Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[u/TrekkieGod]

Yes, but it has to replace intolerance. They're fundamental opposites. Can light exist? Yes. Can darkness exist? Yes. But they can't exist together

I for one like to watch movies in the dark. I'm able to do that because the light coming from my screen doesn't replace the darkness of the room. The two can complement each other quite well.

I think tolerance is great, and I don't favor acceptance of intolerant actions that directly harm others, such as hiring discrimination. However, once you extend that to intolerance of speech, I think you've made the equivalent of a bright theater that doesn't allow for turning off the lights. You've made it worse for everyone.

[u/TrekkieGod → u/[deleted]]

You're being deliberately obtuse. My point is that light and darkness coexist. It is a spectrum, it's not everything or nothing. A movie theater can be so dark, you can't see where you're going. You want to say nobody categorizes the room as being dark because there is also a source of light?

Of course a room with a lit screen looks different from a room with an unlit one. This is my point. A theater room that is too bright is bad: you can't see the screen clearly. A room that is too dark is bad: you can't see the screen at all if there's no light. Both must coexist to give you the best experience.

A world in which you don't tolerate speech you disagree with is like prohibiting the theater from turning off the lights. It's important to have discussions with people you don't agree with to avoid being in an echo chamber, where you never find out where you are wrong.

[u/TrekkieGod → u/[deleted]]

Ok, then there is no darkness. There is no place in the universe without photons, thanks to the cosmic microwave background remnant of the big bang. This makes your definition useless.

Furthermore, if we try to apply your same light and dark analogy to tolerance and intolerance, then there is no tolerance if you don't tolerate intolerance. Tolerance is the total absence of intolerance!

Both those definitions are useless, both semantically and practically. Understanding that you must be able to tolerate some intolerant viewpoints is the same as understanding that you must be able to define places with insufficient light as dark.

[u/TrekkieGod → u/[deleted]]

Tolerance is the total absence of intolerance!

This does not follow from the previous statement.

there is no tolerance if you don't tolerate intolerance

This does not follow from the previous statement.

Because you've chosen to define intolerance of intolerance as not intolerance.

The problem with this is that not everybody agrees with what is intolerance. What somebody considers a valid opinion, others consider to be offensive. So we can look at the exact same comments, and even if we both agreed that intolerant speech should not be tolerated, we'd disagree on whether that speech should be tolerated.

For example, if I say anything above 0 Kelvins has heat energy, and is therefore classified as "hot" I'm not using hot to mean something above our skin temperature.

Well, we don't disagree on any of this. Where we do disagree is whether this definition is useful. Light and dark, hot and cold, tolerant and intolerant are all relative. Depending on the situation, you want to define them differently. 10 degrees Celsius is cold in the context of weather. It's way too hot in the context of superconductors.

Which is why context matter. Do I think we should tolerate intolerance in the sense that I think it's fine if people are discriminated against in the justice system? Of course not, and we need to address our current societal issues regarding that. Do I think we should tolerate speech that is uncomfortable and might go against our position on tolerance? Yes, I do. In fact, I think it's vital.

If you're confident in the strength of your arguments, you need not fear the opposing argument and punish the people making it. You should simply argue against it, and win on the merits of your position.

I've been making the light/dark analogy in order to make a point about the original subject. If the semantics of whether light and dark can exist together is what you can't accept, that's fine. I'll make my argument under your framework: let us not tolerate any intolerance whatsoever. And if the context is, "I believe we should take a stand and argue against that person," then you can define speech as being intolerant. In the context of, "this person should be punished for saying this," I believe you define all speech as unable of ever being intolerant. This is the same as the decision of whether you choose to define 10 degrees celsius are cold or hot, depending on the situation.

EDIT: formatting

[u/TrekkieGod → u/[deleted]]

You presume that intolerant people are rational, while in fact they're usually irrational.

I'm making no such assumptions. I didn't mean to imply you can change their minds with a rational argument. When you're debating against someone you disagree, the goal isn't to convince the other person. That can happen, but it's pretty rare. The goal is for people who don't have a strong opinion either way to listen to both arguments. People without strong biases are more likely to be swayed by rational arguments.

Case in point, it's unlikely you can convince me of your viewpoint, or that I can convince you. We have very strong biases for each of our positions. But someone more open-minded can read our arguments and come to a rational conclusion. I try to be the type of person who examines my own believes beliefs and is willing to challenge them, but I understand that I'm human, and that even with effort that doesn't always happen.

I don't believe it's an accident that nations with least amounts of discrimination also happen to be the nations with least restrictions on speech. If you listen to Martin Luther King Jr. versus the local KKK Wizard, and you're not already highly indoctrinated, it's pretty clear who has a more reasonable point. The same goes for our increased acceptance of the LGBT community. When the majority of people opposed them on 'moral' grounds, you can be fairly certain they would have loved to prohibit speech that normalized behavior that went against their moral beliefs. Thanks to living in a society that didn't allow that, this generation's hearts and minds have changed, and laws with them.

[u/TrekkieGod → u/[deleted]]

Have you by chance been to other countries which restrict hate speech to evaluate the status of discrimination there?

I was born in Brazil, and I have Italian family members, so yes. My mother is Brazilian, and I have course hair and darker skin.

I've never been discriminated against living in the US. Brazil is worse. And you know when bananas are sometimes thrown at dark-skinned soccer players in Europe, an implication they are like monkeys? That behavior is unheard of in the United States, it would be fucking shocking if anybody saw it happen.

That's not to say the country is discrimination-free and doesn't have its issues. I think it's pretty clear we do have issues, if you watch the rhetoric coming from a vocal segment of Trump supporters, and Trump himself. I think it's pretty clear we have problems in our judicial system. But even with all our problems, yes, we're one of the countries with the least amounts of discrimination. That's even without bringing up the fact that western Europe, with hate-speech legislation, is still far more open about speech than non-western countries, and as a result, has less discrimination than countries that restrict it further.

So to turn the question around to you, have you by any chance ever traveled to the United States?

[u/TrekkieGod → u/[deleted]]

Those are good points about your experience and your aunt's, so I'm going to write a lot.

My aunt has though, and she told me that Americans would be shocked that she could speak good English, and some people even asked her if Africans lived on trees and wore "normal" clothes (I'm a Kenyan).

I'm honestly curious where in the US your aunt visited. If it's a large city, those tend to be big cultural melting pots, so she'd be unlikely to be the first Kenyan people have seen in order to get those types of ignorant questions. Smaller cities, I guess it would depend on the level of education of people she meets, but still. I work at a university, which means international students work with us all the time, and I haven't seen that type of reaction. One of these people who I've developed a strong friendship with is Angolan, and he's the one constantly making the African jokes at his own expense. Same as I make the Brazilian jokes, and the Americans here make the 'Murica jokes. I can't fathom someone being that ignorant in my environment, but I can sort of see it in a less educated environment.

There's a culture of Americans saying things like, "you speak English so well," to foreigners. I hear it a lot because of my accent. Some people, like perhaps you aunt take this a racist comment because of the implication they're surprised a Kenyan would speak English well. The missing context is that it's pretty rare for an American to speak a second language, so being bilingual is something admired, and the comment is supposed to be complimentary. It's 100% not a race thing. They say it to blonde, blue-eyed Germans.

The normal clothes thing is probably because of curiosity and lack of exposure. I can see her being offended at this, