
Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
July 18, 1930, Page 7:
'JERUSALEM, July 17.--Deep emotional feeling marked the Jewish representatives' final addresses before the League of Nations Wailing Wall commission today. In stirring terms the Jews appealed to the Moslems not to be influenced by religious bigotry but to seek a settlement of the present dispute as generously as possible.'
____
"Haj Amin el‐Husseini Dies; Ex‐Palestine Grand Mufti," The New York Times, July 5, 1974:
'In 1952 the Mufti explained ... This land, he pointed out, had belonged to the non‐Jewish peoples of Palestine ...'
____
Hamas senior jihadist in his interview to Sky News on May 24, 2021 openly said, the Jews don't "belong" there, as it is all Arab Muslim land:
'“You are not a citizen. We are the owner of this area – Arabic area. This is well known as an Islamic area.”…'
It's not a competition to get to the bottom of the oppression ladder, i can imagine nothing more dystopian then a chart ranking minorities with an "opression" score or something.
Thanks for linking that. It puts the issue in perspective. To be honest, I'm amazed that a blog post like that can make someone lose his job as a "head of diversity." Apparently, diversity at Google means that people should never voice critical opinions about the Israeli government, not even privately.
For me, the lesson to learn from this is that to never apply for a job in the US or for a job for a large US company. That's easy for me to say, though, since I'm working as a philosopher in academia and these are not wanted or needed in corporations anyway.
this isn’t just criticizing israel. this is criticizing all jewish people as being war hawking hypocrites unable to remember history who don’t care about anyone but themselves. it’s clearly antisemitic. and if he wanted to make this about israel it should have been phrased “if i were an israeli” which still isn’t accurate cause not everyone in israel suppported this
maybe the lesson is if you are going to make sweeping, negative, generalizations about a population you are probably going to look like an idiot. and especially if you feel the need to publish them to the world
While I wouldn't put it the same way he did, calling this "clearly antisemitic" goes way over board and is in my point of view unacceptable. Besides, albeit regrettable, it is common for Israelis to mix up their religion with political matters, too.
The kind of ferocity with which people reject other people's opinions and evaluate them to the highest possible moral standards once they disagree with them is a special kind of modern savagery. We're talking about a blog post this guy wrote ten years ago as a private person. Maybe he even changed his opinion or regrets the way he phrased it then?
I really can't tell if this is right or wrong. On one hand, these comments are hurtful and obviously stupid. On the other hand, this post is 13 years old. We all say or think stupid things sometimes, especially when we're naive about a topic. Isn't it possible his stance has changed? All this publicity now may have ruined this guy's career forever, all because the scribbled down some random stupid thoughts more than a decade ago?
Downvote me, but I am truly sorry for him. Stuff like this makes me never want to post on the public web under my real name, who knows what will be marked as "offensive" a few decades from now.
This is how it works now, yes it's extreme.
But if you say something demeaning over women or blacks the response is much much worse. Here the guy just got transferred to another cushy job with big pay, not even fired. Jews are fair game unfortunately
> All this publicity now may have ruined this guy's career forever,
You do seem to live in extremely polite and enlightened world where just a transfer is ruining career. Out in real world today one would have their ass out of job instead of mild reprimand for such blog post.
Slightly shocking that he didn't get fired. (yet?)
They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research.
Bobb goes on a clearly antisemitic rant, and just gets reassigned.
Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years?
> They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research
Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided.
Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with.
Over the 4 years since the controversy I've asked countless Damore critics to point to the specific part of his memo that was tone-deaf, insensitive, or bigoted. I'm still waiting for an answer.
People take issue with the following, but I don't recall Google confirming/denying if it is true:
I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
● Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race
● A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates
● Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
● Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
● Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination
I don't get it. He's pointing out five problems with Google's efforts. I don't know whether they're correct or not, but I don't see anything here to criticize. If these are true, and they seem plausible, they do need to be fixed.
To my knowledge Google has never challenge the accuracy of those claims, and such practices are commonplace in many tech companies in the name of "diversity".
Do you think purposely hiring X group is a bad practice? From what I understand, it's not enough to say "we'll hire X if they're better than Y". When you don't actually have any X at the moment, your company might not be very welcoming to X, and so they won't join. So you purposely go out of your way to hire extra X, to account for the lower acceptance rate.
The common response is "that's not fair to Y, you should be hiring only based on quality, not on X or Y". But the issue is if you only hire on quality, but the quality X candidates don't join, then you're actually losing out on quality. So instead, you lower quality requirements, with the goal that overall you're actually promoting quality in the end, by working towards an environment where quality _is_ the only determining factor, and removing the current factors that work against X candidates.
What about this do you disagree with?
Note: This kind of handwaves over what "X won't join is". There's a lot of nuance to this. It may be that X grows up thinking the job isn't for them, because they always see Y in those types of jobs, and never bothers to try that job. It may be that X tries to join, but the people hiring them all Y, and favor Y instead because it's familiar to them, and the rest of the company is Y. It may be that X joins, but they feel uncomfortable that everyone is Y, and quits. There's a lot of different factors that goes into what discrimination looks like, which is why affirmative action is a lot more than just company policies.
I believe that people should be treated as individuals, not collectivized into groups based on immutable characteristics like ethnicity.
I believe that while "reverse-discrimination" has become commonplace in the name of diversity, it is unfair, divisive, counterproductive, and illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I'm not accusing you of making this argument, but the assumption that a particular ethnic group can't compete on a level playing field is deeply condescending towards those groups. It's "the soft bigotry of low expectations".
I don't entirely disagree with you. But by the same token, trying to treat everyone as an individual without acknowledging disadvantages due to race, gender, etc isn't a good idea either.
For instance, I'm trans. I'm not openly out when searching for jobs / at work, because I fear I will be discriminated for it. If I saw a company already had several trans people, and they were seeking trans people out and asking them to apply, I would maybe change my mind.
Should companies treat everyone as individuals, and say "if trans people wanted to work here, they need to apply"? Because that's how you get no trans people applying, and that perpetuates the cycle of "I can't come out, no one else in the world is trans". Sure, it would be better if companies didn't have to advocate for diversity, but until society doesn't have stigmitism, real or imagined, against minorities, then I don't think it's wrong to help them on the basis of their identity.
I'm sorry to hear that you are fearful of discrimination and it has discouraged you from seeking employment. That's wrong and unfair.
I have no problem with companies going out of their way to advertise that they are welcoming to all, whether black, trans, white, gay, young, old, etc, and that candidates will be judged on merit.
But I do have a problem with holding people to a different standard because of their ethnicity, gender, gender identity, or any other inborn characteristic that's irrelevant to their ability to do the job.
If that is the line of thinking, that certain races are naturally predisposed to playing basketball, then I could see why Google took issue with insiuating that certain genders are naturally predisposed to be engineers.
I didn't claim that certain races are naturally predisposed to playing basketball, I just quoted an uncontroversial statistic and asked whether it could only be explained by discrimination.
Beyond your handwaving absurdity, is there any empirical evidence at all that lowering the quality bar for X ends up actually raising quality in the end? Because it sounds like a bunch of unicorn fairytale nonsense to me.
> Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided.
> Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with.
I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone deaf and insensitive. The bar for insensitive is very low in this context.
I think with a fair and honest reading of his letter & the context that it came up in, its clear that he was trying to contribute in a positive way to the discussion & effort.
This is why the inconsistency between these two cases is so remarkable. Antisemitism, even if from years ago, and not related to company business, is pretty damning (esp for someone leading D&I efforts).
Meanwhile, an attempt, albeit executed in a politically naive way, to positively contribute to a discussion led to a firing & character assassination.
> I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone deaf and insensitive. The bar for insensitive is very low in this context.
If a fair and honest reading of his memo reveals that he had good intent, and the memo was scientifically accurate - and yet he was fired and publicly vilified for it, then isn't describing it as "tone deaf and insensitive" a form of victim-blaming?
It seems similar to pointing out that the victim of a sexual assault was dressed provocatively.
He suggested that biological differences between the sexes (rather than bias/discrimination) are the reason why women are underrepresented in the tech industry.
It’s not hard to understand why many people find this offensive.
Here’s the direct quote if you need it: “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.”
That’s why I used the word “suggested”, which is exactly what he did, in a section prominently titled “Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech”.
Parsing his sentence for tiny nuances like that isn't very helpful IMHO, but I'll indulge you.
His exact words are "these differences may explain". He doesn't say "these differences may PARTLY explain". If I say that A may explain B, the reasonable implication is that A may fully explain B. So, yes, he does suggest that non-bias causes are the only causes.
Just to be clear: I don't think this makes any real difference. The reaction to his email would've been the same either way. But the fact remains that your interpretation of the quote isn't supported by the actual words he used.
If a holistic reading of Damore's memo reinforced the idea that he was trying to deny the possibility of bias/discrimination, then perhaps you could call your inference a "reasonable implication." But the opposite is true, Damore repeatedly tries to represent the uncertainty and possibility of multiple causes. This is true even in the single sentence you quoted.
Given this, I do not think it is a reasonable implication to turn "may explain" to "may fully explain."
It's hard for me to believe this distinction doesn't matter given that his critics always seem to specifically call out his "denial" of bias/discrimination when they want to paint him in the most unflattering light (even the NYT: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1360626887035338752).
Non-native English user here, it seems the word "neurotic" has some connotation that the trait "neuroticism" doesn't? And that's why it's received so poorly?
"Neurotic" does have a negative connotation in common usage, but it's also the term used by personality psychologists, it's the 'N' in the OCEAN personality model. It means "risk averse".
Within the context in which the claim was made, it's "not even wrong". Lots of the claims in the Damore memo are similarly better to characterize as "not even wrong" rather than "false".
> Doesn't seem like something he would assert without a cite.
"... statements about immutable traits linked to sex - such as women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution - were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment..."
I think the blog post is definitely worse than Damore's email (although I thought it was pretty crappy in itself), but you're talking here about a blog post from 2007 and an email that was sent via company channels while he was working there.
I can only imagine Bobb was quite apologetic and a lot more aware of how terrible his conflations are there than he was in 2007. That's also 14 years of time to have solid evidence that he no longer holds such myopic views.
No Damore sent supposedly confidential feedback when solicited to do so by diversity trainers. That content so enraged the diversity staff they leaked it to the rest of the company. Perhaps Damore was naive in thinking the feedback about diversity training was welcome or confidential, but he definately did not send a company-wide email to anyone.
"Damore emailed his memo to the organisers of Google’s diversity meetings in early July. When there was no response, he started sending the document to Google’s internal mailing lists and forums, eager for a reaction."
This is the Guardian telescoping and generalizing with it's usual rigor.
There were two diversity trainings, both requesting feedback. There was no email there was a google doc, a link to which was sent as part of a feedback form in the trainings and then shared with a larger group called "skeptics" created for these types of discussions at the request of Damore's manager.
Read the timeline, so he shared it on a forum, he persisted with it through the month via various channels (who were all seemingly dismissing him, and I'd say that in itself is a huge failing on their end considering his autism), then he shared it another forum, several days later an anonymous source leaked it. So his legal testification of events isn't at all far from the Guardian's one paragraph summary.
Meanwhile, your initial summary of it was that he sent confidential feedback to the diversity team after a training session which pissed them off so much that they leaked it to screw with him.
> called "skeptics" created for these types of discussions at the request of Damore's manager.
No, at the suggestion of a random person who was a manager. Not damores manager.
And the skeptics group has nothing to do with diversity, is open to anyone, and by sharing with the group, functionally meant that the doc was emailed to hundreds or thousands of people.
He was using company resources to respond to a company request for him to provide feedback to a company event.
When the company asks you "tell me what you think about the content of our diversity training, we promise your response is confidential and we are interested in hearing what you have to say", and you respond with an evidence based argument that the diversity training is incorrect, then this is a very different situation from the head of diversity making public comments on a blog. Remember Damore was a non-management developer.
If you are going to fire people for their views, which is what apparently Google has no problem doing, then the Damore situation is much less justifiable than this situation and the person with the offending views was not even fired.
I don't have all the facts, but this article [1] seems to refute your accounting.
The memo was initially sent to Diversity Training, then after a non-response, Damore himself circulated to a wider internal audience.
According to Google [2], he was fired because portions of his memo were found to be a violation of Google's Code of Conduct, specifically "each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."
But again, this all misses the point--a 2007 blog post when you were not an employee is much different than sending a memo internally while on the clock.
That seems like a pretty shallow distinction considering Google's "bring your whole self to work" policy and cultural norms. People at Google regularly expressed far more controversial opinions than Damore's using company resources on company time. Further, the explicit rationale for canning Damore was not that he was expressing himself on company time or with company resources, but rather the patently false notion that his criticisms of the company constituted a hostile work environment.
Of course he was only fired because he was criticizing popular regressive policies and that provoked the wrath of employees who identify with those kinds of policies, and management decided it was easier to give in to the authoritarians (indeed, Google's management the authoritarian employees in question are probably not distinct groups--they certainly overlapped).
In Damore's case: He was asked to privately(?) provide his thoughts to the company(hence while employed and on company time).
Bobb's case: He decided to write a blog post. No-one asked him nor compelled him to share his thoughts.
My view is that firing people over views and opinions is dumb as long as they are not trying to force their views and opinions on other people in the workplace.
On the other hand, my view is that one's views and opinions are private and don't need to be spewed everywhere, hence why I have a dim view of social media(notes the irony/hypocrisy of posting this on HN).
That's not true. Damore posted his document to larger and larger making lists (it was essentially ignored on the first two or three) until it finally got a reaction. He shared it with thousands of people.
>Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years?
Simple explanation is Google's Democrat-leaning leadership are more aligned with Bobb than Damore (in the US, the left are generally anti-Israel while the right support it, and the left are pro-affirmative-action while the right oppose it).
This is the correct answer. The amount of anti-semitism shown during this recent Hamas Israel conflict in the woke left has been very worrying. We are likely to see a big resurgence of anti-semitism in the next period. It's more and more socially acceptable on the left.
I am curious how much actual vs perceived anti-semitism there is. I've seen more people conflate "Criticism of the state of Israel" with "criticism of Jewish people" and further still with "discrimination against Jewish people" than I have seen actual antisemitic sentiment on the left.
Street harassment or violence against visibly Jewish individuals has nothing to do with “criticism of Israel” though, and it did spike and has been increasing based on news articles and counts of reported incidents. https://www.jta.org/2021/05/21/united-states/antisemitism-in...
Why does this statement sound sexist? Is it true? I feel like I should disagree on principal, but honestly I've remotely no idea if this is true or false.
I thought the data was that there are differences, but they're so small that the average man and average woman overlap in the majority of their characteristics.
> women's innate biological tendency towards neuroticism
What the actual...
Are you serious right now? Men kill women and other men at much, much higher rates than women kill men or other women. What does that say about the the "innate biological tendencies" of men?
It is not universally acknowledged. Case in point, during the 2016 campaign, people asked if a woman could be trusted with the nuclear codes, but no one questioned whether a man could be trusted with them.
I was seeing how far people would go with Damore, and it really saddens me how much my comment was upvoted. People here are the type of people I work with... they all hold these views?
Of course, now that I've clarified, I expect the Damore-types to downvoted my comment, it peaked at +5.
Damore doubled down on defending the document and asserted his right to publish it. At that point, he made himself a walking Title VII violation and tied Google's hands. Whether management wanted to fire him or not, the legal cost of retaining him was going to exceed his value as an individual contributor.
As far as I can see, Bobb is doing everything he can to work with Google to avoid the further creation of a hostile work environment. It might not be enough, but for now it seems to be worth more to the company to keep him than to fire him.
There may be one aspect, however, where your observation about relative American tolerances for hostile-environment-creating speech matters. Hostile work environment is partially decided by fellow employee's reaction to behavior. If the average Googler is, in fact, less tolerant of biological essentialism than antisemitism, that could create a corporation where one speech is punished more hardly than the other. But I think we ought not to discount the reaction of the separate actors in these two stories once caught in the spotlight.
They are entirely consistent. They succumb to pressure from their far left employees, which don’t like insensitivity to the Jews, but abhor any take that conflicts with their “diversity = equal outcomes” nonsense. There is no room for thought even remotely consistent with conservatism, whether or not it’s consistent with scientific consensus.
> far left employees, which don’t like insensitivity to the Jews,
The far left doesn't like insensivity to Jews? Which far left are you thinking of? In the US, the far left is the most reliable source of public anti-Semitism. (Note specifically that I said public. I'm not going to try and divine whether rightwing anti-Semitism is worse in private, which it very well may be.)
The first link is about Germany. I specifically mentioned the US. It's also about anti-Semitic _violence_, not public statements, another thing that I made sure to clarify. I'd be pretty comfortable guessing that anti-Semitic violence is more right-skewed, incl in the US.
Your second link is interesting, thank you. Caputo in particular is a good example of anti-semitism among rightwing public figures. It doesn't dispute my impression that anti-Semitism (and other racism) on the left is much more acceptable in public statements than rightwing public anti-Semitism; it just claims that the media disproportionately focuses on leftwing anti-Semitism (possibly true).
I don't think complaining about Internet votes is particularly constructive, but this is more of an insight than a complaint: the downvotes on my original comment are a perfect reflection of how inanely most people engage with topics like these. There are "good guys" and "bad guys", and the "good guys" don't do any of the bad things. I don't use the phrase anti-Semitism reflexively, and think it's often wielded as a bludgeon, particularly in the context of criticism of the Israeli government. But the idea that one would be surprised at anti-semitism on the far left, like the comment I responded to, is ridiculous.
Damore held and advanced his beliefs while working for Google. Bobb went on his "rant" (actually just one instance) back in 2007 and has recanted his beliefs. So the disparate treatment is based on disparate behavior, which isn't on its own an inconsistency nor necessarily a policy change.
> Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years?
Nope, they're being very consistent if you use the correct ideological goggles, change Bobb's color palette and first name a little and we would have another Damore-like shitshow.
A blog post from 13 years ago.. which has since been removed.. is different from an email sent internally.
Hopefully nobody will hold me accountable to all the slashdot comments I wrote 10-15 years ago. Taken out of context, I've probably made fantastically horrific statements too.
Literally within the past day, along with the rest of his entire blog. This post was still online yesterday!
I also don't see any form of public acknowledgement or apology anywhere on his site or twitter. Perhaps he made one but I just can't find it. I'm not sure how people are affirmatively concluding that his views have changed so substantially since this post.
> Taken out of context
The full post speaks for itself. Nothing is taken out of context here; he's directly making offensive statements about all Jewish people based on stereotypes and actions of the Israeli government, which literally has no relation to the majority of Jewish people in the world.
Damore held and advocated for those beliefs so much so that he communicated them within the company at the time of his firing, and then legally disputed his firing.
Bobb wrote something which he has since recanted, 10 years ago, outside of Google's official channels?
Even within Israel there are of course fringe groups (e.g. Naturei Karta) and such, but unfortunately, the reality is that while it wouldn't suit most Jews for Judaism to be conflated with Zionism, it suits most zionists, so they try to further that notion.
Edit: To be clear I'm addressing the Judaism x Zionism aspect of this comment thread, not the blog post in the topic post.
Another part of the problem is when the criticizers forget that Zionism got a huge boost after pogroms on Jewish communities across Europe.
So, by criticising Zionism in a middle of a self defense operation in Gaza (as they see it), you look like you don't know its roots and look like they ignoring the Jewish right for self defense.
> However part of the problem is that zionists within the state of Israel work really hard to blur this distinction.
> So, by criticising Zionism in a middle of a self defense operation in Gaza (as they see it), you look like you don't know its roots and look like they ignoring the Jewish right for self defense.
Yes, this is an excellent example of exactly that sort of blurring that GP was talking about, thanks.
What do the military actions of the state of Israel have to do with the "Jewish" right to self defense? Many Jews don't live in Israel and Israel contains many non-Jews.
Speaking with these people on clubhouse recently, I can say they absolutely believe
1) Hitler was right,
but (contradictorily)
2) The Holocaust/Progroms were exaggerated,
and finally
3) there was never any instances of strife in the region before the forming of the state (and if there was it was always the Irgun and nobody else ever).
I’m not saying all people who criticize Israel believe the above but many of the people in “The Balance” room who criticized Israel appeared to.
Sadly the moment you call out Israel's human rights violations and ethnic cleansing you get automatically branded as antisemitic on all major social media and by most mainstream outlets too.
Yep, my experience too. Critics of Israel get called antisemitic too easily, moderated down here on HN too. On the other hand, people who defend atrocities committed by IDF get easy pass, openly defending stuff like: "the IDF is really gentle in killing civilians (collateral damage)", they nicely warn Palestinians "we're going to destroy your house, so please leave in 5 minutes", or "be silent while we bulldoze your house", etc.
Back on topic, the blog post title is definitely offensive, you can't label people like that. Maybe it was a bad tongue-in-cheek,
thinking about it, I don't think you can even say Israelis or citizens of Israel, since not all people have the same political views or support the same solution of the "Palestine problem".
We'll have to agree to disagree as I have yet to see an example of this on HN. In my experience 100% of submissions (and comments) critical of Israel gets spammed by people saying it is antisemitism.
Most but not all apparently, though I don't think it's as bad as the one you reply to seems to imply. E.g. there's already some 'a lot of anti-Israel is also antisemitism' sentiment creeping in in some comments, without data to back that up.
I think you misunderstood me (or I don't understand what you are trying to say here). I was just pointing out concrete examples of the 'You are in a tread this very moment that shows proof of his opinion' since you replied to that by asking 'In what way?'.
There is a lot of disingenuous stuff to go around, in all directions.
Antisemitism, antizionism and anti Israel sentiments relating to current events are distinct in purely theoretical terms. One does not imply the other and they often are distinct in practice. IRL though, they're very often intermingled.
The banal example is the PNA president's doctoral thesis, that the holocaust was faked to justify zionism. Most Israel critics and all antizionists define/use the term "zionism" entirely differently to how zionists use(d) it... Very often these draw from, or are similar to new world order conspiracy theories, most famously "the protocols." Speaking of old tropes, The Protocols are regularly republished in Islamic publications today. I ran across it once in a random indonesian magazine, for example. This obviously has roots in the Israel Palestine conflict, not antisemitism. Anti Semitism is not part of indonesian culture.. but intermingling.
It is true that anti-antisemitism organisations, jews, especially those with ancestral ties to europe can be paranoid about antisemitism and see it where it doesn't exist. It's also true that they often have a better eye, and recognise actual antisemitism where others don't. We know the old stereotypes and libels.
A lot of it is contextual. The vast majority of Israelis (myself included) do not suspect antisemitic motives in Palestinians, no matter what "Jews be like X" stuff they say. Antisemitism doesn't mean animosity towards Jews (or semites). It is a specific, european cultural phenomenon that persisted for a long time, and still exists. Many of its features or ostensibly banal. I'm not american, but I think "why is blackface racist" is an analogy of sorts.
For "proof" look at unmoderated comments sections of many/most anti-zionist posts. You'll find obvious, unmasked antisemitism very commonly.
This is not apologetics, nor does it mean that criticism of Israel is inherently anti semitic, invalid or unacceptable. It also doesn't mean that people are never unjustly accused of antisemtitism.
> The vast majority of Israelis (myself included) do not suspect antisemitic motives in Palestinians
Speak for yourself, I'm Israeli as well and most Israelis don't agree with you. There is antisemitism among Palestinians and there is Islamophobia among Israelis (though to a lesser degree in my opinion), wishing it away won't make it go away
Being Jewish is also multi-tiered because it's associated with both a religion and an ethnicity. I'd love to popularize being thought of Ashkenazi and not Jewish. I don't have a familial bond with Israel for probably 17 centuries and I don't really care if I ever did. My culture is more strongly associated with Eastern Europe and we were run out of town on a rail 100 years ago.
Yes, but the average American also thinks of an Ashkenazi Jew when they think of a Jew, and has no idea that Sephardim & mizrahim even exist, even if they don't know the words for any of it.
Ashkenazi is just an old hebrew word for German. If you strip away both Germany (the HRE, more specifically), and Judaism then the term doesn't have much meaning. At least, not as an identity that people have assumed historically.
Ashkenazi Jews before the war just called themselves Jews, with secular emancipationists often appending nationality.
The etymology of the word "Ashkenazi" is irrelevant (argument from etymology is a fallacy), as for a long time now the word has been used in a different, wider meaning. And Ashkenazi is a valid distinction versus e.g. Sephardi Jews: Ashkenazi Jews used a different reading for Hebrew, adopted different codes of dress, employed different structures of doctrinal authority and hermeneutics of Scripture, etc.
Naturally under the Ashkenazi umbrella there were people of different cultures (and different degrees of assimilation to the surrounding non-Jewish population), but those Jews were still more similar to one another than to non-Ashkenazi Jews.
I'm not arguing the etymology. I'm just saying that "Ashkenazi, as a demonym would be a new idea historically. I have no problem with people forming new identities.
It's also not about accent. There are distinct Sephardic reading styles. It's not technically doctrinally different either, at least formally. In religious terms, distinctions are termed is "customary/minhagim" which are lower on the hierarchy.
In any case, etymology is not far off the mark. Ashkenazi judaism isn't just named after germany, it originated in the HRE and Ashkenazim spoke a German dialect.
My grandmother was a native polish speaker, secular, and would not have identified as "askenazi" before the war. She identified as polish, strongly, and was as comfortable in a sephardic synagogue as an ashkenazi one. My grandfather, a Yiddish speaker, was more comfortable in an ashkenazi synagogue. Most are mixed, these days, whatever the majority is.
If you were your ancestors who were "run out of town on a rail" you would care very, very deeply about your familial bond to Israel. Like yours, my family was run out of town. Unlike yours, many in my family did not run fast enough. If only there was a place they could run to either as first resort or when quota had been reached in other places. If only there was a place that could make running a specific people out of town a very costly pursuit for those who were making those people run.
Israel is and will always remain the eternal Homeland of the Jewish people. Am Yisrael Chai.
I acknowledge the darkness of history and a desire for security in territory owned by the group you identify with. However, Israel is now repeating history by displacing present-day non-Jewish people who also have familial bonds to the territory.
Why? We were run out of Israel on a rail too. Ancestry of any kind means nothing to me. Sunk cost. As far as I'm concerned, my ancestral homeland is New York. And I'm pretty happy with that. My wife's parents are from Korea and they had a rough time there. They think of New York as home too. Speaking of new ethnic identities, I think of my kids as being Neoamerican.
That's the argument certain Native Americans use to say that they are the only ones whose home is America. Do you see how this argument makes you look?
Saying that Israel is a jewish homeland does not necessarily mean that it is not anyone else's home. It does to some, but they are an extreme minority. It's also contrary to our declaration of independence.
I'm not american, but I'll hazard a guess that "certain Native Americans" who take this position are also more often assumed than real.
The history of Israel is centered around a rebellion to prevent the other people who lived there from getting joint rule. Just look at the history - this is the document that prompted the Jewish insurgency in mandatory palestine. [0]
Let me hazard a guess that I know the history of my own country better than you. That doesn't make me right, but don't be condescending.
"history of Israel is centered around" - bollocks.
First, the main faction, which later became the government, did not "rebel" against the British Empire. In fact, they offered to contribute troops and enforced a truce on the grounds that the UK was fighting nazis. It was a minority faction that fought the British, both before and after this event.
Second, nothing about the white papers had anything to do with voting rights. There were no voting rights during the British period. Arabs had voting rights in Israel once Israel existed, but that's neither her nor there. The "rebellion" was about immigration restrictions. More to the point, it was about emigration restrictions, cutting off the last escape route out of the third reich.
Third, the "Palestinian Civil War," as the British called it, had started 10 years prior, shortly after the first partition of Palestine. It started when it became clear the French & British were going to chop the region into nation states and skedaddle.
> It was a minority faction that fought the British, both before and after this event.
The people actively involved in fighting are going to be a minority in any rebellion you would ever study.
> First, the main faction, which later became the government, did not "rebel" against the British Empire.
They were clearly opposed to the idea of a state with joint rule between different ethnic groups. What is the Jewish Resistance Movement if not a rebellion against the British mandate?
It is disingenuous to suggest that they did not "rebel", indeed, I have an older friend who has recounted blowing up British police stations as a member of the Palmach, which was not the minority faction.
> There were no voting rights during the British period. Arabs had voting rights in Israel once Israel existed, but that's neither her nor there
Most post-British former-colonies had majority rule voting rights. You're right (and I was wrong) that the white paper didn't explicitly address that, but it did address the creation of a multi-ethnic state.
You've got the history garbled. The Palmach enforced a truce during this period. I suppose you could call Etzel rebels. They aren't the ones who formed the State of Israel, or led the majority militia. There were also jerusalemite militias insurrecting. against British rule and bedouin rebels in Transjordan. A lot of people disliked the British presence. Palmach didn't like them either, but they declared a truce so long as they were fighting Nazism.
None of the fighting had anything to do with anything but migration, with the primary emphasis on getting Jews out of the Reich. Ships being returned to Italian ports were the main incendiary. You are caught up the the boilerplate, which preceded any document from that era. It was the British trying to square the circle of contradictory promises made to different factions. Jews & Arabs. Hashemites & Bedouins, etc.
It's also not the beginning of anything, neither conflict with the British or Arabs. It's certainly not what the country is "centred on." Most notably, it's the only time Jewish militias fought one another.
Who care about insurrection against Britain anyway? Why?
Sure, if you only look at the first 5 years after the white paper. Post-1945, the Palmach were actively bombing police stations & bridges, I know this for a fact, my friend/acquaintance was literally there doing this, he disliked Etzel/Irgun, but they were both fighting the British at that point.
There are plenty of non-zionist people who survived the Holocaust, it is disingenuous to paint caring about Israel as the natural, inevitable reaction to the Holocaust.
The whole concept of having a natural "homeland" because of your DNA/ethnicity/race is bullshit, land doesn't care what color your skin is or what religion you practice.
The majority were not zionist, including my family. The Holocaust changed that.
The premise of zionism was never "having a natural "homeland" because of your DNA." The premise of Zionism was that Jews could not stay in Europe, particularly in the age of nation states. Most commonly, this was referred to as "The Jewish Question."
The majority of secular Jews believed in emancipation. The majority of religious jews believed that only god could create the Jewish state. They were also skeptical of Zionism's desire for secular Jewish identity.
That said, my grandparents never referred to themselves as zionists. Before the war, zionism just meant "want a jewish state to exist." Foreign politicians (eg Churchill) were referred to as zionist for this reason. After the war, it generally meant exuberance about zionists political ideologies of the time. Founding Kibbutz, farming, hebrew language revival, etc. "Zionists" wanted to take hebrew names, for example. Today, "zionist" just means Israeli patriotism.
The Holocaust definitely changed how the majority of people felt, but it doesn't mean that I can't be critical of that sentiment.
Bundism also continued to exist after the Holocaust, albeit in a diminished form.
"premise of Zionism was that Jews could not stay in Europe" -> the creation of a state where citizenship is granted explicitly on the basis of your ethnicity, in the form of a "right of return" is 100% the premise I suggested.
I don't think you can't be critical of that sentiment.
I do dispute that it was a a sentiment at all, at least in grandparents' case. It wasn't ideology either. It was just a fact. They couldn't stay in europe. A right of return to a Jewish State^ was the only practical way to survive, besides conversion. My grandfather considered that route, as an atheist, but his first wife dissented. He also looked very Jewish. That was their conclusion att. You are free to disagree.
The majority of post war immigration was non ideological. There wasn't much daylight between ideological and non-ideological zionism, for the most part.
It also (in my opinion, this time) proved true for 1.5 million people who found that they could not stay in Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, etc. The new world wasn't an option for them, as it had been for many europeans.
I might agree with you that nation states, or the common form of nation state, isn't ideal. It is quite terrible in its purist form. However, I don't see why this criticism is so often leveled at Zionism exclusively. I'm also Irish, and have never heard such a criticism of Irish Republicanism. Besides that, lots of countries' have rights of return, ethnonational symbolism, etc.
Meanwhile, most Israelis supported South Sudanese and Kurdish independence for similar reasons. Me included. I think that Kurds have been screwed since the fall of the Ottomans, because they ended up without a state. Lebanon was founded on this premise. Pakistan. Lots of examples
^Zionism originally called for a homeland, not necessarily a state, and hoped to achieve this as cultural autonomy and migration rights under Ottoman sovereignty. Nation States were not the norm, when zionism was first conceived.
I don't know your grandparents, so really can't hope to prevail in any discussion about what their sentiments were.
I don't dispute that most of this immigration was non-ideological, I wasn't trying to suggest that it wasn't. Nor am I opposed in any way to Jewish immigration to Israel.
Moreover, racial & ethnic separatism is a very common and understandable reaction to oppression. But I still remain critical of it - just as I would be if Black people in the United States established a separate Black state in North America.
The crime, in my view, was the insurgency, bombings, and driving out of the British following their announcement that they planned to transition Palestine into an independent, multi-racial state with majority-rule. Fighting against that goal in order to form an ethno-state is, in my view, analogous to what the white minority in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia pulled after similar British announcements around their colonial state. The primary difference is that Israel remains, Rhodesia no longer does.
> I'm also Irish, and have never heard such a criticism of Irish Republicanism. Besides that, lots of countries' have rights of return, ethnonational symbolism, etc.
My understanding is that Irish republicanism is not based on the same principles as Zionism, namely there is no opposition for a multi-ethnic/racial state with majority democratic rule.
There is quite a lot of similarity between the two movements, current antagonism aside. Language revival being the most commonly noted. IDK what you would consider "principles of," but they're both nation state ideologies of the time... as opposed to republican universalism (a la france) of previous centuries.
It is also true that ireland was segregated along religious/national lines, and that protestants in ROI (I am catholic-jewish-atheist, as the old joke goes) are nonexistent today. They were about 25% before independence. Driving out protestants is emphatically not a principle of irish republicanism. Many/most founders of Irish Republicanism were, in fact, protestant. Most emigrated, moved north or converted in the generation following independence. There is some dark, rarely mentioned parts of our history of that time.
I'll also note that driving out arabs is emphatically not a principle of zionism, never was. The coming of the nation state had other ideas. zionism started in the ottoman period, and aspired to cultural autonomy of a kind that was practiced there. A nation state goal was adopted after France and Germany decided this was the future of the region.
People seem to forget how mixed Europe was before the wars, before nation states. Poland was about 50% polish. Jews, Germans and other minorities made up the rest. Its now 99% Polish-catholic. My grandfather's region (now eastern Slovakia) were Slovaks, Jews, Czechs and Ukrainians in a "majority-minority" mix. Now 99% Slovak. All of mainland europe shares this history.
When the Ottoman empire fell, giving way to nation states, same. Greek & Turkish ethnic "exchange." The Syriac & Armenian genocide. Yugoslavia & multiethnic arab countries segregated more recently. India, despite Gandhi's efforts. Etc. Empires were more multicultural than the current states.
I'll note that the philosophical distinction between universalism and ethno nationalism is barely noticeable in actual history.
Re: racial & ethnic separatism
Seeing independence as synonymous with racial & ethnic separatism is a leap. But, as I said, but if it applies to Israel it applies to half the world. In Israeli law, now and since founding, there is no preference or limits on any citizen. The only preferential law is the right of return. Actual discrimination, especially during wars, is a real thing. It is a failure though, not an ideal.
Rhodesia practiced apartheid and only allowed whites to vote. Israel never practiced apartheid, and all citizens can vote.
During the 1948 war about >1m palestinians became refugees, most ending up in the Jordanian or Egyptian parts of Palestine. >1m european jewish refugees arrived from europe and >1m arab-jewish refugees who were forced out of various countries. Thats how the demographics came to be. There was never a time when israel, as an independent state, had a jewish minority.
Despite the downvotes this post has a point - if you want to protect your religion/ethnicity you have to do it yourself.
Rise of anti-semitism in Europe - nothing is done
Jews seek safety in other countries - immigration denied
Holocaust happens - world sympathizes and moves on
Israel is under no illusions as to what happens if they don’t have a home and defend it. I kind of don’t blame them for ignoring the worlds criticisms.
Generally we don't justify US military funding on the basis of "protecting the White race." The strongest military in the world will be representing a majority non-white nation in a decade or two.
>Generally we don't justify US military funding on the basis of "protecting the White race."
Someone should probably tell all the people invaded and oppressed by the USA that it's gotten woke now and white supremacist settler-colonialism is over.
I have absolutely no interest in protecting my ethnicity. Plenty of ethnicities have gone extinct and I fully expect most extant ethnicities (and religions) to fade away eventually too. No one will be upset when there are no more Jews any more than they miss Manichaens or Hittites. Borders and superstitions serve no practical purpose. To be clear, I'm not advocating genocide or violence of any kind. I'm just saying attrition is inevitable.
The author may have a valid point, but expressed it in a condescending manner. If a Jewish diversity officer wrote a blog post saying "If I were black, I would prioritize fixing black-on-black crime" as a criticism of BLM, would you give them the same defense?
That said, it's still a dumb thing to be cancelled over. Everyone has been an asshole to someone else at some point in our lives. Why do people feel the need to socially shame people publicly for an offense over a decade ago?
>Why do people feel the need to socially shame people publicly for an offense over a decade ago?
Because they're playing a game of Moral Supremacy one-upsmanship. In the long run, everyone who plays this game must lose, because were all humans. But in the short term this game can be quite lucrative in terms of attention getting, internet points, and money.
His bigotry goes beyond that. Kamau Bobb's blog posts were almost exclusively about White and Jewish people, and the theme throughout is the mistreatment by them of Black Americans. There is a very clear tone of distaste for white and Jewish people in his posts.
Search for the word "white" or "Jew" in his blog [1] posts to see for yourself.
Since Google supports "cancel culture", Kamau Bobb needs to be fired.
> The cost of elite education for our children is extraordinary. I dropped my beautiful black star into a sea of white children and it hurt.
> among the increasing number of white women holding leadership roles in the academy and in the public and private sector, they surely see younger versions of themselves in the next generation of white girls. It is a natural instinct to want the very best for them.
> In a nation with a history such as ours, that imagery is connected to a much longer and darker legacy – a legacy where white men have abused black women and girls with impunity.
> I do not need to be convinced that diversity and excellence are intimately interwoven. But what of my White counterparts? I really do not know how White people learn about Black or Hispanic people in ways that are honest
> Perhaps it is time to focus the inquiry on our White counterparts. They may well feel marginalized by the shortage of academic inquiry into the complexity of their changing American citizenship alongside people of color. Their sense of self-efficacy may be undermined by their pending loss of majority status.
> I was learning about the resilient spirit of black people in America in the context of white American barbarism.
> It is still true that white people kill black people in America with impunity.
Possibly, but the second statement points at the contrast between being a Jew and being an Israeli. For the "global lead on diversity strategy and research" of one the world's giant corporations, it's remarkably insensitive, of course, but then again, written 13 years ago.
People can be critical of the state of Israel, but they should not be antisemitic.
Theoretically, I guess, but it's really strange how the one tiny country in the whole world that has a Jewish-dominated society is so often a target for complete destruction.
Many of the same countries that have all but eliminated their own Jewish populations somehow find Israel's very existence to be unpalatable, going after them in the UN, in their state-sponsored media, and through military/terroristic acts.
So, sure. You could be critical of Israel but not be antisemitic. But as a matter of probability, a lot of people who criticize Israel are also antisemitic.
>But as a matter of probability, a lot of people who criticize Israel are also antisemitic.
This is a meaningless statement though. We can expect that nearly anyone that's antisemitic would be critical of a country run and mostly inhabited by Jewish people.
It becomes a problem when people try to extrapolate that fact to dismiss every criticism of Israel as "this guy's probably just antisemitic."
Its only true as a matter of probability throughout the entire world because its true in a particular region that has an enormous population padding those statistics.
There is antisemitism everywhere in some amounts and it is wrong like all forms of bigotry. However, in many countries, such as the US, you are just as likely to run into a person that criticizes Israel for reasons that have nothing to do with the religion of its inhabitants. You are still free to think that they are wrong, but people should stop using accusations of bigotry as a weapon to silence people simply for disagreeing with them. If you want to call someone a bigot, its pretty important to make sure you are right about it.
And for the record when it comes to that Israel/Palestine conflict I think neither side is even close to being innocent. I don't give a shit about their religions I just want families to stop being murdered by the actions of two shitty governments.
"people should stop using accusations of bigotry as a weapon to silence people"
Huh? Are you seriously calling someones words who feels victimized, a weapon? Are you seriously holding fear of actual violence to an unsubstantiated standard?
"If you want to call someone a bigot, its pretty important to make sure you are right about it."
Please show me one other form of bigotry accusation you hold to the same standard.
This perspective is almost certainly a blindspot. Im not certain - but I definitely would not rely on you to stand up or defend folks from actual antisemitism.
How do people even think, let alone say these things and not get called out by everyone immediately?
Do you actually and critically think this is true or even appropriate to say?
>Huh? Are you seriously calling someones words who feels victimized, a weapon? Are you seriously holding fear of actual violence to an unsubstantiated standard?
The idea of figuratively describing something as a weapon isn't new or unusual. I'm not even sure what you mean by the second sentence. I was talking about people defaulting to claims of bigotry at any sign of criticism. If every criticism of Israel, even legitimate criticisms not coming from a sense of bigotry, makes a person feel victimized then there is something wrong with that person. If words cannot be used as a weapon exactly how do criticisms of Israel make a person feel victimized?
>Please show me one other form of bigotry accusation you hold to the same standard.
I hold all forms of bigotry accusations to the same standard. The example given was basically "a lot of people exist that are antisemitic so we can assume that criticism of Israel is probably antisemitic." Which is an argument that's basically uses the same sloppy logic that actual bigots use to justify their beliefs. Calling someone a bigot can have severe consequences for that person whether they are actually bigots or not. The key part of that sentence is that it can have consequences when they are not guilty. Yet people throw accusations around assuming someone's intentions simply because they said something they don't like. That's wrong so its important to try to only make those accusations against people that are actually bigots. I'm not sure how that's controversial. Some people do this because they genuinely think that anyone that criticizes a thing they like is a bigot. However, some people know better and intentionally falsely accuse people of being antisemitic because they know that it makes people afraid to voice their opinions. Thus, I called it a figurative weapon.
>but I definitely would not rely on you to stand up or defend folks from actual antisemitism.
Well whether you rely on me or not I will do the right thing if a genocidal antisemitic political party attempts to take over US politics. In the meantime, if I see people doing bigoted things I will stand up for people being targeted. Like I always have. This is kind of what I was talking about though, you seem to have labelled me as an enemy of yours simply because I suggested that there are people that criticize Israel for reasons other than antisemitism. There is no government in the world that doesn't sometimes deserve to be criticized.
>Do you actually and critically think this is true or even appropriate to say?
I don't understand. Are you saying its impossible to be critical of Israel without being antisemitic?
To be clear, what I was saying wasn't intended as a defense of the person OP was about. I think that the Google employee's letter was poorly worded and offensive. I don't know if he's antisemitic, but the phrasing saying that "Jews have an insatiable appetite for war" comes across as bigoted to me. It could be the result of poor phrasing causing someone to say something that they didn't mean, but it might not be. I can't blame someone for interpreting his statement as antisemitism because it was an overtly antisemitic statement. He could be a different person today, but no one made him publish that.
"I was talking about people defaulting to claims of bigotry at any sign of criticism."
The idea that antisemitism is used to silence criticism of Israel is meant to do exactly that, victim shame them into silence - its an outrageous accusation without any factual basis.
I don't know anyone that defaults that way about every criticism of Israel...but there are many types of critiques that are clearly antisemitic - for example blaming Jews or even Israelies collectively for their governments actions - or holding Israel to a standard you dont hold anyone else to or leveling criticism at Israel with no attempt to even get the facts on the ground correct.
Can a claim of antisemitism be taken at face value without accusing the victim of weaponizing it to silence criticism of Israel?
Why are you looking for reasons to dismiss accusations of anti semitism?
Why isn't your default compassion and understanding?
This. You can be critical of Israel's actions. You can also be critical of Israel's existence specifically as a nation that discriminates against non-Jewish citizens. None of this means you are an anti-semite who wants the destruction of Israel, let alone Jews.
By and large, for example, the UN security council resolutions that the US keeps single-handedly vetoing are not calling for any destruction. They simply condemn Israel's violent behavior.
This is technically true but ignores the complexity of the situation, which is that Israel is essentially at war with groups such as Hamas, which call for Israel's destruction and deny its right to exist. When Hamas starts firing rockets at Israeli civilians, it just isn't clear what response critics prefer Israel show. Israel has little choice but try to destroy and degrade the infrastructure used to fire those rockets. Israeli violent behavior is in response to attack on its civilian population. Ignoring this while criticizing Israel seems strange to me
We will never know but I believe this current conflict was provoked by Israel with heavy police presence outside the mosque in Jerusalem.
For what it is worth I have visited Israel and the West Bank, and my sympathies are with Israel as the only democracy in the region.
That does not mean I cannot criticize when it acts wrongly. Sure the whole conflict is incredibly difficult with no easy solutions, but some people want to use it to stay in power.
Of course Hamas is not better, but that is not the expectation for Israel.
Of course one can. Except for the fact that often people scapegoat their criticisms with a line like I'm not antisemtic, I'm just criticizing the government. Which typically comes just before an anti semetic comment is made.
It's also an entirely an uneven playing field. No other country is condemned and attacked by the international community as often, and as widely despite other countries' far worse offense.
Criticisms of Israel is unique and direct and no other country is held to the same standard.
How much of a joke is it that Saudi Arabia was on the human rights commission at the UN for so long. Or the lack of similar statements against China for their decimation of Uighurs.
This isn't a finger blaming game, its recognizing that the UN demonstrates a massive bias against a single country with standards that no other nation has to face
Your comment is a straw man because I never claimed that you couldn't be critical of Israel but not be antisemitic. In fact, I said it's theoretically possible. I just find that in practice, people who show their hand at being antisemitic seem to try to hide behind the whole anti-zionist/antisemitic distinction.
Based solely on the merits, you'd think that Israel's ethno-state bona fides wouldn't be any worse than dozens of other countries'. In fact, they're far less problematic. You can be Arabic/Muslim in Israel and rise to the highest levels of government with full rights of citizenship. I can point to many other countries where that wouldn't be the case for ethnically/religiously mal-aligned individuals. But somehow those other countries aren't constantly in the news cycle for defending their ongoing right to exist.
I believe you, but too many people use the line, I'm not antisemitic, I'm just criticizing the government as a scapegoat to excuse obvious antisemitic behavior.
The vast majority of people are criticizing the government not the population. It’s unusual for people to consider a nation’s population rather than their government because a nation’s population is largely irrelevant. It’s not random Americans that have a history of overthrowing democratically elected governments, it’s the US government that does so etc.
Israel’s government, like all governments, does plenty of things people disagree with and as such often gets legitimate criticism on it’s own merits.
Sure, but Americans aren't randomly attacked when abroad or out doing normal things, like getting food out or drinks.
And yet, Jews are today. It wasn't too long ago that people marched in Charlottesville chanting jews will not replace us. Now there's a massive rise in violence
> Sure, but Americans aren't randomly attacked when abroad or out doing normal things, like getting food out or drinks.
Yes, they are. The US State Department issues travel advisories over such issues. It’s safer to travel in many places as a Canadian rather than American.
That’s true but severely understates antisemitism both historically and currently. Americans does not and have not faced the kind of discrimination that Jews have.
Jews and Israel should have no connection. Attacking Jews for what Israel does is just incredibly wrong.
Let’s be very clear, any criticisms of Israels actions should not apply to Jews as a race, people or religion and even more so not be used as an excuse to harm or treat any single Jewish person negatively.
I've not met many. But I have met plenty of people who deliberately conflate criticism of Israel with criticism of Jews in order to easily dismiss criticism of the former.
I'm part Jewish.
I disagree with this. There are certain things that the Israeli government have done that are worthy of being criticised - the same can be said for every government in the world. Brushing off all criticism as antisemitism is unhelpful.
There's plenty of states with ongoing ethnic strife, and they do face a lot of deserved criticism. However I can't really recall popular, internationally supported calls for their abolition altogether.
The age of state again has not much to with it: for example Lebanon is younger than Israel and has a rich history of ethnic/sectarian conflict. Now there must be people who want to abolish Lebanon, but somehow you never hear them.
What people usually find particularly offensive is the de-facto annexation and settlement of territories that exceed the UN resolution that created the State of Israel, along with the complete imbalance in both military power and casualties of both sides. It's not just ethnic/sectarian conflict. In many aspects, it would qualify as genocide.
Well, Syria is just across the border with genocide (not just as rhetorical device) very much ongoing. Military imbalance a plenty. Anyone up for dissolving it yet?
Hell, even outright Nazism wasn't deemed a reason enough to dissolve Germany (although at some point it was seriously considered).
I don't think anyone is advocating for the dissolution of Israel. While the Syrian government is doing appalling things to its own people, I don't think we want to use "We're better than Syria" as the bar here.
The Israeli government and its people need to take a hard look at what it is doing, whether they'd like to be subjected to it by a foreign military power, and how they'd react against it. If they wouldn't like it, and if they would react violently against it, then I believe we'd have a lesson to learn and understand what Palestinians are experiencing and why a more peaceful solution would be a more constructive way to move forward. Some of the pain points can be immediately addressed.
And Germany was, in fact, dissolved into two smaller and very different countries for a long, long time after WWII. Their own wounds and the memory of the horrors they perpetrated, and the lesson that very normal people can do unimaginable evil is a tough one to learn, but one we must learn nevertheless if we decide to be better than our ancestors.
Germany was partitioned between rivalling occupation forces, and neither did dissolve the bit of German state they held on. There is little doubt that either party would have preferred the whole Germany on their side, but dissolution was never on the table.
And yes, plenty people do advocate for dissolution of Israel, it's in fact a mainstream (but not the only one) position among pro-Palestinian activists.
I don't think anyone is advocating for the dissolution of Israel
That's exactly what many advocate. It's in the charter political documents of the Palestinian ruling authorities. Major US politicians hold this position who receive a lot of political and media support. Notable celebrities have tweeted/said "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". What do you think they mean by that besides the utter destruction of the state of Israel?
whether they'd like to be subjected to it by a foreign military power
Since the Israelis only are responding to being attacked, I fail to see how they're in any way being hypocritical.
>Sorry. I meant nobody respectable is suggesting that. Not even the respectable Palestinians.
BDS is doing so precisely in the guise of
>A single-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians share the same rights and live under the same democratic government [and gerrymandered borders and immigration policy to create a Palestinian majority]
We can’t continue with forced evictions and settlement of occupied territories like it’s nothing because it’s wrong and serves as an excuse to radicalism for increasingly violent responses.
There is an elephant in the room and we must acknowledge it’s there so we can deal with it.
So only True Scotsman are to be considered respectable? Rashida Talieb, Ilhan Omar, and other overt anti-semites who appear regularly on national media aren't "respectable"? Let me know when they're abandoned by the media and their own party like Steve King was for making racist-adjacent statements.
A single-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians share the same rights and live under the same democratic government.
The attempt to make this about body counts and not the initiation of hostile military action baffles me. But I disagree with "ineffective". People in Israel are being injured and dying in rocket attacks. That's not ineffective. And then if you want to think this through a bit more, you'd realize that the degree to which it is ineffective is due to the fact that Israel counter-attacks to destroy the ability of Hamas/PLO terrorists to attack them. If they didn't respond to the degree that they do, there would be more Israeli casualties.
Nothing to do with Israel's recent creation, many states have been created recently without them being targeted by neighbours for mass destruction and genocide.
What makes it strange is sense of normalcy people (sorry, I mean racists) have about a sense of white / Islamic supremacy over Jews, that makes them think it's ok to say things like 'we will wipe every Jew off the face of the planet' etc.
This tactic of saying "oh try to find Israel on the map, it's so tiny, oh poor state of Israel" is often pushed by Zionists, also often trying to link anti-zionism with anti-semitism.
I saw a talk with Ruth Wisse, a professor at Harvard University pushing this narrative.
If Israel weren't Jewish, nobody would care about it. You can go line by line describing Israel and its so-called "atrocities" and I'll show you countries that are far more appropriately accused of those types of atrocities... yet those other countries never make it into the international news cycle.
I'm not Jewish. I'm not religious.
But the singling out of Israel by political/antisemitic forces has not escaped my notice.
China vs the Uighurs and Tibetans? India vs Pakistanis? Pakistan vs Indians? Russia vs Chechnya? Spain vs the Basque people? Canada in the 80s vs native people (we had an article just the other day)? The US vs black people?
Plenty of countries get criticised for their treatment of minorities when they do something wrong.
You're making my point. China is literally wiping out the Uighurs. There's no hair-splitting or propagandizing about it. They're committing actual genocide. But besides a few mentions here and there, the international community is doing nothing about it. If it were at all proportional, the stories and condemnation should be in the news every day.
But instead, we see more media coverage in a single day of Israel's counter attacks from rocket fire than we do for a year of Uighur genocide.
The news gets bored. It's why settlements don't make the news but it makes the news when it rises to armed conflict. Israel has already been pushed out of the news cycle by Belarus here.
There were plenty of news stories about the Uighurs last year.
The international community is not doing much about Israel either.
Nah, what will happen is that after renewables replace oil and the Palestinians keep firing rockets, people like you will find a new spin to claim that some grave injustice is being done because the Israelis defend themselves.
Anyone who looks at the power dynamic knows the truth of the saying: If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, they would be slaughtered.
> But as a matter of probability, a lot of people who criticize Israel are also antisemitic.
Agreed. In practice, antizionists (folks who believe that Israel shouldn't exist) virtually are virtually always antisemitic. Whatever you think of him, Bret Stephens makes a pretty insightful analogy that it's like how there could theoretically be segregationists that aren't racist, but they don't exist in practice.
That said, there's a distinction to be made between antizionism (i.e., "Israel shouldn't exist") and criticism of Israel (e.g., "Israel's settlement policy violates human rights"). The former is de facto (but not de jure) antisemitism while the latter is not.
EDIT: I'm getting a lot of downvotes for this, I'm guessing I've offended a lot of people who identify strongly with antizionism/antisemitism. My intention wasn't offense, but rather observation. That said, I make no apology for any offense taken--enjoy my Internet Points! (:
You are terribly correct. It reminds me of the left claiming Islam is a peaceful religion because only a ~third (whatever the numbers they allege) support violence and a much smaller fraction perpetrate it. Unfortunately, your claim is unquantifiable, so, as evidenced by your replies, the people who hate Israel vehemently deny any anti-semitism.
If you're taking the position that the actions of some people who follow some version of a religion to be defining for it, every religion is the religion of war, including atheism.
At that point, it's not a very interesting statement
I'm most certainly not "taking the position that the actions of some people who follow some version of a religion to be defining for it", and I'm perplexed as to how you reached that conclusion. That's quite a ridiculous claim and quite a ridiculous inference as well. But we agree that that particular statement is not very interesting!
A colony of what empire exactly? Jews were a group of massacred refugees.
> massive support from the United States
There is no massive support from the United States actually, at least not monetary. There is military help that is needed because Israel's enemies want to destroy it, still to this day. And it's not that big compared to Israel's gdp (4 billion to 400 gdp = 1%) and is completely meaningless to the U.S budget. The other support is vetoing U.N decisions that constantly target Israel. Which is needed for the same reason the military aid is needed.
> Israel (the colonial ethnostate) should not exist
Should the U.S exist? Last I checked California used to be part of Mexico - why isn't it being returned to it's rightful owners? How about West Europe? Maybe it should be dismantled and have all it's assets transferred to Africa? I've never heard anyone say stuff like that but when it comes to Israel sure let's destroy the evil ethno state.
The US doesn't have a law that says "you can immigrate and be a citizen but only if you are white"
Also, the US wasn't born out of a revolution against equal voting rights for people regardless of national origin, Israel, like Rhodesia at the time, was.
In both cases, minority groups rebelled against British attempts to impose majority-rule democracy, Israel has just succeeded more than Rhodesia did at the time.
I thought it was the UN that decided the country should be split into two states, where one would have a Jewish majority and the other would have an Arab majority. When did people rebel against imposing a majority-rule democracy?
Last time I checked Israel just changed the prime minister after having an election, while Palestine had its last election in 2006 and chose a party that literally killed its opponents.
I'm on my phone, so the history lesson is going to be pithy.
The Jewish insurgency in mandatory Palestine was prompted by British indications that it was going to create a multi-racial, democratic state in Palestine, as they did in many of their other colonies once they departed. I believe there was a policy white paper published but I don't recall the name.
After substantial British civilian/government worker deaths at the hands of insurgent bombs (ie. King David Hotel bombing), the British retreated and gave it to the UN, who did the partition.
> Palestine had its last election in 2006 and chose a party that literally killed its opponents.
I may be misremembering, but I believe a large reason elections haven't been held since then was because the party elected in 2006 was ejected in a coup by the party supported by the US and Israel.
So, 14 years since an election in Palestine, and Netanyahu has been prime minister for 14 years.
> The US doesn't have a law that says "you can immigrate and be a citizen but only if you are white"
Israel doesn't have that law either, there are black Jews and Indian Jews and white Jews as you probably know. Israel is an anomaly because of 2000 years of persecution that culminated in the holocaust. Maybe when there is no more any antisemitism (yeah, right) Israel will happily dismantle itself. Until that day it seems to me quite clear why Jews need a nation state.
> Should the U.S exist? Last I checked California used to be part of Mexico - why isn't it being returned to it's rightful owners?
Yes, the U.S. is also a colonial state. Not all states owe their existence to colonialism and occupation, but the U.S. is definitely one of them. We committed a genocide on an unimaginable scale, and took all the line of the people whose territory this was rightfully theirs. Not a good example of states to emulate.
> How about West Europe? Maybe it should be dismantled and have all it's assets transferred to Africa?
Its colonial territories in Africa should have been, and were, transferred to Africa.
Who is actively calling for the dismantling of the United States? No one. But Israel is fair game.
> Its colonial territories in Africa should have been, and were, transferred to Africa.
How is that enough though when comparing with the much more minor "crimes" Israel did? Israel displaced 700000 people as part of a brutal civil war where it also suffered major casualties. Belgium, Germany, France and others destroyed millions of Africans and robbed their nations. How is it enough for them to simply retreat from their colonies? If you actively call out for Israel to be dismantled I would expect for Europe to at least give away 50% of it's wealth to the people it destroyed. That sounds somehow fair to me or at least morally consistent.
If what happened 73 years ago in Palestine must not be forgiven I don't see why everybody else gets a pass.
> Who is actively calling for the dismantling of the United States? No one. But Israel is fair game.
Because we "won". There are almost no indigenous people left in the United States, because we killed nearly all of them and destroyed their culture and civilization. I hope that this does not happen to Palestinians. For those indigenous people that remain, I definitely support greatly expanded rights and territory.
> If you actively call out for Israel to be dismantled I would expect for Europe to at least give away 50% of it's wealth to the people it destroyed.
One could argue on the number and logistics, but I absolutely support stronger European reparations for the damage done by colonialism.
> For those indigenous people that remain, I definitely support greatly expanded rights and territory.
Huh? What expanded rights some tiny resorts? Give them everything back - it's theirs. Even if there are only 1 million of them left make a referendum and ask them if you are allowed to stay.
Also California is Mexican!
Boy we have a lot of fixing to do!
But basically I can infer from what you're saying this isn't about morals at all but about how strong you are. The U.S is super strong so no one calls for it's destruction (at least not seriously). Israel is tiny and weak and surrounded by enemies that want to see it go down. That's what this is about.
It's not about taking example from the US, it's about how popular it is to say that Israel shouldn't exist while many other countries had a much worst history. Not many of the places people live in now were empty when their ancestors arrived there.
More importantly, I keep hearing about the Israeli colony and am a truly interested to know what empire my family are representing. As far as I heard they were massacred pretty much everywhere and came to Palestine with literally nothing, some being jailed in Cyprus by the Brits to prevent them from entering the country. No one told them about the big empire that was backing them up.
Seeing how the actual Declaration of Independence promulgated by the actual would-be founders of Palestine states that "The State of Palestine shall be an Arab State and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation", I think you failed to clear your non-ethnostate theory with the relevant people.
> The Palestinians in Gaza never controlled the land.
Doesn't that just mean “they were never powerful”? If they were living there, does it matter who was in power? English rule never stopped the Welsh being Welsh, or Wales from “belonging to” them. (I don't know how applicable this analogy is to this situation – probably not very, given there isn't a territorial dispute over who should have Wales.)
it’s a colonial ethnostatePalestine is not an ethnostate
That's a strange view on the situation. Let's say I give you a choice.
1. Be a practicing Jew living in Palestinian-controlled territory.
2. Be a practicing Muslim living in Israel.
I'd definitely choose 2, choosing 1 would be suicide.
who rightfully controls the area occupied by Israel
The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?
> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?
My maternal ancestry is of the Bering Strait islander and First peoples. Does that make me an indigenous person for the entirety of Americas and thus give me the right to control and occupy the entirety of America and expel all the "recent" migrants? Because that's the equivalent of claiming a blond haired blue eyed German Ashkenazi with a couple of generations in New York is somehow indigenous to the area of historic Judea and thus has the right to expel a different tribe of Semitic people who have only been there for say what, a thousand years?
I'm no expert but doesn't the Torah directly say that the Jews took Canaan from the Canaanites as directed by Yahweh? Wouldn't that make Canaanites the actual indigenous people of that territory? So would Canaanites thus be accorded the right to control and occupy that territory using your logic?
> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory.
No. Even according to their/our [1] own mythology, the indigenous people were the Canaanites.
[1] I am ethnically Jewish. My parents were both born in Israel (except that it was still Palestine at the time). I grew up speaking Hebrew. But I do not self-identify as a Jew and I am highly critical of the conduct of the state of Israel. It has quite clearly become an apartheid state, and think that is reprehensible. But I am also a descendant of Holocaust survivors, so I am mindful of the very real historical oppression of Jews, and the importance of Israel is pushing back against that oppression. It's a very thorny problem with very few unambiguous protagonists. But no matter how you slice it, promulgating falsehoods like that Jews are the indigenous people of Palestine is unhelpful.
> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?
This is a fictional narrative constructed to justify the state of Israel. It has no basis in historical fact -- there never existed a Jewish ethnostate in the territory known as Palestine, this is a modern construction. Regardless, I don't believe in ethnostates -- of any ethnicity, anywhere.
> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?
When? The region of Palestine was majority Muslim when Israel was founded. That your ancestors lived in a region doesn't give you any rights to it. If anyone has a birthright to a region, it's those who were born there and no one else.
If you believe "Israel should not exist", you have to account for what would happen if it didn't. What would happen to the Jews who live in the Hamas-controlled "multicultural, multi-ethnic state" that would inevitably replace it? We all know the answer: they'd be killed. That's why people who call for the non-existence of Israel (anti-Zionists) are considered anti-semitic. If you support a position that leads inevitably to the death or displacement of millions of Jews, you are an anti-semite.
I never said I support a genocidal Arab ethnostate, that's extremely offensive. I support no ethnostates, no colonialism, and no occupation in the region.
Ok, but what you fail to recognize, is that the best way to do what you want, is for there to be 2 separate, independent states, controlled by each of their respective population.
A single state solution is not going to have good consequences.
Yes, except for the "westerners" bit. People from everywhere conflate this issue - even people living in the region. Check out The Ask Project on youtube, tons of people on all sides of the issue are misguided or simply wrong - and they live there.
Can you quote where exactly they are "conflating the state of Israel and Jewish people and lumping it all together."?
>Plenty of Jewish people that live both inside and outside of Israel are critical of the state.
Is this not exactly what this thought experiment of an article is talking about? Trying to put themselves on the shoes of a Jewish person who is critical of Israels politics
Honest question here - how do you criticize Judaism the religion without being called a bigot? Christians and Muslims are fair game for discourse. Is the Jewish religion and its followers not fair to criticize? They have many of the same arcane and backwards beliefs as other Abrahamic religions.
I don't know how to answer your question, but a thing to keep in mind is that Jewish people are usually less than 1% or 2% of the population. For example (in France), I'm worried about Christian and especially Muslim homophobia, but Jewish not so much because it's way easier to navigate around. I don't even have anecdotal evidence of Jewish presence or absence of homophobia because I didn't meet many of them.
Edit because I realized I may not have been clear: what I mean is that in a lot of country Christian and Muslims are in power. For Jewish people, it's the case in one country, and there's not much big minorities like there are Muslim minorities in Chrisian countries and the opposite.
Being jewish does not mean you are a zionist. Being a zionist does not mean you are jewish (many evangelicals in the US's "south" are staunch zionists).
You can want the palestinians to have basic human rights and still be pro-Israeli state.
Internal and external criticism is important and welcome, but when the only democratic country in the hostile region, that's constantly fighting for its existence, becomes the world's punching bag, you have to wonder why it is. Does UN's human rights council obsession with Israel [1], while turning a blind eye on real atrocities in murderous regimes like Iran, North Korea, Turkey, Russia, etc., makes sense to anyone with a common sense?
BTW, I don't think most people who use the term Zionism in a negative context actually understand what it means. It's just the desire of Jews to live in its historic homeland - Israel, in a peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.
How so? I just gave the gist of the term Zionism, as described by Theodore Herzl, the father of the movement. The demonization of this innocent ideology is by itself a form of anti-Semitism, a modern one.
Of course not, only those who choose to adopt this ideology, I didn't assume anything about ALL Jews. But that's not the point, my point is that those who identify as anti-Zionists either do not understand what Zionism means, or they are plain modern anti-Semites in a poor disguise.
1. There's a lot of irony in your statement, since Jewish people were slaughtered and horribly mistreated in those other countries simply for being Jewish. So how have they not been ethno-states... or at least "anti-specific-ethno states"?
2. There are plenty of countries that are dominated by Islam, and yet their right to exist isn't generally questioned.
Yes, they used to be. That's usually how nations are born - around common ethnicity.
And that's the point, everyone else got criticized for it except for Israel, which has a bipartisan support (at least in America). And any critique of Israel being a Jewish state is somehow portrayed as a double standard against Jews. At the same time you can freely attack white, non-Jewish people on the basis of what European and American governments did without any fear of repercussions. Not saying that there should be repercussions, because I support free speech, just pointing this out.
The first part of your comment refers to Jews as ethnicity and the second as religion.
That's sort of like asking in what way are African-Americans treated differently under US law. Sure, the law may appear to be equal for all legal members of society, but that doesn't mean in practice it works like that.
The settlement doctrine, removal of Arabic as an official language, and language specifically about Israel being Jewish that were passed in 2018 are also instances where the law actually does diverge for Arab citizens. [1]
There's a pretty decent breakdown of why Israel officially meets the international requirements to be considered an Apartheid state here as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MknerYjob0w
Israel heavily disputed its responsibility to help with vaccination efforts of the same arabs of the territory it's annexing, so yeah, that's not great.
It would not be entirely far-fetched to compare the status of Arab Israelis with the status of Coloureds in South Africa during late apartheid: Coloureds had some rights (including enfranchisement well before Blacks did), more than Blacks did, but were still pretty systematically discriminated against compared to Whites.
In Israel right now, Arab Israelis have fewer rights than Jewish Israelis do--notably in land rights, where pre-1967 land ownership claims are only legally recognized if you're Jewish, not Arab. That a coalition government has just now been formed with an Arab Israeli party for the first time in Israel's history, largely because it's the only way a coalition could be formed that doesn't include Netanyahu, doesn't invalidate the fact that legal discrimination still exists in Israel, let alone Israel's blatantly illegal actions vis-à-vis Palestine.
The real apartheid in Israel is not against its Arab population (although by various means a good part of it doesn't even have citizenship). The real apartheid is what happens in the occupied territories, where Jews enjoy all the benefits and protection of their citizenship while Arabs are deprived of any rights.
Anyone writing something so inflammatory ought to approach this topic with more nuance though. If you're willing to write that you should also be willing to get it right, from a purely factual perspective.
Yes, there is an association and a Head of Diversity should be smart enough to not generalize based on this association; it's failure to satisfy the core requirement of the professional role.
Well it was published 14 years ago. He was probably in college or something when he wrote it. Not giving him a pass or anything, just pointing out he didn’t write in while in his current role.
He didn't clean it up when starting in the role, he damaged the (employer) brand he was expected to protect/develop as part of his role, he got re-assigned to a different role, which is arguably a reasonable consequence.
Definition of apartheid: "a rigid former policy of segregating and economically and politically oppressing the nonwhite population"
Arabs and Jews are both white but I am guess that in your analogy you are referring to segregation of those groups, correct me if I misinterpreted your specific version of propaganda.
In apartheid South Africa, whites and blacks didn't live in the same areas and blacks couldn't vote.
Taking a look at the countries around Israel, in Egypt there used to be 100,000 Jews, they were mostly forced out by president Nasser, there are less than 20 left today.
There are no Jews in Saudi Arabia. During the Gulf War when US military forces were stationed there, the Saudis allowed Christian worship services but prohibited Jewish worship services for the military personnel, Jews had to hold services in ships offshore.
There are no Jews in Jordan. There are less than 20 Jews in Syria. There are around 100 Jews in Lebanon.
There are 1,900,000 Arabs in Israel, that is around 20% of the population. They have full voting rights, around 16% of the parliament in Israel are Arabs. They enjoy full civil rights.
Describing Israel as an apartheid state is anti-Jewish, and it is ridiculous.
> Definition of apartheid: "a rigid former policy of segregating and economically and politically oppressing the nonwhite population"
I find this a very curious definition. Why should the skin color of the oppressed population matter? Googling it returns this dictionary entry[1]:
> (in the Republic of South Africa) a rigid former policy of segregating and economically and politically oppressing the nonwhite population.
> any system or practice that separates people according to color, ethnicity, caste, etc.
So the definition you quoted only applies in the context of South Africa, in general apartheid refers to any system or practice that separates people according to color, ethnicity, caste, etc..
The word apartheid is an Afrikaans word (Afrikaans is a Germanic language spoken in South Africa) that was used as an election slogan by a South African political party that implemented complete segregation and racial classification in South Africa in the 1950s.
If you are not making a specific comparison to the former racial policies of South Africa, there are better words to use.
Although I know over time, meanings change, so that words like anti-Semitic, racist, fascist, etc. all just become synonyms for "bad" or "things I don't like".
It’s easy to spot people who know less than nothing about the situation when this word shows up. Israel is literally not an apartheid state. “Palestine” is literally an apartheid state. This is a demonstration of supreme ignorance.
Israel, a nation with a strong national identity, a small nation not a multinational organisation, generally governed by right wing governments, hugely successful in terms of meritocracy, good entrepreneurial spirit.
Filled with a nation of people persecuted for millenia, who have been victims of racism forever, who yet become massively successful, and don't act like victims.
Yes, I understand it's a ridiculously annoying example that counters every woke left ideal. Can't blame the woke for being anti semitic.
His bigotry goes beyond anti-semitism. Kamau Bobb's blog posts were almost exclusively about White and Jewish people, as a whole, and their mistreatment of Black Americans both historically and today. He even targets progressive white people for their more unspoken racism.
There is a very obvious tone of distaste for white and Jewish people in his posts. Search for the word "white" or "Jew" in his blog [1] posts to see for yourself.
Since Google supports "cancel culture", Kamau Bobb should be fired. I don't see how he, having himself being accused of being a racist [2], can work in any diversity or HR department.
> The cost of elite education for our children is extraordinary. I dropped my beautiful black star into a sea of white children and it hurt.
> among the increasing number of white women holding leadership roles in the academy and in the public and private sector, they surely see younger versions of themselves in the next generation of white girls. It is a natural instinct to want the very best for them.
> In a nation with a history such as ours, that imagery is connected to a much longer and darker legacy – a legacy where white men have abused black women and girls with impunity.
> I do not need to be convinced that diversity and excellence are intimately interwoven. But what of my White counterparts? I really do not know how White people learn about Black or Hispanic people in ways that are honest
> Perhaps it is time to focus the inquiry on our White counterparts. They may well feel marginalized by the shortage of academic inquiry into the complexity of their changing American citizenship alongside people of color. Their sense of self-efficacy may be undermined by their pending loss of majority status.
> I was learning about the resilient spirit of black people in America in the context of white American barbarism.
> It is still true that white people kill black people in America with impunity.
Hmm... I'm a white man who doesn't consider himself half as "woke" as the (I'm certain a bit exaggerated) descriptions of what happens on Twitter and none of that feels particularly offensive to me?
"I dropped my black star into a sea of white and it hurt" -> "I see so many beautiful black stars, why don't more of them get this wonderful opportunity?"
"A natural instinct to want the very best for people that look like them" -> Isn't the author displaying this own natural instinct in the very previous excerpt you chose about the sea of white? I'm hard pressed to say I'd find it inconceivable that humans empathize more strongly with people who are closer in appearance to them.
"a much longer and darker legacy where whites have abused black girls and women with impunity" -> I mean, yea... that's definitely back there for sure.
"Perhaps it's time to focus our inquiry on white people who may have complex emotions regarding their changing position in society" - race is a complex issue and maybe we should examine it from a few more angles? Sure, that seems fine?
"White people kill Black people with impunity" -> Chauvin's conviction was almost certainly the exception in cases of police homicide is my understanding, especially when the victim is Black and the police officer is white (or in many other instances of white on Black violence).
I don't get the sense this person's painting all white people with broad strokes really? Maybe just thinking critically about a system which traditionally has undermined certain segments of our population and may finally be in some position to come to grips with that.
In some sense he appears to be saying "Hey lets take a look at why people may be feeling in some manner" and not "Wow, I can't believe people would feel that way, those <insert name calling here>".
It's also possible that it's hard to offend me and I give people the benefit of the doubt a lot.
None of those excerpts are concerning on a personal blog. I assume his removal is based on something more substantive.
Maybe you're imagining the reaction if "black" and "white" were reversed in the writing. It would be very different because it's very different to be black rather than white in America.
> It would be very different because it's very different to be black rather than white in America.
That's a race essentialist myth[^1]. There are no "white experiences" or "black experiences". We assign "white" and "black" labels to diverse individuals with diverse experiences who process their experiences differently. The average black person may have a different experience than the average white person, but the variance is so large (more variance within a race than between races) that this is utterly useless for talking about any individual (the "average white person" and "average black person" don't actually exist).
[^1]: I would say "a racist myth" but that's a bit overloaded these days and it carries some judgmental connotations that I don't want to imply, but it is no less racist than other racist myths.
My intuition from reading these quotes is that this person spent a lot of time thinking about socioeconomic differences in relation to race[0], so they see things through that lens. It can come off as hostile, but the more generous interpretation that they simply emphasize this theme.
[0] I dislike the term "race" in these contexts. In biological terms there is only one human race currently alive as far as we know. Every time I read or use it I feel like the pseudosciences such as social darwinists have won.
A racial construct has been used to shape every facet of our society and we can't make right those wrongs with out maintaining an awareness and understanding of that construct. We can't undo the historical (and current) harms of racism with out continuing to see race.
This is why the colorblind approach to solving racial issues failed. All it did was make us blind to the continuing harms of racism and there for unable to change those systems and solve those problems.
Kendi expands on it in great detail in his book "How to Be an Antiracist"
Good point and thank you for the book recommendation.
My comment was not on why the term is being used today but merely the fact that I don't like it, because it solidifies the racist pseudosciences in our culture in a way. It just feels wrong to me to speak the lingo of an enemy.
At the same time, as you said the term is here for a reason, so simply changing or ignoring it won't change the underlying problem.
Thinking about it, it might even be a good thing that using, reading or hearing the term stings. It reminds us of how incredibly frustrating the problem is. It appears so simple and arbitrary, is insufferably harmful and it should not exist in the first place, but here we are still.
>A racial construct has been used to shape every facet of our society and we can't make right those wrongs with out maintaining an awareness and understanding of that construct.
This is a dangerously myopic view of the development of this country and more importantly it ignores progress over the last few decades.
The fact that blacks have not achieved representational parity or wealth equity yet does not mean that that the path of race blindness was not working. By all metrics it was working, and there must be room to discuss the internal cultural issues within the black community that account for the remaining lack of progress.
Instead by silencing any such criticism we are falsely blaming whites as a demographic for cultural change that is beyond their control, and artificially forcing transfer of power and wealth from said demographic in a misguided attempt to correct past wrongs, in a manner that is fundamentally at odds with the principles of meritocracy that are critical to a functioning society. Hiring minorities for the color of their skin is no better than hiring whites for the color of their skin.
The combination of a fundamentally racist theory/policy and vicious cancellation of anyone who publicly criticizes the movement is going to lead to severe backlash. It's immoral at its core. You can't have your cake and eat it too - either racism is acceptable and we have the freedom to discuss when and where it is acceptable, or racism is unacceptable. Wordplay with euphemisms which disguise the racist nature of CRT inspired policies is intellectually dishonest and not sustainable.
About [0], in Portuguese we have abolished the usage of the term "race" for human beings for exactly that reason. Now we exclusively use the term "ethnicity".
Edit: What about the downvotes? Are people going crazy?
Using more precise terms in language has nothing to do with being an utopia. Really, as a native Portuguese speaker it sounds really weird to ask about the race of a human being.
> They're on a path to becoming more racially progressive than much of the U.S.
Having spent time in Brazil and as a luso-American, that is ridiculous. Brazil has an even bigger problem with racist police violence and extra-judicial killings than the US does!
In fairness the U.S. has been on a regressive trajectory for the last ~10 years, so anyone who isn't similarly regressive is "on a path to becoming more racially progressive than much of the U.S.", strictly speaking.
When the racism is more visible because the racists feel more comfortable broadcasting their messages, and indeed when the media and academy effectively and institutionally endorse and promote those messages, that seems like textbook regression.
The confusion between skin color, race and culture seems to be one of the root cause for many problems in the US. Their history with minorities seems to have unfortunately unconsciously tied skin color and culture, ignoring the fact that it's the definition of racism. Not saying it's all rosy elsewhere, but at least it seems not that deeply ingrained and perpetuated.
So to candidly answer your question, yes there are of course physical differences between people, and correlations between people sharing a set of physical attributes, like skin color. Now if you attach culture and values to skin color, yes it's intrinsically bigoted, no matter the group. The corollary is that people with different skin color can have the same culture, and that criticizing a culture is not racist.
This is a question that's so loaded its disingenuous without context. You weren't asking me but here's what I think about it.
Do I think that police involved in bad shootings or another type of unjustified death have a really good chance of getting away with it? Of course.
Do I think that the scenario above of an unjustified police killing happens more to people of color? Probably, I haven't looked up the numbers though and I don't know where to find them.
Do I think the overwhelming majority of police killings are justified? Yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't a big deal when unjustified deaths go unpunished.
Do I think most white people in the US could get away with murdering a black person? No, and keep in mind this is closer to the question you actually asked than the question you wanted an answer to.
The original statement "It is true that white people kill black people with impunity in the US" is problematic without contextualizing it.
If he means in a general sense (which he most likely didn't) then its obviously a false statement. If I as a white man in the US murdered a person of color, most likely I would be arrested and convicted.
If he means in the literal sense that in a country of 350 million people that its possible for a white person to kill a black person and get away with it, well then you could probably say that about any demographic vs any other demographic because its impossible to make sure that never ever happens in a population that size.
What I suspect he really meant is that there's a problem with American police getting away with it when they are involved in unjustified killings of black people. But he chose to word it in an exaggerated and inflammatory way for emphasis. Then you also have to take into account that we were presented with that one sentence out of a larger blog post so perhaps he added the context that would have made that sentence make sense.
One of the failure modes I see often in today's discourse is that using a group term as a subject makes the associated verb profoundly semantically ambiguous. If I say:
"Brunettes like smooth jazz."
It can mean any of:
* There is at least one brunette who likes smooth jazz.
* Some brunettes like smooth jazz.
* Most brunettes like smooth jazz.
* All brunettes like smooth jazz.
* Brunettes are more likely to like smooth jazz than people with other hair colors.
* Brunettes are more likely to like smooth jazz than people as a whole.
* Liking smooth jazz is a defining characteristic of brunettes.
* Liking smooth jazz is a defining characteristic of people who identify themselves as "brunettes".
* Disliking smooth jazz is a defining characteristic of non-brunettes.
* Liking smooth jazz causes (some|most|all) people to dye their hair brown.
* Having brown hair causes (some|most|all) people to like smooth jazz.
When the group term has a long history of power imbalance (unlike brunettes for the most part) and when the verb has deep moral implications (like "murder"), then obviously these different interpretations connote wildly different things.
When you take that ambiguity and place it in the context of the Internet where context is stripped and nothing is known about the audience who will be interpreting it, you are setting yourself up for misinterpretation.
When you do that in a political environment where people are seeking power and stand to benefit from willful misinterpretation, you get, well, much of what US online culture looks like today.
There are obviously many deep systemic problems, but one technique to try to improve the quality of discourse is to simply avoid using groups as subjects in sentences. It almost never conveys anything that can't be better expressed in some other form.
Less so today than they did before BLM highlighted the way they repeatedly did so.
EDIT: I mean, two people actually think the recent spate of prosecutions of white law enforcement officers for unjustified killings of blacks is because in the last few years American law enforcement officers have just become violently racist in ways they previously weren't, and not a change in accountability resulting from public attention to the issue?
Acknowledgment of race is inherently an essentialist position; that there is an essence to being a certain race that sets it apart from other races. Doesn't matter if that position casts the purported essence in a positive or negative light, it is bigotry in one way or the other.
> Acknowledgment of race is inherently an essentialist position
No, you can acknowledge race as a widespread social construct, which having been constructed, has material effects that can only be fully discussed by including race. The idea that we can only discuss categories with an essential characteristic is, itself, an incorrectly essentialist idea.
> No, you can acknowledge race as a widespread social construct, which having been constructed, has material effects that can only be fully discussed by including race.
That is still essentialism with extra steps. Social or not, your category hinges on purportedly durable and universal attributes, whether they arrived from within or without.
> The idea that we can only discuss categories with an essential characteristic is, itself, an incorrectly essentialist idea.
That's a strawman argument I haven't made. I am against conflating pragmatic categories with essentialist categories. There is a difference between using x as an ephemeral demographic category to address the material issues you allude to vs overplaying it to an x'ness as an essentialist identitarian concept.
You can acknowledge that there is a social construct called "race" that some people believe is useful for predicting things about individuals without subscribing to those beliefs yourself.
E.g., some people argue that white people are unfit for certain roles because they haven't endured the sufferings of people of color which is clearly expressing a belief that (1) race is real and (2) race is useful for predicting things about individual white and non-white people. This is racism, race essentialism, etc. But I can also acknowledge that those people are more likely to treat white people (i.e., the people that they put into their "white" category) differently than nonwhite (i.e., the people they put into their "people of color" category). This is not racism or race essentialism or etc.
What the U.S. calls "races" would simply be considered subcultures in the rest of the world. (Bordering on ethnicities, but not really - they're way too integrated within mainstream culture to be true ethnic subdivisions.) You can acknowledge subcultures without clinging to the absurd notion (that is, absurd to much of the civilized world) that "race" is a legitimate term at all, even for a socially and culturally-bound construct.
I don’t think that’s correct considering people from Nigeria, France, or N-th generation Americans can all be considered “black” provided they have a certain set of physical traits even though these people very likely have very different cultures. So the American notion of “race” spans cultures and it is derived from physical traits, not cultural artifacts.
Whether African immigrants qualify as "truly" Black is actually a very contentious point within Black culture itself, and that's despite widespread solidarity with Africa and Pan-African ideals. This makes 100% sense if you regard this U.S. notion of "race" as a pure social construct, something not dependent on any fixed set of physical traits or purported ancestry.
Within American culture, it’s not contentious that dark-skinned African people are “black”, certainly no less so when they immigrate to the US. But that’s race.
There is also a distinct notion of “black culture” which is a subset of American culture (people who identify with black culture also tend to be racially black, but not every racially black American identifies with black culture). That there is a “black culture” doesn’t mean that the American notion of race is incorrect.
Kids don't see skin color the way these ideologues do. They look at it like hair color. My twin brother and I were literally the only white kids on our school bus, attending mostly black public schools in a mostly black county in southeastern Virginia. We were never really aware of skin color as a thing, just "this kid let's us borrow his gameboy and is nice", vs. "this kid punches us in the back of the head on the bus cuz he's psycho". Race was a useless proxy for good/bad when you are in a heavily integrated school system, because it's ALWAYS been a useless proxy for judging human character.
People that speak like this publicly ("sea of white children") are THINKING like this constantly.
In my opinion, he projects his own bigotry and obsession with skin color onto everyone else around him. That's what bigots of all colors do.
Through my childhood I would agree with you. By the time I was in high school this was no longer the case. Had many black friends, and once we all pass puberty and got cars, the world changed.
The first time I was with a black friend who got pulled over for no reason, and seeing the cop visibly change his demeanor when he saw me (white clean cut male) in the passenger seat, changed me. Talked with my friend after - this was already normalized for him. I was angry beyond belief.
It’s a useless proxy for judgement and yet US society does it to black and hispanic people with alarming consistency and frequency. It hasn’t gotten better since my youth.
This is the crux of white privilege and why “cancel culture” is bullshit for snowflakes who can’t imagine that the world is as systematically unjust as it really is.
I’ve listened to many black activists who ARE anti-white, who do self segregate, and I don’t blame any of them for a second nor hold any animosity towards them. They spent their lives being lied to, despised, tricked, and crapped on. Why would anyone want to continue that cycle?
Both are an issue. Trying to reframe all racial issues as only class issues is as dumb as trying to claim all class issues are racial in nature.
Few people who think about racism deny class has impact though. An intersectional analysis would suggest that a rich black, rich white, poor black, and poor white experience would all be different.
> Walk into a trailer park in Appalachia and talk about white privilege. See what they think.
Right, I can't tell if your argument here is that you don't think a poor Appalachian person would be up on the intersectional lingo, or you think that they can't critically analyze different kinds of privilege, or you think that they think that there's some kind of moral argument that poor white people can't also have advantages over black people and I'd feel bad talking to them about that? In any case, you're wrong.
Also you realize that Appalachia has a significant black population right, its 10% of Appalachia vs. 12% of the US population. Appalachia includes large swaths of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. (also it includes major metro areas in Pennsylvania, so trying to paint "Appalachia" as a rural-white-poor thing is dumb and misrepresentative of Appalachia).
Look I'm not going to quibble about what is and is not Appalachia. My definition of Appalachia part of the South that was inaccessible to rivers and navigable waterways and had poor soil and was therefore not remotely of interest for plantation owners. Therefore there were no native populations of slaves when the civil war ended.
My point is that a plurality of people in the United States who live below the poverty line happen to be white. And when you talk about class have you ever seen Google or any tech company talk about making sure they are hiring from a diverse set of classes? Of course not.
Show me a bunch of googlers and I'll show you a bunch of people whose parents were college-educated no matter what their skin color is.
All of this is just laziness at it's core. Treating humans differently because of their group membership in person-to-person interactions is the epitome of bigotry. It's not acceptable when cops do it and it's not acceptable for you to give passes to people of certain colors who have become bigots despite probably never experiencing extreme racism themselves. My cousin was murdered in Virginia Beach by a man who happened to be black in 2006. It would be inexcusable for me to hold that against other people that share that man's ethnicity. But if the colors were reversed you would have no problem giving me a pass because you have low expectations for people that don't look like you.
Kids do not write laws or have political agendas. In an ideal world, skin color would be an afterthought. But that is not the world we live in. I grew up as a white person in a 99%+ mexican/hispanic area. I grew up thinking the same. I didn't think much of people's race, but other people did. I was treated differently because I was white. It took me a while to realize that I wasn't seeing the world from the minorities point of view because I wasn't a minority. If you try to ignore race completely, you ignore the issues minorities are facing.
Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban that sort of account, regardless of which ideology you're battling for, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for. If you would please review the guidelines and use HN in the intended spirit from now on—curious, substantive conversation—we'd appreciate it. Note, for example, this one:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with? We're trying for a different kind of forum here.
Cancel culture is not about canceling people who say racist, misogynist, homophobic, etc things. It is about canceling (read: disenfranchising and taking revenge on) straight white males, who are at the bottom (top? intersection? whichever) of the intersectional hierarchy. Kamau Bobb is not a white male, therefore this does not apply. He is receiving the same treatment that any powerful person, regardless of skin color, would have received 10 years ago in the western world: tuck them away until the scandal blows over.
What? This event seems to match the collectively assigned definition fine.
"Cancel culture or call-out culture is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". The expression "cancel culture" has mostly negative connotations and is commonly used in debates on free speech and censorship.
The notion of cancel culture is a variant on the term call-out culture and constitutes a form of boycotting or shunning involving an individual (often a celebrity) who is deemed to have acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial manner." [1]
That definition is neither empirical, nor is it collectively defined. It is selectively assigned and selectively enforced. And here we are, in a thread where the top level post provides an obvious example.
Great, now also link me to a cacophony of Twitter activists who've defined it the same way, I am proven wrong.
But, and of course it's a silly request, can you provide any objective large-scale studies as to who (their demographics) is being canceled, for what categorization, and the net effect of their cancellation? It doesn't matter, granted, because the Wikipedia definition of highly politicized terms is, of course, what counts.
Not quite. It's about ideological alignment and purity. The cancel mob just got Antonio García Martínez fired, for example. And they are constantly trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald, a gay man married to a minority POC, and with minority kids.
I don't know Antonio García Martínez's ethnicity, but he looks and sounds very much like a straight white male, so I would not consider that a counterexample. Also, certainly there are no absolute laws of who is always targeted and who is never, just clear trends.
However, it is true that to some small degree I am oversimplifying something quite complex, partially because the cited example was James D'Amore. Other examples you might cite include Dave Rubin or Ric Grennell. Certainly gay white men and straight white women (specifically if they are Republican) are targeted. What happened at Disney with the treatment of Gina Carano vs. Krystina Arielle is evidence enough of that.
If you supported the firing of Antonio Garcia Martinez this should make you happy. If you thought that Apple overstepped their bounds by punishing a new hire for old creative work, this should outrage you, too.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency in peoples' views on these two closely related incidents. Why?
> If you supported the firing of Antonio Garcia Martinez this should make you happy.
Hardly. In fact only being transferred instead of fired from a cushy job shows one just has to be on right side of social justice movement to be shielded from past transgressions.
I am outraged, but on the other side for me the whole diversity industry is parasitic with undertones of blackmail. And I am generally speaking fan of poetic justice.
Which puts the whole situation as the old joke said "what is mixed feeling - seeing your mother in law drive off the cliff in your new Ferrari"
Another thing if we go more nuanced is that this "don't fire people for stupid shit" is something of a detente. I view it as pragmatism, not unbendable moral conviction. So if you have broken it, you are no longer protected by it. And let's be honest - chances of a person in this position not having a lot of outrage in his public social accounts is quite slim.
What I have learned in recent years is how shockingly accepting of antisemitism people apparently are on both sides of aisle. Growing up in a prominently Jewish neighborhood in Minnesota I never really encountered it until maybe ten years ago.
The fact that he was just shifted rather than fired in this political environment speaks volumes.
I'm trying to understand what he did that was so wrong? He (correctly imo) called out Israel for its violent tendencies. The only mistake he made that I can see is he conflated Israel with the Jewish people generally. But Israel has a massive propaganda campaign leading people to do exactly that (an attack on Israel the country is an attack on Jewish people in general).
If that blogpost was the same, but said Israel, instead of the Jewish people; would there be any issue with it today?
I really don't know much about the Jewish faith or how it interplays with Israel, so I'm just trying to understand where all the anger is coming from. I feel like Israel is acting in bad faith on public forums too, which makes everything more complicated for somebody unfamiliar with it all.
EDIT: Reading more comments I think I get the gist of the controversy, he insinuated all Jewish people should feel guilt for the actions of Israel? I agree that's wrong, but I understand how somebody could come by that belief. Israel themselves have fostered the narrative that Israel represents the Jewish people by constantly conflating an attack on Israel as an attack on the Jewish people.
>If that blogpost was the same, but said Israel, instead of the Jewish people; would there be any issue with it today?
The whole problem with the blog post is that he did was stereotyping millions of people (the majority of whom don't even live in Israel) as being bloodthirsty killers based on the actions of the Israeli government. Imagine how wrong it would be to write a blog post about Idi Amin and coming to the conclusion that African-Americans are inherently violent.
Compare Israel to its close neighbourhood, the US or even France and the UK. Israel exists in the ME, what's the West's excuse for fighting in different continents? And his text goes much further than that.
>If that blogpost was the same, but said Israel, instead of the Jewish people; would there be any issue with it today?
It would be grossly inaccurate, but saying dumb stuff wouldn't be enough to get people to call for his removal.
>Israel themselves have fostered the narrative that Israel represents the Jewish people by constantly conflating an attack on Israel as an attack on the Jewish people.
It's not a particular surprise that people who are drawn to attack Jews attack Israel too. Maybe if critics of Israel took pains to separate themselves from the antisemites rather than excusing them, more people would see a difference between critics and actual antisemites. If instead their only resort would be to argue bad faith, well, people would see that too.
> Israel themselves have fostered the narrative that Israel represents the Jewish people by constantly conflating an attack on Israel as an attack on the Jewish people.
Israel’s attempts to equate itself and its current policies with the Jewish race and identity are definitely a reason (an additional reason, on top of many others) to be disgusted at the governing regime of the State of Israel and its government, but they aren't an excuse, even a little bit, for the bigotry against Jews qua Jews for Israeli policy (indeed, that is rewarding the violent bigotry of the Israeli regime, which actively seeks the protection of whataboutism that being able to paint opposition to its apartheid and lebensraum policies as anti-Semitic provides.)
The Israeli government, Israeli Jews, Israelis, and Jews are different groups, and the actions of the first don’t justify hatred of any of the latter groups, all of which include fierce opponents of pretty much any action you might blame thw first for.
I think you and I are on the same wavelength, and I appreciate your take on this issue. It's tricky looking from the outside in with all of the misinformation though (hence my mention of the Israeli propaganda). And I definitely agree, nothing justifies antisemitism (to be honest, I really don't understand it either). I hate to be critical in these situations because I don't want to lend credence to those who'll jump in and pretend I'm on their Jewish hate train.
> in a culture where all white people are guilty for slavery, this mindset makes sense to me
Not all white people are guilty of slavery, and virtually no one thinks that they are.
Essentially all American white people continue to materially benefit from a long history of systematic racism in America [0], including slavery, state-mandated and state-tolerated post-slavery subjugation and segregation. Heck, many living white Americans are direct beneficiaries of overt discrimination in public programs, not to mention systematic, coordinated private discrimination.
People who oppose acknowledging the latter point like to set up the former as a convenient strawman.
[0] which is not to say all are in a good absolute position, or even not structurally disadvantaged on balance; systematic racial discrimination isn’t the only structural bias in American society.
> Essentially all American white people continue to materially benefit from a long history of systematic racism in America [0], including slavery, state-mandated and state-tolerated post-slavery subjugation and segregation. Heck, many living white Americans are direct beneficiaries of overt discrimination in public programs, not to mention systematic, coordinated private discrimination.
I come from a family of poor farmers in the South. I've done some genealogical digging, and thus far I've found three 16-24 year old members of my family who died in the Confederate war. We never owned slaves; service was mandatory back then, either through law or social pressure.
Approximately ~600-700,000 people died in the Civil War. This country has made sacrifices for African Americans and racial equality, more than any other country on Earth. It will never be enough.
No matter how much they give, apologize, change the rules, white Americans will never shed their "original sin." Because of my white skin, I "continue to materially benefit" from "systemic racism," and yet, where are these benefits? I come from a place riddled with opiate addicts and alcoholism. Most of the younger people don't make it out, they have to score much higher than African Americans applying to the same colleges (as do Asians).
Everyone was on board with MLK's dream of equal opportunity for all. Racial discrimination was clearly a bad idea. But, in the last 10 years or so, some people have realized that "racism" is perhaps the most powerful bludgeoning tool in the US. Now, MLK is outdated, the new movement is about racial revenge.
Like a lot of poor farmers rent or share farm equipment today, poor farmers overwhelmingly rented slaves at critical points in the growing cycle in antebellum rural South. Slaves were expensive, about $100k each in today's money, so poor farmers rented them just like any farm equipment today can be rented by those that don't have the capital to buy outright. Use of slaves was ubiquitous, even among those who didn't outright own the slaves.
What would MLK say about billionaires using identity politics to distract the working class from any kind of solidarity? That's what I believe is happening here. A lot of identity politics started after Occupy Wall Street.
A racially divided nation is profitable, and it's much harder for workers to organize.
He had choice words for white moderate push back against change for racial equality, even if it's ugly in the moment to said white moderates.
> I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
> I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
As for connections to Occupy Wall Street, my view as some one connected to the scenes is that they're orthogonal, and instead both rise from the beginnings of a generational shift in existing power structures.
> "One unfortunate thing about Black Power is that it gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks and whites alike. In this context a slogan 'Power for Poor People' would be much more appropriate than the slogan 'Black Power'."
Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go from Here, 1967
In the context of 1967, he's talking about taking to the streets and creating a separate black nation in a concept called "black separatism". Nothing about that is against the idea of a company making sure that they have a diverse set of employees across the structure of the company, if we can stay on topic. Nothing about it rails against "identity politics". He's not saying, if you read the whole book (which you should, it's fantastic), that the black struggle doesn't require a different set of tactics from the poor white struggle. Only that there exists some overlap that would be served by making sure that every person in America makes a good living (in addition to other separate struggles). Particularly since black separatism in a lot of cases meant leaving the US and the society that was built using quite a bit of under(or simply un)paid labor and the wealth that belongs to all here.
I'll give you that anyone saying that _only_ corporate identity politics can solve racial issues in America is blowing smoke up your ass, but honest looks at why companies as their employees become richer trend white and male is an important component of the fight for racial equality.
> Because of my white skin, I "continue to materially benefit" from "systemic racism," and yet, where are these benefits?
Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely to be stopped or harassed by police, less likely to be denied a job or mortgage. Those are some of the major systemic privileges White people have that Black people don't in the U.S. The statistics are pretty stark.
Read the paper, as it's not just those two names. Black names are undeniably discriminated against at the earliest points of the employment process.
This is something I like to bring up, since it's a great example of a microcosm of discrimination that it's easy to not think about. There's a black saying that blacks have to work twice as hard to get half as far, and the data seems to be remarkably close to that assessment.
>Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely to be stopped or harassed by police
Communities which experience more crime tend to interact more with law enforcement. The perpetrators of those crimes, who generally come from the same communities as their victims, tend to get arrested and incarcerated in proportion to their rate of criminality. Most murder in the US is committed by black men [1], and mainly concentrated in a handful of poor urban areas: St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, etc. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) [2][3], widely seen as the gold standard for data on criminal victimization, confirms that violent crime is simply a larger problem in America's urabn black communities compared to the white, Asian, and Hispanic communities. Rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration reflect this.
It is no longer the 1960s. Body cameras and smartphones are everywhere. Racism has been taboo for decades. Police know that if they unjustly shoot or abuse a black person, there's a good chance their careers and lives as free citizens will be over. The notion that law enforcement arrests and incarcertates more black people mainly due to racial antipathy, rather than that community's starkly higher rate of criminal violence, is not supported by evidence.
Tracing back through history, the forces which led to the present situation such as slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and redlining were undoubtedly racist and systemic. However, these systemic forces are now gone. They have even been replaced in many areas by systemic counter-forces, such as in university admissions [4], law school admissions [5], med school admissions [6], access to government debt relief [7], and access to the COVID vaccine [8]. The problems which bedevil many black Americans today- disproportionate poverty, broken families, drug addiction, all resultant criminality- would appear to be the results of historical inequities, not ongoing systemic racism.
> Communities which experience more crime tend to interact more with law enforcement. The perpetrators of those crimes, who generally come from the same communities as their victims, tend to get arrested and incarcerated in proportion to their rate of criminality.
Over-policing and racial profiling is a large cause of the increased criminality. The base rate of illegal drug use is fairly similar for all races but arrests and convictions have been much higher for Blacks and other minorities for quite some time [0][1].
> The notion that law enforcement arrests and incarcertates more black people mainly due to racial antipathy, rather than that community's starkly higher rate of criminal violence, is not supported by evidence.
Actually, traffic stops are biased against minorities despite a similar base rate of infraction [2] yet this increases the rate at which Black people interact with police which compounds the harm caused by statistically harsher reaction to infractions. Further, sentencing is influenced by race in complex ways for which there is unfortunately limited data [3] but Blacks tend to receive longer sentences and be at risk of minimum sentences [4].
The root causes of violent offenses are even more complex and although income disparity, childhood trauma/abuse/neglect, and oppression are all potential causes I haven't found good sources with solid statistics to dig into that.
Flippantly, it's entirely possible for someone to be both paranoid and to have enemies.
People who are poor, and especially those that live in rural areas, face serious difficulties. But minority Americans face those same problems, plus racism.
"Everyone was on board with MLK's dream of equal opportunity for all. Racial discrimination was clearly a bad idea."
Everyone? Clearly a bad idea? I could rustle you up a big stack of people who disagree. Weirdly, many of them are poor and rural---you'd think they would see the common cause and join together, but no. On the other hand, there's the old joke about everyone having to have someone to look down on; they may be white trash, but at least they're not black.
> The statistics are pretty stark if you start with the incorrect assumption that "all men are created equal." This is, quite simply, not the case, and will never be the case. Of course, hell will freeze over before anyone accepts that "horrific" truth.
> I'm sure you recognize different dog breeds, and possibly know that certain dog breeds are known to act a certain way. This is due to generations and generations of artificial-selection in breeding. Herding breeds were designed for herding, German Shepherds were designed for herding and protection, Shitzus were designed for companionship.
> You probably wouldn't expect to see a Shitzu herding sheep. That does not, in any way, make Shitzu's "less than" a herding breed, they're just built for a different function. Shitzus evolved in environments where companionship was prioritized over herding, obviously.
> And yet, when it comes to humans, we choose not to acknowledge this fact: geography influences evolutionary pressures, and evolutionary pressures influence the humans that evolved there. You see this in culture too. Cultures evolve just like the humans that belong to them do, and it's a big soupy mess of genetics influencing behavior/culture, and behavior/culture influencing genetics.
> Expecting African Americans to act like neurotic white protestants is fundamentally racist, you're trying to shove a square peg in a round hole. Human diversity is real, except it goes beyond skin color. On average, racial groups exhibit similar behavior, across socioeconomic spectrums. Racial groups evolved in similar geographic regions, they are optimized for survival in those regions, around those people.
> "All men are created equal" is perhaps the most harmful lie ever told.
Just to fast forward the discussion for some people so they know the conclusion noofen is leading toward.
Thanks. Their comment is (flagged) (dead), which is one of my least favorite parts of HN. For a site that doesn't let you delete comments after two hours because it believes you should stand by what you say, it structurally removes your most egregious comments from view. That allows dog whistle arguments to fester and comments that mistakenly go mask off to be conveniently hidden quickly from the general discourse.
In America, it's better to be born white and poor than black and poor. Data from field after field backs this up - economics, healthcare, policing, housing, to name a few.
Further, I don't think you can exactly call losing the Civil War "making sacrifices for racial equality." If I've got my boot on somebody's neck, and I won't take it off until pushed off by force, my skinned knee isn't a sacrifice that I made so that my victim can get up.
I get where you're coming from and it took me (a white person from the US) a long time to wrap my head around what most progressives talking about responsibility and the US's history of slavery were really trying to say. Let me try to explain with an analogy.
Your grandfather dies. In his will, he leaves you his house, which has been in your family several generation. It's a nice place, better than the crappy apartment you live in, and it's yours now by all rights, so you move in.
When you do, you discover to your delight that you water bill is zero dollars every month. What a nice bonus! Free water from the tap!
One day, when poking around the basement, you discover the secret to this mystery. Apparently one of your ancestors many years ago dug a secret tunnel over to the neighbor's house put a T on their water main, and ran a pipe back to your house. Your water isn't free. Your neighbors have been paying for it the whole time.
In fact, they have even known this and been trying to tell you. But, you know, you were so busy getting settled in and dealing with all the stuff in your own life that their discussion about "water equality" never really registered for you. It's not that you didn't care (you love equality), you just didn't think it had anything to do with you.
So what is your moral position today?
It is not one of guilt. You didn't put that sneaky pipe in. And while, yes, you certainly took some showers with free water, at the time you honestly didn't realize that anyone was paying for it. There was no malice on your part.
You could argue that since it's your neighbors who are suffering from the jacked up water bill, they should be the ones to pay to cut that pipe and remove it. After all, you didn't cause the problem, and you don't have any personal incentive to fix it. You aren't trying to steal their water, it's just the way your plumbing happens to be set up.
At the same time, your neighbors are actually poorer than you, in large part because they have been paying your water bill the whole time. It feels pretty selfish to expect them to foot the plumbing bill to get it fixed.
So I think that you bear a responsibility to fix the plumbing because you now own the house. And you have some moral obligation in the sense that those who are most able to do a thing bear some obligation to their community to do that thing. If we're all in this together, then we give back to society in the ways we best can. Since you can more easily afford to the fix the plumbing (all those months of free water let you save up some cash), you should be the one to do so.
Now, granted, there are certainly some progressives (of all races) who take the history of slavery in a guilt/shame direction. If you're white, you're just supposed to feel bad. We should all be walking around in hairshirts as a penance for the sins of our fathers. There is a real weird Catholic guilt vibe in some progressive circles today.
But I think for most, it's not that. And the most charitable interpretation of people saying that whites today bear responsibility for slavery is just what my example here says: we have some ownership over the institutions that benefited from slavery, and we have a greater capacity to amend that problem, thus responsibility to do that falls on our shoulders.
The most compassionate way to look at this is as an opportunity. What a great thing it is to be in a position to help address one of the most grievious injustices in the United States.
I reject this way of thinking because it groups second generation Irish immigrants with those who inherited wealth from the days of slavery.
I get that you're trying to be charitable but there really isn't a valid defence for an ideology that tries to slap a label onto heterogeneous groups of people with nothing in common beyond their skin tone. It is a racist way of thinking and should be called out as such.
> I reject this way of thinking because it groups second generation Irish immigrants with those who inherited wealth from the days of slavery.
I understand that this is an extremely sensitive topic that can make it hard to reason about. People never feel good when accusations—false or not!—start flying. And once those kind of intense feelings get involved, it's hard to lower your defenses and try to read what people say charitably.
The point of my comment was entirely that it is not about guilt. None of us living today bear responsibility for historical slavery in the US, even those whose ancestors owned slaves. How can I be considered at fault for something that happened literally before I existed? How could I have caused that?
(Edit: I realize now that my analogy where the house is inherited obscures that. I think the analogy would work better if I said you won the house in a lottery.)
What we carry is not guilt from the past but responsibility for today. Because of that history of slavery, many institutions today still unfairly benefit white people. (In my analogy, the pipe continues to deliver water long after the person who unfairly plumbed it has died.) Because of those benefits, white people today have more power as a group generally than Black people do.
It is today's unearned benefits and the greater capacity to remedy them that places responsibility on white people in the US, not any bloodline that traces back to slaveowners.
We should fix racism today because it's wrong and because we can. We bear a moral obligation to people living today to give them the more just world they deserve.
"many institutions today still unfairly benefit white people."
When it comes to the criminal justice system, I'm mostly there with you. Although, it is wrong to call it pro-white, and the pro-white narrative comes from the ideology that I was criticizing. It is anti-black and anti-poor. The reason it is not merely pro-white is that the system treats Asians, Hindus, etc, well even though they're not white and even though there's not many officers from these demographics.
Beyond that, I struggle to believe it, but perhaps you can fill me in if I'm missing something.
As an example, in what way are institutions biased in favor of poor rural white people?
Their entire culture hates them (music, movies, media) and they are quotad out of universities and flashy career paths. To add salt on the wound their manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas.
This reality on the ground is the near opposite of any kind of institutional privilege of the sort you're talking about. In some cases (e.g soft quotas) this is demonstrable institutional racism working against white people.
> Although, it is wrong to call it pro-white, and the pro-white narrative comes from the ideology that I was criticizing. It is anti-black and anti-poor.
I think it's both pro-white and anti-black. When you dig back through US history, you see plenty of evidence of both a belief system that whites are the best (and thus deserve to have power over other races) as well as that blacks are particularly deserving of their lowest status. Other races and ethnicities form a more complex middle ground. In many places and times there simply weren't a great enough quantity of those members of those groups for any well-defined cultural claim to be made.
I don't think your average 19th century Virginia farmer had a strong opinion one way or the other about the relatively inferiority of, say, the Sami people because they'd never even heard of one. Whites in almost all parts of the US by necessity had to incorporate blackness into their culture because—thanks almost entirely to the slave trade—blacks were so present in much of the country and were enshrined in its laws and institutions.
> As an example, in what way are institutions biased in favor of poor rural white people?
"Poor", "rural", and "white" are three ways to slice demographics and the way they interact can sometimes illuminate and sometimes obscure.
I think most of what you're seeing is that it generally sucks to be poor and rural, full stop. In 1910, there were about 13 million US farm workers. Today there are about 3 million. In 1979, there were close to 20 million manufacturing jobs. Today it's around 12 million.
This disproportionally hurts whites because black people have historically concentrated in urban areas (often driven by trying to escape anti-black racism). So it's easy to have a vivid image of how much it sucks for some opioid addicted country-music blaring coal-rolling white dude living in a trailer in Appalachia compared to some hip black guy riding the subway in NYC listening to billionaire Kanye's latest album.
But that's comparing different cohorts. The real question is what is it like for a poor, rural, black person? Black people make up only 3% of the population of West Virginia, but 28% of its prison population. (Whites are 93% of the state, but 65% of prisoners.)
Meanwhile in NYC, black people are 16% of the state population but 53% of its prison population. The median household income for white people is $80,300, for black people it's $42,600.
So, yes, I agree that poor rural folks have gotten the short end of the stick since neoliberalism took over. And their perception of relative worsening is something that we should look at. (I think it's one of the primary drivers of the Tea Party, Trumpism, the alt-right, etc.) While their anger at black people is misplaced and wrong, I can empathize with where it's coming from. It hurts to feel that others are moving ahead while you yourself are not.
But at the same time, it has always been hard to be black in the US and it's still hard. Here's a fun (spoiler: not fucking fun at all) guessing game to play if you don't already know the answer: When was the last lynching in the United States?
If you were naive, you might guess the late 1800s when Jim Crow laws were rife and the country was still coming to grips with emancipation. Maybe you'd guess the 1930s when the KKK was flourishing. You would hope it wasn't the 1950s when economic prosperity and blacks and whites fighting together in WWII should have brought us together. Hopefully no later than the 1960s when the Civil Rights Act was signed.
Actually, it was 1981. His name was Michael Donald. He was 19 years old and was chosen at random by KKK members angry about an unrelated murder trial "to show Klan strength in Alabama".
He was killed by poor rural whites who were this close to getting away with it completely until the FBI got involved.
"When you dig back through US history, you see plenty of evidence of both a belief system that whites are the best"
I'm referring to the criminal justice system today. Is there reason to think it's more pro-White than pro-Asian or pro-Hindu?
I only see evidence that the system today is anti-Black and anti-poor.
I accept the historical examples you've given of pro-white attitudes, but I'm hoping to discuss today's reality since that's the point of contention.
"I think most of what you're seeing is that it generally sucks to be poor and rural, full stop"
You're right that this is most of it. But I believe there is unique institutional racism specifically directed towards poor rural white people in particular.
The soft quota they face in employment and education and the hatred and derision uniquely directed towards them in particular (and towards no other group) from all cultural institutions.
The white quota in the workforce, for example, is there to be filled by inner city whites with the right pedigree and right social values. The white quota in higher education makes it difficult for rural whites without the same early educational opportunities to have a chance, whereas a black rural person (even if they're a recent immigrant) will have an easier time, all else equal, for no other reason than they have the right skin color.
From my perspective, this is evidence of institutional discrimination, but it runs in the opposite direction to what's claimed.
"Meanwhile in NYC, black people are 16% of the state population but 53% of its prison population."
I don't see this as evidence for institutional bias that exists today that's pro-white.
Hindus do better than Whites in general. Is the system pro-Hindu?
Nigerians immigrants do well. Is the system pro-Nigerian?
Differential outcomes are not evidence that today's system is pro-white.
There's certainly a historical legacy of slavery and discrimination that helped to create these inequalities. But it's not evidence for much beyond that if we're discussing the institutions of today.
> But I believe there is unique institutional racism specifically directed towards poor rural white people in particular.
I don't know what to tell you, man. I pointed out that the incarceration rate of blacks is dramatically higher in the US state that likely has the greatest concentration of poor white people.
> derision uniquely directed towards them in particular (and towards no other group) from all cultural institutions.
Sure, Hollywood makes fun of them, but I don't think that has a particularly significant material effect on the quality of their lives. (Though it does make them really angry and more politically active.)
> Hindus do better than Whites in general. Is the system pro-Hindu? Nigerians immigrants do well. Is the system pro-Nigerian?
There is significant selection bias here in that immigrants are not a uniform sample from their ethnicities.
"pointed out that the incarceration rate of blacks"
This doesn't change the reality of the anti-white institutional discrimination examples that I highlighted.
And again, disparate outcomes aren't evidence of current discrimination or bias for or against any group.
You could be right that Hindus do well in the criminal justice system because of selection bias, and whites do well because of specific pro-white bias that Hindus don't benefit from. But the burden of proof is on you to show that that's true. Do poor Hindus or poor Asians do worse than equally poor Whites? If you could show something like this, then you will have convinced me that the criminal justice system is pro-white.
The only actual evidence I've seen is that the criminal justice system is anti-Black, and that evidence has nothing to do with disparate outcomes. Beyond that I haven't seen any evidence.
it's impossible to "fix racism" until people stop profiting from trying to "fix racism." nobody tries to actually fix anything regarding racism, politicians etc. use it as a talking point. 99.99% of the country isn't racist and doesn't like racism and wants it gone, everyone's on board, but somehow nothing ever improves, and, in fact, it sure seems like things just get worse. profit motives need to go, no idea how to accomplish this though.
> it's impossible to "fix racism" until people stop profiting from trying to "fix racism."
Would you say that it's impossible to fix climate change until people stop profitinng from trying to fix climate change? Is it impossible to fix infant mortality while doctors profit from saving infants' lives?
There is something to what you're saying. There's a process that goes like:
1. People who dislike X want to fix X.
2. In order to put a lot of time into fixing X, they seek out work that pays them to do it.
3. In the process of that work, they build up a lot of expertise.
4. Now they have a natural incentive for X not to be fixed so that they can continue to make money from their expertise.
This is a real thing. A perverse incentive that arises basically in all cases where bad things require deep expertise to fix.
I see very little evidence that this incentive is powerful enough to dwarf the massive desire to fix X for most problems.
Most oncologists are not out there blowing cigarette smoke into people's faces to ensure their job security. Dentists are not plying kids with candy. Most people fighting against racism are not so callous as to completely undermine their own deeply held convictions just to keep themselves employed.
> in fact, it sure seems like things just get worse.
Things looking worse is often a sign of them getting better. You never saw news articles about the environment in the mid-1900s when pollution and industrialization was at its worth. It didn't become visible until people cared enough and had enough power to make it visible.
The "me too" movement isn't about sexual abuse becoming more prevalent, it's about victims finally having enough power to be able to shine a light on it. If we weren't hearing about Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Bill Cosby, that wouldn't mean they weren't still abusing. It would mean they were continuing to abuse with inpunity.
people want to fight for change, but if they got the change they wanted, then there would be nothing more to fight for. politicians and other powerful people (I realize I'm speaking very generally here) recognize this and use it to create a perpetual motion grifting machine. people enthusiastically donate money to causes and the money ends up largely going nowhere near the people it's supposed to help. we elect the First Black President of the United States of America, thinking that surely, at some point in his eight years of Presidency, he'll do something to directly help black Americans... and then nothing happens, and, well, maybe the next guy will do it. I'm 30 and I've seen this cycle repeat for at least the half of my life I've been vaguely conscious about politics. at some point we have to recognize that the politician-promised solutions that are always around the corner are not in fact ever coming, and we need to hold them thusly accountable. until then, there is no grift more personally profitable than paying lip service to the desire to fix major societal problems, then doing jack shit about them for elected term after elected term, only to go right back to the useless lip service around re-election time. we need some kind of serious political movement that holds elected officials to task for what they claim to want to accomplish. until this happens, we're going to be stuck in the same endless cycle of not-getting-shit-done forever, with people re-electing the same people over and over again solely based on how good their ideas sound when vocalized.
we can hardly define racism fairness and justice today let alone "fix" it. as for change, I'm happy to support any change that empowers people, treats people compassionately, and removes discrimination. that is unlike the solutions I see put forward by the so called anti-racists.
Whiteness is a social construct, you're absolutely right. It's one that our society and institutions consistently reward, though.
Maybe the Irish person is the first guy's roommate or spouse - they didn't directly inherit the free water from their direct ancestors, but they're still getting free water from next door.
I think the main issue isn’t that people don’t recognize that discrimination exists, they’re just annoyed at who it’s being targeted at and how it [not] working.
One main thing is that white people as a whole need to atone for slavery, even though the vast vast majority (poor southerners, northerners, immigrants from after the civil war) had nothing to do with it. And secondly, that race is used to only talk about the issues facing black people, not whites. Poor white people (in WV, the South, etc.) are just as poor as black people, yet get no help in things like university admissions or job placements.
And for Asians (inc. Indians), they (disclaimer: I am of Asian descent) also receive material disadvantages (I have zero chance of getting into an Ivy League, nor will I ever receive assistance programs for minorities) so that black people have a level playing field. Positive discrimination works, but not in its current form.
Reading his blog post it seems to me like he is commenting on Israeli state politics and the extremists within its borders rather than "any" jew. Yes he uses the word jew in a general way, which of course is unfortunate as Israel does not solely consist of jewish people.
His points are presented without hyperboles, and while they certainly do not paint Israels state politics in a good light, how is this anti semitism (which in wikipedia is defined as "hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews")?
Antisemitism is of course as inexcusable as any other form of racism, but criticism of a country's or groups political views and policies is not hate nor discrimination.
In my opinion his removal is an overreaction, but with how polarizing this subject I don't see how it could have gone any other way.
Anti-Zionists deny being anti-Semites, claiming they make a clear distinction between Israel as a political entity and Jewish people in general, and are only against the former.
Bobb conflated Israeli politics with Jewishness and thus making the latter responsible for the actions of the former.
The fact that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state does not mean that all Jews see themselves as Israelis or are pro-Israel.
It is like criticising Arabs for the actions of Saudi-Arabia, or any other Arab (or Muslim) country, which is unfortunately an recurring theme in the West and justifiably regarded as a form of racism (Islamophobia).
How so? The norm in human society is to accept that people can grow and learn with time. The fact someone can be fired or shifted because of something like this said 14 years ago speaks volumes of the power of cancel culture and says nothing about antisemitism.
The fact that he felt qualified to lead a diversity team (whatever that might mean), with the knowledge that he authored such an article speaks volumes about his moral compass and lack of conscience.
It is incomprehensible to me how anyone could judge someone on something they said 14 years ago when it would likely instantly be explained today that that wasn't what he meant and isn't his opinion today anyways. This is a perfect example of people wanting to ruin other people's lives without so much as listening for one minute to what the victim have to say - because yes, this is making him a victim, persecuted for something that might very well be a misunderstanding.
It's one thing the we see persecution by anti-Semitic people against jews -we are used to that sadly- but that it equally often happens the other way around from people who surely knows better is mind-blowing.
> It's the blanket statements about Jewish people that I'd call anti-semitic.
I find those inappropriate too- I think he might have gotten carried too far in making his point. However, on one hand I think it's an understandable slip: after all, Israel calls itself the Jewish homeland and often tries to extend criticism it receives to all Jews (by calling it antisemitic). This with little objection from Jews elsewhere. On the other hand, "antisemitic" is a very strong accusation: are we sure there aren't middle grounds, such as calling something inappropriate or incorrect, without associating it straight away with one of the worst mass murders in history?
> However, on one hand I think it's an understandable slip: after all, Israel calls itself the Jewish homeland and often tries to extend criticism it receives to all Jews (by calling it antisemitic)
“Some racists justify racism by equating their racism with their race and calling criticizing of their racism an attack on their race” doesn’t even begin to justify, excuse, or mitigate racism against that race. That’s what all racists of all races do, and if we accept that as a justification for racism all racists will be justified by other racists.
But again, "racist" is a very grave accusation, are you sure that a single inappropriate sentence (missing possibly just a qualifier, "Israeli Jew") at the end of a more articulated argument is enough to qualify someone as a racist?
> But again, "racist" is a very grave accusation, are you sure that a single inappropriate sentence (missing possibly just a qualifier, "Israeli Jew") at the end of a more articulated argument is enough to qualify someone as a racist?
I didn’t describe someone as racist, I described an argument as racist (the difference is the same as that between a dumb idea and an idea from a dumb person.)
And the argument would be racist even with “Israeli Jew”. It would be possible to rewrite it while retaining some of the ideas in it and not be racist, but it would be a major revision that I don’t think anyone would view as cosmetic.
Interesting to read that post, which is clearly pro-gay, and contrast with gay marriage referendums in the 2012 election which barely passed with around 47% of voters opposed (and of course Prop 8 had won in california just a few years earlier).
If that post were criteria for firing around half or more of the American population could also be fired if they had made the mistake of recording their opinions online or in written form before 10 years ago.
How sad that a well written post that openly and rationally speaks of his internal struggles, and ends in a positive place, gets dismissed as “homophobic”.
I've lived in various ME countries, as well as Israel. I've tried to understand the core issue and frankly, failed. Both arguments about this historical conflict between Israel and the Palestinians seem as close to being morally equivalent as I could imagine. I have sympathies but I keep them to myself. I don't feel as though I have a right to take a particular side: I am not existentially threatened on a daily basis as both peoples feel they are. I have no history of being both threatened and abandoned by the world as both side feel. I have no experience of living as a people whose every political choice is one of zero-sum cultural survival. Who lives, who dies? Who prospers, who does not? I have no moral expertise on this subject to pick a team.
So on this topic, when pressed, I say I have no right to comment. The irony of course, is that in many circles, one is attacked for being too bewildered to form an opinion.
I think it's a mistake to understand this (or most) conflicts in terms of an argument about ideology, or history. Those play a role, but it isn't a philosophical debate. It's a war.
Palestinians and Israelis are not on the Palestinian or Israeli side because they are convinced by the arguments of Edward Said or Ehad Haam. Its because they are Palestinian and Israeli. That's what war is, for the most part. They (we.. I am Israeli) are not going to read the others' literature and adopt their position. Ideologies, philosophies, political takes and such came about to make sense of the reality that exists, not the other way around.
If you talked politics with locals, I assume you encountered a great variety of views.
Honestly, I appreciate your honest bewilderment. It is quite disturbing to me when tourists and foreigners take extreme, unyielding, anti-comromise positions... including (especially) pro Israeli ones. I am quite certain that many Israelis, Palestinians & Jordanians feel the same way. I cannot speak for other arab countries, as I have never been.
Thanks for summing up how I feel about this so succinctly. I have tried to understand the history and the issues between these two groups and there is honestly there is so much that each side can victim claim for and be pointed out as an aggressor on its really hard to make any judgement on a particular side being right or wrong. And with the history on this going back thousands of years and my admittedly complete lack of understanding of cultural context on both sides (and to be honest its so complex I am not sure anyone can understand this unless you have been living it) I just freely admit I am too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion- which is still quite problematic- despite having never been to the Middle East, I live in NYC and have lots of Jewish friends who claim that anything less than supporting Israel is anti-semitism.
But even when my wife, who knows I read news and books an order of magnitude more than her, asked me to kind of distill it down for her in whatever terms I understood it after the recent flare up, and I was just like I really can't... aside from there just being an inherent inability to share their ancient homelands.
look to see who is using 5th generation multi role attack fighters and who is using rockets made from the water pipes of the buildings destroyed by the air assault.
which side, forgotten by the world, receives almost four billion dollars a year in military aid from the global imperial hegemon?
> I've tried to understand the core issue and frankly, failed
It's quite straight forward. Up until WWI, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in Palestine, which it and other areas of Arabia and North Africa were under Ottoman rule. During WWI, Sykes–Picot divided up the Muslim lands into arbitrary borders to make them easier to occupy. Syria was occupied by the French, Libya by the Italians, etc. Palestine was under British rule. Post WWII, the Zionists convinced Britain to give them Palestine, so they moved in and formed an illegal government, which ironically applied similar tactics the Nazis applied to the Jews in WWII (ethnic cleansing, killing discriminately, etc.). The conflict continues to this day until the Palestinians get back their rightful land.n
I'm normally against taking punitive action against employees for old social media content. People make mistakes and they should be allowed to grow and improve without being held permanently accountable for their past selves. However, this isn't like James Gunn being fired for old jokes with bad taste. This person was Google's head of diversity and he posted serious, blatantly-antisemitic arguments. That post would compromise his credibility with subordinates - not just as a person, but as a leader with a focus on diversity.
I like how Google reassigned him instead of firing him. It's an old post and he has hopefully changed for the better since then. He's no longer fit for his previous role, but there are probably many other roles he can still be effective in. I don't want to see someone crushed for past mistakes if they've learned from them.
IMO, this sets a good precedent for how to handle issues like this in the future. Hopefully other companies are taking notes.
If a groups behavior doesn't match your expectations based on your perspective of their history but you dont have the benefit of their lived experiences, wouldn't that be a tell-tale sign to try to recognize you MUST not have an understanding of the topic or enough information to formulate an opinion?
Some people learn also by sharing their current thoughts and learning from how other people react. One way to gain perspective about your ideas is to communicate them.
I have no idea about the reasons why that Googler published a blog, maybe he's just self-obsessed idiot who doesn't give 3 fucks about other people's perspective, like one would think reading the reactions here.
But I don't see an issue in putting out random thoughts on a small personal blog with a comment section.
I was expecting the typical criticism of Israeli government = antisemitism junk but that's definitely not what this was. It's not like the guy wrote this in the 50s. It was obviously a little eye-raising in 2007 as well. I think Google made the right call here.
It is quite evident that this person has been affected by the plight of the Lebanese and the Palestinians.
As unbelievable as it may seem, many modern-day Israelis consider the Palestinians to be sub-human. That the Palestinians do not deserve their land.
This attitude is indoctrinated through the military service.
They make the Palestinians in Gaza really suffer.
That article is hard to understand. Makes yu think that this person witnessed somehow whats going on there.
Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state, is one of the most militaristic states in the world. So in fact we do know that the only present Jewish state has a “propensity for war”, not sure how this is seen as controversial. Of course, I think pretty much the same thing about the US government and about its citizens, the Americans, after all they’re the ones supporting said militaristic propensity.
Ah, yes, because Israel doesn't bomb schools, hospitals, or libraries... Damn hamas and their stones! Why can't they be more advanced with their killings like the Israelis and just level entire buildings full of children?
What's the body count on Israeli children killed by hamas vs Israel killing Palestinian children? I'm pretty sure it's lopsided.
"Security concerns" are not enough to judge the situation. Mobsters surround themselves of armed guards as much as the investigators trying to capture them. Nations that start wars need to protect themselves from counter-attacks and retaliation. Israel is in blatant violation of international law and handsomely profiting from it: 10% of its population lives on land that doesn't belong to the state and that by international agreements has to be returned to its legitimate owners.
Israel is a thing and Jews are another. There are more jews in America than Israel. If you want to criticize Israel, that would be easier to present than a criticism of Jews. If you think Judaism is a violent and warlike faith, it is better to criticize it than to criticize generally the descendants of people who might have practiced it, or the state that doesn't even hold it as the state religion.
We are no longer able to discern truth from falsehood, and as a result are scared into polarization by the nature of our surroundings. We no longer morally stand strong against the pull of power as we may have once did.
The ensuing discussions are more often than not, nothing more than desperate attempts of talking past one another.
Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Palestinian, Israeli, human. We all deserve peace and love.
I want Palestinians to have a home. I want Israelis to have a home as well. It’s a complex issue. And because there is not necessarily an easy answer, we more easily fall victim to the tide of fear and frustration on a global scale.
Existence is suffering. May we all find a way to survive.
It is Anti-Semitic in that he is lumping all jews in with Israel. I am a Jew, America is my homeland. I live here and am an American. I am not an Israeli. I give almost zero thought to Israel in my day to day. Jews are consistently labeled with an "other" tag, we are not Americans, we are Jews and Israel is our country.
Also "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."
The first sentence sounds anti-semitic to me. The second does not. It's well worth being concerned about ones insensitivity to suffering in the conduct of self-defense. It may be particularly important if you feel that defense is entirely righteous. If hurting anyone for any reason does not provoke self-reflection, something is wrong.
That's completely consistent with doing what is necessary to defend your loved ones, including violence.
If one takes a charitable read of his words, it might be less damning (although definitely questionable in terms of style):
1. It’s clear in the post that he’s speaking about Israeli Jews. While even Israeli Jews are not monolithic, and speaking of them like they are is suspect, he could have been clearer by using “Israeli Jew” rather than “Jew” in this post.
2. Furthermore, it seems more like he is speaking about “Israeli Jews” both in terms of being an actual Israeli Jew as well as a term used to represent the Israeli government.
3. He use the wrong pronouns. He used I/me when we/us would have been more standard when speaking of the acts of a nation state (esp. a democratic one). Even this creates problems since it would paint Israeli Jews as being monolithic in their thoughts (my experience is that they very very much are not monolithic). That said, with a charitable read, the stylistic use of I/me is definitely more powerful and more personal, and it probably provided the effect the author wanted of making the violence feel personal. As an editor, I would have given this stylistic choice a firm veto, but try explaining that to a young person who is finding their voice and is discovering the amount of violence towards various peoples that is occurring around the world.
TL;DR - Another way of interpreting the post is that a young kid trying to find a powerful voice made some very suspect stylistic choices when trying to write about the government of Israel.
I find the whole thing offensive in concept, even if he had used "Israeli" instead of "Jew".
If some white dude wrote "If I was a Black, I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Blacks have endured and the insatiable appetite for crime that permeates inner cities", we would rightly castigate him as a virulent racist.
It also wouldn't matter if you replaced "Black" with African, or Senegalese, or Mexican, or any other nationality. You aren't that thing, you don't have the experiences of that culture, you don't get to write from that perspective.
I'm Jewish, and I personally found the post to be offensive and anti-semitic.
Israel is not my "homeland". I've never been to Israel, let alone lived there. My parents have never been to Israel. You'd have to go back over 2000 years to find an ancestor of mine who lived in Israel. I have no connection whatsoever with the actions of the Israeli government. So if you attribute their actions to me, simply because I am Jewish, that is by definition racist and anti-semitic.
Imagine if the non-black head of diversity at a major US corporation wrote a post titled "If I were Black", directly tying the actions of modern-day African governments to all African Americans. Or a post titled "If I were Catholic" doing the same thing to all US Catholics based on actions of the Vatican or even just the Pope. This sort of thing happened in the US decades ago and was acceptable then, but is not even remotely acceptable now, nor was it acceptable when this post was written.
Thanks for the commentary, it's a useful perspective. Perhaps it depends on many things, but i feel like this post is not attributing these actions to you, in any way. My reading of the actual actions being criticised in that there is no way the author could mean anything other than the jewish state of israel. Working backwards from there, it's clear to me that any reference to jew is simply because AIPAC and western media in general have spent the last ~50 years blurring the discourse to the point where Jew ~= Israeli.
Among other blatantly offensive things, he directly said "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." Certainly sounds to me like he's attributing these actions to me and all other Jewish people.
Stop blaming "the media". If the head of diversity of one of the largest corporations in the world doesn't understand the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli, they are not qualified for their position.
> Stop blaming "the media". If the head of diversity of one of the largest corporations in the world doesn't understand the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli, they are not qualified for their position.
Their position is the key aspect to me.
It's possible the commenter above was right and that he didn't mean it that way (it's also possible they very much meant it exactly that way). It's possible their views have changed. But it reads the way you describe, and while one might give some random nobody the benefit of the doubt about a post from 2007 after perhaps having a conversation about it, it's an entirely different situation to have them as head of diversity.
Even if HR at Google have talked to him and are 100% confident his views are ok today and that they understand the issue with the statement, and that it won't impact their actions in the role, the problem still remains that they'll have to interact with people and communities that may never be able to trust someone who once said those things.
He said Jew, not Israeli. He is intentional in the use as the entire article is about Jews and Israel. Also the person in question is not an idiot, he is a mature adult smart enough to work in stem at Google. Your argument essentially absolves any anti semitic statements / actions by blaming the Jews for it.
This is exactly the definition of anti-semitism, and now I am speaking about your words, not his.
I'm being as clear as i can, when I read the document I don't see anything about "the jewish race". What i see is commentary on the jewish nation of israel. I can only blame israel for bluring that distinction as much as possible.
Honestly, I have no clue what you are trying to say. Clearly we have different definitions of anti-semitism? To me anti-semitism is a form of racism. By definition being opposed to the political actions of a nation is not racism. It could have underlying racist motives, but you cannot ascribe those from the position that a nation state is doing inappropriate things.
the group that called him out on Twitter are clearly Zionists, though, not Jews who want nothing to do with Israel. I think a Jew who never thinks about Israel is likely to read that essay and think it doesn't apply to them.
If someone wrote "man, people in Colorado like to go on shooting rampages" I would think to myself, "yeah, that's right, we should not sell ar15s to folks; also, what is it about this place that affects mental health?" I would not take offense just because I happen to live there.
He called out Jews, not Israelis. Can you think of any other race that is expected to ignore comments that specifically insults their race and think "doesn't apply to me".
ok, so s/Jew/Zionist in the post and it's all ok? The thrust of the essay seems to be condemning violence in the name of an identity, whether that's a religious, racial or national identity, and it seems to me Zionists don't make a distinction between Jew and Israeli.
Uh, yeah. That's the point. That to be Jewish, to be Israeli, and to be in support of the Israeli government in power are three very distinct things.
Next up, let's write an article critical of Hamas and start with "If I were a Muslim, I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing".
> it seems to me Zionists don't make a distinction between Jew and Israeli
This serves their interests, but the framing shouldn't be accepted. There are plenty of non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews, or even Zionist Jews who have specific concerns about the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere; it's a little funny seeing people like Bernie Sanders being deemed antisemitic, for example.
> "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself"
This part near the end is the one I find really hard to interpret in a non antisemitic way because it bears the implicit assumption that a Jewish person (whether Israeli or not, whether zionist or not) would be compelled to feel in a certain way because the Israeli violence he describes is unleashed to defend himself as a Jewish person.
That closing argument could have turned the whole point of view upside down simply by explaining from his (or an imaginary Jewish person's) point of view why the society in Israel dictates what he should feel, and how right winged populism in Israel often adopts the antisemitic opinion that Jewish diaspora cannot truly integrate into their countries and therefore must make Israel part of their Jewish identity.
That could have been a legitimate critic that I too share as a Jewish man who live in Israel.
What strikes me even more is that Google were not aware of this post or did not based their decision upon it when offering him this role. Having gone through a full on site cycle recently with a FAANG company (which I didn't pass), I submitted a GDPR request to receive all the data that has been collected as part of the interview process. Most of it they won't really share but one thing that they did share was a file with a list of pretty much all my twitter activity that went through a 3rd party review, and that's just for a simple L5/L6 role.
> If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired. This reconciliation would be particularly difficult now, in November, 79 years after Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass. The anniversary of this dreadfully monumental day in my history would bring me pause. It would force me to reflect on the legacy of extraordinary human suffering. I might wonder how the vicious eruption of cruelty in the mid-twentieth century has influenced the shape of my identity as a Jewish person and our collective identity as Jewish people.
> Suffering and oppression typically give rise to sympathy and compassion among the oppressed. I can look upon the sufferer and know that, “there but for the Grace of God, go I.” During this period I might well reflect on the redemptive qualities of suffering that my people have learned through a ghastly set of lessons. I would not have to reflect alone, I could read the lessons explicitly from Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, or Chaim Potok. I would conclude that my Jewish faith and the history of my people render me closer to human compassion; closer to the instinct to offer healing to hurt, patience to anxiety and understanding to confusion.
> I don’t know how I would reconcile that identity with the behavior of fundamentalist Jewish extremists or of Israel as a nation. The details would confuse me. I wouldn’t understand those who suggest that bombing Lebanon, slaughtering Lebanese people and largely destroying Beirut in retaliation for the capture of a few soldiers is justified. I wouldn’t understand the notion of collective punishment, cutting off gas, electricity and water from residents in Gaza because they are attacking Israel who is fighting against them. It would be unconscionable to me to watch Israeli tanks donning the Star of David rumbling through Ramallah destroying buildings and breaking the glass.
> I would be confused in concept too. My faith would lead me to believe that Israel is the homeland of my people. My intellect would convince me that it cannot be that simple. The faith and reason of the Palestinians or of Muslims cannot simply be baseless. I would have to believe that the degree of animus, vengeance and violence that they now carry is not rooted in their identity, but rather in their experience; in the sordid nation shuffling and rebuilding that took place after World War II. It must be rooted in their hurt, in their sense of displacement, abandonment and hopelessness.
> My reflections on Kristallnacht would lead me to feel that these are precisely the human sentiments that I as Jew would understand; that I ought to understand and feel compelled to help alleviate. It cannot be that the sum total of a history of suffering and slaughter places such a premium on my identity that I would be willing to damn others in defense of it.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.
Thanks for the full context. Much of the reaction here is due to his mistake of placing 'If I were a Jew' when based on the rest of the essay I'd estimate he meant to say 'If I were Israeli'. Had he done so the tea shop would still have all its crockery intact.
Absolutely on the nose. I'd go a step further - if he had said "If I were Isreael", then he's imagining being policy maker directly responsible, instead of merely being a citizen.
It's not empathy to put one's self in someone else's shoes, but then dismiss the viewpoint that comes with wearing those shoes. This is simply another version of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.
Moreover, using collective guilt as an underpinning of any political stance is garbage. It's not enough to say racists and racist policies are bad - white people are collectively guilty, regardless of their own personal behavior and history. It's not enough to say Israel's out of line with their policies - all Jews are collectively guilty. So on and so forth. And it's alienating and insulting to anyone sympathetic policy-wise, but don't want to be lumped in with bad actors.
After reading the post this is the same impression I get. His views don't seem that different from someone like Noam Chomsky, just not articulated as well.
Note that “diversity head” does not mean “head of the company’s diversity efforts” here - that’s a different person, Melonie Parker. It’s not super clear to me what this guy’s role actually was.
> As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy would not have been removed from his position and Damore would not have been fired. Instead we could have had a conversation to win hearts and minds, but today it is all about getting scalps, witch hunts and over-reaction. What we are currently doing sends people underground which radicalizes them more
EDIT: since this is heavily downvoted, I will remove the original text, as I feel I badly miscommunicated. It is obvious to me now that the words I selected really did not represent my intent. I did not intend to challenge the parent's assertion, but I completely understand why it would have been read as such.
Rest assured I understand why the quoted statement in the tabloids is perceived as antisemitic, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise! I was searching for some alternate explanation for why he wrote that specific phrase, because it was so beyond the pale and unlike the formulation he had used elsewhere in the post.
Please chalk this up to lessons learned on my part. Here's a link to the full version of the blog post where the excerpts may be read in context. [0]
Which charitable person would conclude that was a typo? I have a feeling people like you would say the same thing if he wrote “I hate Jews” in capital letters.
It's obviously intended to be anti-semitic, but I don't understand what it means, either. They're all English words, but I can't parse them in that order.
The whole post is about how to reconcile the adversity of neighbors and philosophy about them, and integrate into a world that doesn't have the toxic relationships after growing up in a toxic environment
It is a vague and meaningless concept. It has never been defined except by referring to antiquated notions of “race” stemming primarily from 18th and 19th century ideas.
In modern times, we’ve apparently added biological sex, sexual preference and a vague (and meaningless) concept of self-identity that can, apparently, cross all other definitions with impunity - even changing fluidly throughout the day.
To appoint people as “head” of this mess of ideas point to deeper issues in the organization.
The fact that categories are often fuzzy does not make them useless as a general heuristic for finding people who are more likely to share similar experiences with each other.
Almost every kind of categorization system shares the problems you talk about: people can call themselves "programmers" for a variety of different reasons, even though they're working in wildly different environments and might be totally unsuited for each other's jobs. People self-identify with political parties, even though there are no strict rules about what a "Democrat" or "Republican" are, to the point where beliefs of members of those parties might overlap with each other or even be the opposite of what the party normally espouses. We separate games/movies into genres, even though genres are often a complete mess that don't always map well to player preferences or experiences. We take a light spectrum and we break it up into distinct colors, even though the number of colors and lines between those colors are completely arbitrary and meaningless.
It's good to recognize that categories are fuzzy human inventions that are prone to abuse, and it's good to be cautious about putting a lot of weight on them in every situation. It's good not to assume that everyone in a category is identical. But abandoning categories entirely would make it much harder (even impossible) to go through normal day-to-day life.
So it is similarly useful to be able to think about categories like "Black", "Gay", "Conservative", "Christian", "Rural", "Trans" -- even as we acknowledge that those categories are just human inventions and that they blur around the edges. Those categories are still be a useful heuristic for trying to find people who are more likely to share certain attributes or who have had certain life experiences.
> Those categories are still be a useful heuristic for trying to find people who are more likely to share certain attributes or who have had certain life experiences.
In other words, prejudice is a "useful heuristic".
> In other words, prejudice is a "useful heuristic".
If you don't see any difference at all between community and othering, or if you think we need a single universal metric that defines whether categories are being used for evil in every single scenario, then I don't think you understood what I was saying about fuzziness.
Categories are a neutral tool, it's how they're used and the effects of their usage that determines whether or not an action involving them is problematic -- just like every single other tool in existence.
You are trying to rationalize the usage of “black” and “white” while simultaneously seeming to agree with my point.
I would say this to you: if you believe a diverse set of skills, experience and personality are important (I believe they can be) then use categories for that.
Skills categories are judged from education and practical work tests.
Experience is judged from CV and references from earlier employments.
Personality can be assessed from tests and judged during interviews.
These aren’t perfect either, but they are far more relevant than: “oh, you seem brownish, how nice”
- First, this is not an either/or situation. You can assess personality, skills, and experience in traditional ways, while simultaneously understanding that having a diverse collection of genders, races, ages, disabilities, etc on a team is often a competitive strength. You don't have to throw away people's CVs to do any of this.
There's an assumption that I see sometimes that caring about diversity during hiring necessarily means ignoring everything else, and that's just not what people like me are saying to do at all.
- Second, the role of a head of diversity should go way beyond simple hiring decisions, it can also mean trying to make a more welcoming environment that accommodates diverse workforces after they're hired, it can mean trying to explain why certain demographic outcomes and trends exist in hiring, and trying to figure out on a high level if there are areas where Google is biasing its hiring process or culture to be less diverse.
It should be kind of obvious, but Kamau wasn't just sorting applications based on skin color -- you wouldn't need multiple people and a "head" to do that. A diversity initiative is supposed to look at the entire company, identify subtle problems in multiple areas/departments, and come up with creative solutions to those problems.
- Third, I think you're discounting life experience in general as a contributing factor towards how people make decisions. It's not "you're brownish, that's nice." It's "Black people want to use our products, is there someone in the room who's going to notice if our AI mislabels them in photos?" It's "we want our UI to be usable by blind people, it would be nice if we had anyone in our office that can identify certain pitfalls." It's "we're designing a social network feature that will accidentally make doxing much easier, what are the odds someone who's LGBT+ in our office will raise their hand and point out how dangerous this is for their community?"
Those aren't theoretical concerns, they're issues that companies like Google care a lot about for very practical reasons. So it's a big jump to act like political diversity, age, life experiences don't impact how products get made. Understanding diversity means both acknowledging that these communities are fuzzy and that not everyone in them is identical, and also acknowledging that on net people in these communities have experiences and perspectives that can be valuable to incorporate into decision making processes.
- Fourth, you're missing that many diversity initiatives in companies don't exist in a vacuum. Google has a diversity initiative because it has problems with diversity, because there are unreasonable biases in its hiring processes and recruitment strategies against older, POC, and other minority applicants. Diversity initiatives in companies like this don't just randomly appear out of nowhere. They're not trying to get rid of good hiring practices, they're a response to existing flaws in the hiring process.
It's all well and good to argue that hiring processes should be egalitarian and that diversity will naturally arise if we ignore the categories. But the current outcomes aren't egalitarian, and ignoring the categories didn't lead to natural diversity. Argue if you want that the kind of diversity I'm talking about is irrelevant to quality, but doing so really only reinforces that the lack of diversity across the tech industry is abnormal and it's worth having teams inside of companies who try to figure out why their hiring outcomes seem to be biased in certain directions.
"Diverse teams" does not mean having a proper ratio of white, Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay or ginger. It means having people who have complimentary skills for a task and everyone got to that point differently. A legal team made up of one person from Harvard, one from UCLA, one from Princeton and one from a no name school is a type of "diverse". It's even more if one person was an engineer first, one was JAG, another was an accountant or some other profession before getting into law. A legal team where everyone is from Harvard and that's all they know since they've done nothing else with their lives, but check off different minority boxes, and have a token redheaded stepchild ginger, is not diverse. It's pandering due to both being lazy and being useless.
Someone that diversifies teams actually has to know the team well, what they do, and identity their strengths and weaknesses. Then, they need to figure out what kind of person can bring the neccessary perspective or skillset to round out the team... but that takes work. It's easier to just say, "You dont have a ginger on your team, here you go. Diversity achieved!" This is why people hate "diversity heads". They're glorified checklists.
They can be. Credentialism facilitates structural racism and class boundaries. Nobody gives a shit about gingers, that is a red herring.
One of my parents used to work in the housing discrimination space. Those same types of arguments were used there. Instead of credentials, they’d advertise in targeted ways, like only advertising at law or medical schools, etc.
Recruiters use colleges as a legal discrimination technique to target specific class origins. Unless you win the college lottery and get into Harvard, it is not possible for a kid from an urban setting to get the gig at McKinsey that is the entry screener used to get certain gigs. It’s like the old British civil service.
Companies are diverse as a side effect of hiring for competence. They aren't competent as a side effect of hiring with diversity as a goal. The statistically illiterate HR minions who preach the correlation between diversity and performance don't get this, because they aren't even educated enough to understand correlation/causation fallacy.
Even ignoring that diversity can be a goal in and of itself, and ignoring that a lack of diversity can be a useful metric for identifying other problems, there's also plenty of reason to believe that targeting diversity directly can yield performance improvements. If you're building a product for women, you should have some women on your team. If you're building a product for the general population, you'll get better results if your team has a variety of life experiences and viewpoints.
It's the same exact reason why it's good for a CEO to have experience in the industry that they're targeting with their products, and why managers who know at least a little bit about code works tend to do a better job of managing programmers. Perspective and life experiences absolutely help with decision-making processes and can help you avoid certain pitfalls in your product.
Diversity increases your available breadth of input into decisions and planning; it's like the human version of increasing code-coverage in your QA department.
How did you interpret JPKab's comment? Maybe I misunderstood, do you agree that a focus on increasing diversity can lead to better products and better company decisions?
So are you claiming opportunity is equally distributed? I feel if you "hire for competence", you are going to end up with a highly concentrated group of wealthy people who went to the best schools.
Also, what is your metric for "competence"? You can train people to be computer programmers, but there are many other traits that are impossible to train. Like seeing the world from a perspective different than a middle aged white man, for one.
>Companies are diverse as a side effect of hiring for competence.
I mean, unless factors you evaluate for competence are just 'similarity to current decision makers'. Which is what people largely do in practice. This is why we see that tests show that hiring decisions vary dramatically on the basis of names, pictures, educational background, etc.
No one has a magic 8-ball that spits out an employee's power level. So something else is being measured.
But even if we COULD measure for competence - say in an objective numerical manner - the amount of times you'd optimize towards a local maxima rather than overall maxima would be significant.
So the measurement is flawed, and the algorithm is wrong. You'd think people on HN of all people would recognize the above as self-evident given how frequently 'I'm upset at tech hiring' threads are posted here.
This is probably the biggest reason, they are building products used by virtually everyone on the planet, they cannot afford mistakes that could arise just because their employees only represent a small percentage of human diversity. If all diverse groups were equally well-off, or all they understood the existence and power of privilege, or there was no risk of the built products putting certain groups at a disadvantage, maybe we wouldn't need to do this. But we know that's not true.
Age is somewhat prioritized in practice. Why do you think political diversity would be similarly prioritized?
There's a moral argument that comes into play with politics that doesn't for age or race. There's nothing even abstractly morally problematic about making your product appeal to women or old people or whomever. There may be reasons to avoid marketing or aligning your product to, say, people whose political views you disagree with.
We're not talking about products aimed at a particular demographic. We're talking about products with customers from diverse demographic backgrounds, where the argument is put that we should then have a diverse team so as to ensure we are serving that product competently to the diverse customer base.
My point is that this can't be the real reason for D and I initiatives, since if it was, there would be a similarly strong push to have equal political and age representation in order to reflect the reality of these products' customer demographics.
The priorities won't change because the priorities were never stemming from an earnest attempt to represent customer demographics to begin with.
Not only is there no attempt to represent customer demographics on dimensions such as age, but there continues to be rank discrimination against people based on these dimensions, and the people pretending to be in favor of diversity are consistently and conspicuously silent on the matter.
And you're not educated enough to understand that "meritocracy" is a myth that entrenches existing power and privilege structures, because the people who are good at something are the people with the resources and social capital it takes to get good at that thing.
Skills and experience were not distributed fairly, but they are still real and still necessary. The fix for missing education is more education, not trying to somehow do without it.
Ahhh, so if I disagree with you on a point, it's due to lack of education?
That's a hell of a worldview.
I grew up in an impoverished family, in a trailer park, in a mostly black county. I know far better than you do about "privilege structures", but since I happened to be white, none of the diversity initiatives care or help.
Poor white people are underrepresented in tech. But the white elites think poor whites are in trailer parks because they are stupid. It's their fault, right? That's what all of you say, I've heard it said everywhere. "Trailer trash" this and that, said casually without batting an eye. Never questioning if maybe, just maybe, the kids born there have opportunities equivalent to yours.
It's obvious nobody cares. If they did, they would talk about it, or try to do something. But there are no activist professors for them, so crickets.
"Hiring for competence" doesn't automatically get you a diverse labor force, especially if "competence" is measured by metrics that are themselves demographically correlated to begin with (educational background from schools that aren't very diverse, experience at other firms that aren't diverse, etc.). Criteria like that can entrench established demographics, especially if the people who do the hiring look for similar backgrounds and traits that they themselves have... a bunch of WASPs hiring other WASPs because they come from the same schools or like the same governance tools or some framework, for example, or a bunch of Japanese businessmen excluding the white applicant who speaks perfect Japanese because they don't think he'll understand cultural norms, or a BLM group not wanting to hire the white diversity trainer because she ostensibly has worked mostly with Latino populations. There are always unspoken preferences, often cultural things, that bias hiring -- even if you aim for competence -- unless we blind the hiring committee and resumes, etc. A few studies about identical resumes with different last names (suggesting different races) suggest that competence is not really the best indicator of hireability.
> The statistically illiterate HR minions who preach the correlation between diversity and performance don't get this, because they aren't even educated enough to understand correlation/causation fallacy.
That seems kinda like a strawman? Who's arguing that? It's not like having a more diverse team will necessarily result in higher quality code, or more lines of code per month, or some similarly laser-focused metric of "performance".
Diversity can instigate cultural change at a company (do we value hard deadlines more, or should we emphasize work-life balance more?), make it easier to acquire and communicate with customers from diverse backgrounds (cross-cultural communications is hard for anyone, especially so for non-diverse teams with no specific training in it), fill some legal or marketing mandate (we gotta look diverse even if we aren't), help spur innovation in process or product development (what's "out of the box thinking" for one demographic may be a common process for another demographic), etc.
Of course there are costs too. Diverse teams may or may not work together as well, holidays might be different, food and beverage preferences may not line up with current offerings, religious or cultural conflicts may occur, staff polarization becomes more likely (along political/ideological/national origin lines, whatever)...
That's all to say diversity isn't just skin color but cultural backgrounds too, and you get all the pros and cons of that... for better or worse. It's far more nuanced than simply trying to hire for some arbitrary measure of "competence".
Arguably, they're more about the "typically not harmful" things than about the severe cases.
The severe cases are bad, but they're also obvious. Your ordinary management should be able to handle that. They often don't, and it helps to have a special level of appeal when the chain of management fails, but that's not the real reason for the job.
The real reason is that those "typically not harmful" cases are cumulatively harmful. They're bricks in the briefcase of every employee being discriminated against. They get all of the usual problems of life, plus a new set aimed at them. So they don't perform quite as well, and aren't the best when promotion time comes around. Then you end up with a whole chain of command who thinks that those "typically not harmful" cases aren't the reason everybody in authority looks like them -- and then do nothing about it.
Dealing with the explicit cases is easier, even though companies often fail at that, too. If they can't handle the easy cases, there's nobody looking out for the hard ones. And worse, people often say, "Look, we fired the blatantly racist guy, why are you still complaining that every single manager is white? It's just a coincidence, OK?"
I was thinking in general terms of bias and prejudice. You can’t remove it from existence because those aren’t qualitative terms. A decent person can recognize and actively combat bias, but not erase it. You’re still going to have some form of bias. At least I haven’t met a single persom who does not.
Now you’re talking about discrimination. Those can appear mild and harmless in single instances, but the accumulation is the problem as you said but also what we could call passive ignorance. In my experience people are often not even aware of being discriminatory, some are even well meaning, but are patronizing.
But there is a key difference in a spectrum of bias/prejudice and flat out not reflecting on our behavior.
I realize I‘m discussing semantics here, just wanted to explain how I understand those terms in my response.
So, question: Is any kind of disapproval of Israel's policies on palestinians now by definition antisemitic or is there a way to voice legitimate criticism?
I agree, the "If I were a jew" sentence is an extremely tasteless and and insensitive way to put it, but from the rest of the quotes, his intent to criticize Israel's policies, not call into question the right to exist seems pretty clear.
If someone criticized the Chinese government, you wouldn't automatically accuse them of anti-asian racism either, would you?
The reason so many criticisms are judged as anti-Semitic is because they are anti-Semitic. Often, they will have reasonable criticisms and then delegitimize their argument by stereotyping, supporting conspiracy theories, or conflating Judaism and Zionism. In this case, I think its most specifically: “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.” Being Jewish doesn’t mean being a Zionist, pro-Israel, or bloodthirsty
Regardless of the exact wording of this post anyone who has ever harshly criticized Israel's government policies has gotten reflexively called antisemite so it's rather amusing to see it at such a high profile place. It shows how it trumps any social justice points.
You just don't, which is why you see so many very mild takes in this thread and people are extremely afraid of being reprieved for wrongthink (by American standards).
The left’s obsession with cancel culture and conducting archeological digs on past comments, tweets, etc is coming back to bite them. I think removing this guy was the right thing to do, BUT I also think a major company like Google needs to set an example: Something someone tweeted more than ten years ago should no longer be relevant and should be ignored. However until that standard is set as example by a major company, we are going to see this dig up and burn for some time.
Sorry, but if you think it was the right thing to do to remove him, then you agree with the methods, you're just showing your hand at not liking the things that most people are "cancelled" over.
It's not a contradiction in the slightest. It's possible to disagree with a belief/norm system while still respecting those that adhere to it as reasonable moral entities. This is the foundation of Enlightenment pluralism: you can coexist peacefully with those that have different worldviews, managing the behavior of each group only when it affects others (eg, you can pray to whomever you want, but you can't burn witches at the stake). But if they don't adhere to their own belief system when inconvenient, then absolute normative judgments about their behavior become appropriate (like the one you're making in the quote below).
> you're just showing your hand at not liking the things that most people are "cancelled" over.
Honestly, it feels like you're projecting here a little. Seeing a demand for consistency as hypocrisy only makes sense if moral consistency isn't a term in your moral calculus.
Given this, perhaps an example that's coded in the opposite direction politically will make it clearer. Imagine a critic of legacy admissions in prestigious universities that pay lip service to meritocracy and equal opportunity. Now imagine that critic getting even more incensed when a university decides to reverse their usual racial preferences and refuses to admit black legacy candidates. Would this critic be a hypocrite? Does it make any sense to say, "it's a contradiction to complain about legacy admissions and also complain about avoiding specific legacy admissions"?
Obviously not. They set the rules, and they're refusing to play by them. This is a different, and stronger, complaint than simply not liking the stated rules.
These are rules that you've invented, not every "cancellation" results in a firing even for people posting actually racist stuff. Indeed, there are plenty of people with racist posts who are routinely not fired by these companies.
The contradiction is pretty clear - the guy is decrying these tactics, but still saying this person should be fired using exactly those same tactics.
I can see where you got that implication, it wasn't the intention of my comment - the last few line of the blog post are obviously anti-semitic.
I probably should have used the word "really" rather than "actually", as I was trying to contrast the minor response with the harm of the offense, not contrast other racist things with this racist thing.
Notably, Kamau Bobb removed ALL of his blog posts over from his personal website. It looks like some people on Twitter began looking through all of his blog posts and finding controversial opinions.
In my opinion, the 1619 Project is a racist and decisive project and has no place at Google, and Kamau Bobb was a public supporter of that.
So if Google is going to support "cancel culture", then Kamau Bobb should have no place at Google, or any major tech company, whatsoever.
Google is not threatened by "cancel culture". What are people going to do? Get them banned on Twitter? Won't happen, and that's the extent of the possible damage.
Google does this because someone in the corp didn't like what this guy said, and canned them. People do that because they have beliefs. In the U.S. firing people, protesting, and overall underhanded methods are also a Hallmark of "the right" whenever someone does something they don't agree with. Or have we forgotten that the overwhelming majority of day to day business isn't conducted on Twitter?
I think we should try to avoid it at all costs, because otherwise we can't keep a liberal society. Being able to think and express yourself risks offending others. I do not like what this guy had to say, but I'd rather he not get sacked - same with people on the 'opposite' side of the debate. It's gross but we have to stick up for people to be allowed to say gross things.
In 1998 I was running around Italy telling people that Joseph Smith translated magic transdimensional golden plates that a disembodied Native American spirit materialized for him.
Six years later I became an atheist. I've been an atheist for 17 years now.
As someone who has personally undergone an extreme change in disposition on something so fundamental with respect to how one views the cosmos, what you did or said 14 years ago is only relevant to me insofar as what your transformation story has been.
More than anything though, I want to know what person you have become today. Bonus points if you used to think the opposite of what you think today, because you've managed to really grok that state of mind and figured out how to get out of it.
How far is it OK and relevant to look back for dirt in someone's posting history? 20 years? 30? Rants to their college newspaper? High school yearbook? Today's sensitivity yardstick is much less forgiving than it was in decades past. It's getting to the point where it is safest to just not participate at all, in case something you say today becomes taboo in 30 years.
Both US parties try and "cancel" things they don't like. It's not related to one party or the other. [0] Also, "cancel culture" isn't some new concept. Humans have rebuked and ostracized each other forever.
[0] Or are we forgetting when people lost their minds about "happy holidays" and starbucks' cup design change? Or Colin Kaepernick? Etc. I don't see how anyone can say it's related to one political party in one country.
It's not but right now it's a common talking point that only the left practices "cancel culture" so you will see it surfacing in many discussions online.
Something they wrote and then hosted without retraction for 14 years.
Your library of work is on you. Reviewing it, and adding contemporary commentary where needed is again, up to you. If you don't, people assume you still believe it.
This wasn't some woke slip of syntax, he was very literally holding all Jews accountable for Israel's actions. It's a deeply anti-Semitic set of comments. Even without his position, he should have known better.
> Google announced it's removing its global lead on diversity strategy and research from his post after it was discovered he'd made antisemitic comments in a past blog post.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." Excuse me? If this is not clearly antisemitic, I wonder what is.
Being Jewish has nothing to do with Israeli state policy. Is that so difficult to understand? Some German living in the US in early 40s was not responsible for Nazis. What is wrong with people?
Lately it's seems to me simple logic has no correlation with technical ability. You're not a general genius Bob, you're just good at computers.
If that's the quote, damn, that is sooo wrong. Aside from the overt antisemitism, just replace whoever he is talking about with "X".
For any X, when they live constantly among existential threats, in particular other petro-states, who explicitly state that you should be "wiped off the map" and who use and fund impoverished neighbors to instigate and wage proxy wars against you, you should be extremely concerned if you and your nation do NOT prepare strongly by taking up arms in defense of themselves.
Characterizing a necessary defense posture as some kind of blood lust is just sick and ignorant.
it makes me sick to see everyone thinking that this is proof of cancel culture - LOOK THE DIVERSITY GUY WAS HOISTED BY HIS OWN DIVERSITY PETARD!
NO. The people calling for this are not progressives - look them up - Simon Wiesenthal Center and Stop Antisemitism are conservative zionist organizations who equate anti-zionism with anti-semitism. As far as I can tell Kamau Bobb's post was anti-zionist, NOT anti-semitic at all. If you read the passages you will see.
This is a cancellation by the original proponents of cancellation: conservatives supporting an entrenched power structure.
Edit: To those saying he apologized. Yes, he did - but only to a specific subset of those he insulted: ""First and foremost I extend my deepest and most sincere apologies to my Jewish sisters and brothers for the hurtful and divisive words that came out of my mouth during my interview with Richard Griffin,''"
> Nick Cannon apologized Wednesday night for comments he called "hurtful and divisive" after the television host and producer was dropped by ViacomCBS for remarks the company called anti-Semitic.
First sentence from your link, seems like maybe you are just trying to be controversial.
There are additional examples, but posting them and discussing the normalization of anti-white racism is "flamebait" and will get your account suspended on HN for "ideological battles".
In any case the fact that he hasn't been completely cancelled speaks to the unique status that anti-white racism has over other forms.
It is better to point out how it is counterproductive and offer better arguments on the table. Because we won't bring "balance" by stomping on some other ethnic group, or fall into even more generalization about groups of people.
> Abolish religion, and you free the people to the reality of the universe.
You'd be better off abolishing politics/politicians[1]: religion is but one way of "othering". Religion/sectarianism is only a hot-button issue because it serves hard-liner politicians well on both sides of any conflict/blood-feud
1. Good luck with that! Especially when politicians make the laws.
Abolish those as well, as the nationalism is also a crock of zealot-religious bs. In America, we have lost religion and instead many now feel the need to jump into identity politics. This mentality is disgusting and very small minded tribalism. It's inherent in human nature and we still share so much of that earlier hominid brain.
It's not about the literal beliefs of religions. It's about having a 'tribe' or in-group. That was helpful to our survival as a species, and that instinct has not gone away. If it's not religion, it's political ideology, national identity, ethnicity, or allegiance to a football team. We love defining the world in terms of 'us' and 'others.' The trick is in finding a way to live (and dare I say work) in proximity with 'others.'
It's a similar premise in the fact that each of these systems, whether it be religion, political ideology, or a cult personality all require mindless and low IQ followers to work.
Religion made sense back in the day. Life was hard and short, and we didn't know what would happen afterwards. Today, people work their butts off because they know (hope) they'll be able to enjoy life in retirement - back then, people endured life hoping that they'd enjoy afterlife.
"Working our butts off" for the future hope of a payoff after retirement and after our bodies have lost all our vitality is as big a scam as all religions. It keeps the coffers lined, keeps people head down, and it's nothing but a lie. All people should be able to live free of slavery and not be duped into believing all this office work 50 hours a week ends in some magical, mystical payoff. It doesn't. I've known a TON of people who died right after retirement, and who can't do anything they wanted to do after retirement as they're too damn worn down. The entire working for another company to make them profits in return for a paltry little barely livable wage, is a scam.
Not tech, but in 2018 Nascar/Indycar driver Conor Daly lost a sponsorship because it surfaced that his (at the time) newly immigrated Irish father had used a racial slur in a radio interview in the 80s, years before Conor had even been born [0]. Its going to be hard for anything to beat the absurdity of that situation.
That’s an...incredibly poor and uncharitable reading of his argument.
It’s not a good essay but he definitively isn’t advocating for a genocide - and indeed is arguing against Israel committing a genocide in slow motion. At worst he is conflating Zionists with Jews, an unfortunate generalization which is anti Semitic but nowhere near the mental image most people have of anti Semitic behavior.
Additionally he made these comments 13 years ago and not on company property. Assuming the offenses were equal performing one more than a decade ago vs. last week on a company system is always going to have a different response. Your comparison isn’t a fair one.
Palestinians (aka Philistines) originally weren't Semitic fwiw.
They likely came from Southern Europe (the bible specifically mentions the island of Crete as their place of origin) arriving roughly the same time as the Hebrews who came in from the east. This was part of the "Sea People" migrations which is documented in Egyptian literature that occurred at the bronze age collapse.
They were more sort of a proto Greek and most likely spoke an Indo-European dialect initially.
"Diversity and Inclusion", and woke ideology writ-large has turned into a complete farce. I have zero respect for these people because their concern is a facade - it exists only to exert power over people that you disagree with. There is not a single person in existence that meets their ridiculous standards - they just haven't spotted you yet.
> Instead of firing him, though, Google is moving Bobb into a STEM-focused role.
That's surprising, but I think it's good. He's obviously not viable in the diversity role, but there's no reason to go ballistic over a 15 year old blog post.
Yeah, seems like a good compromise. There's a big difference between "we don't want our spokesperson to say X" and "we want to make people saying X unemployable". I wish the second didn't happen at all. I wish all people saying things hateful to me could find nice jobs and get assimilated into live & let live. What else should I wish, that they'd die poor in a ditch and their kids too?
That's several steps beyond what most in society are capable of foreshadowing.
A society of mad kings (on all political sides) who want anyone not like them "taken away" with little solutions on actually fixing the problems that caused the disagreement.
I don’t know. I’m not Jewish, but I’d have trouble working with someone with views like that. I guess if they were extremely contrite and enough time had passed since they had said it (and no other incident since then).
Sounds like you're the one with the problem then. He barely said anything offensive, just misspoke - if you look at the full blog post text, the intent is clear.
> but there's no reason to go ballistic over a 15 year old blog post.
While I agree in principle I hope this is part of a new trend rather than an exemption for this case because his content is so much more offensive than anything Teen Vogue editor Alex McCammond ever said.
I'm a Jew. If he apologized publicly and it was a long time ago, I think it would be ok. We have to be able to give people second chances and the ability to evolve their views. If someone was a neo nazi as a youth and grew out of it and regretted their past then they should be allowed to live a normal life. Preventing this just leads to more radicalization.
While in sentiment I agree with you, this is not being applied consistently throughout society. We are currently in an environment of maximum consequences, no tolerance afforded. Until something pulls us back from the brink, it needs to be that way consistently or more tensions will be inflamed.
You are not wrong in that enforcement is definitely applied inconsistently and with extreme bias with regards to race and gender. I struggle with the correct approach to take though and if its cracking down on everyone or hoping that this at least is a crack in the door and people will realize the current trend of punishing people for decades old comments is wrong and should be stopped. Unfortunately it is likely that the rules will just continue to be unevenly enforced stoking anger and further dividing people.
C'mon, if we go back 20 years, I'm sure A LOT of Americans wrote and said unspeakable things about middle eastern people. Same goes for a lot of Iraqi and Afghani people, after the invasion.
Point is - war and conflicts brings out emotions, and people say things they necessarily don't mean under normal circumstances.
What's more, people mature and change. The person you were 10-20-30-xx years ago, isn't necessarily the person you are today.
There’s lots of circumstances where you’ve gotta accept that your coworkers might believe offensive things. Imagine being a gay man and finding a devout Muslim on your team who wholeheartedly believes it’s wrong to be gay - if she’s willing to treat you respectfully and not bring it up at work, would you insist she be fired?
A major goal of a diversity leader in a tech-focused company like Google is to influence the behavior of engineers. A fellow engineer is often able to do that far more effectively than someone without a strong technical background.
Remember just yesterday the same thread from dailymail was remove from YCombinator.
This site is censored to the gills. You can talk all you want about tech stuff, but don't cross the boundaries. That is, until it hits a major paper and then perhaps it can't be ignored.
As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy would not have been removed from his position and Damore would not have been fired. Instead we could have had a conversation to win hearts and minds, but today it is all about getting scalps, witch hunts and over-reaction. What we are currently doing sends people underground which radicalizes them more.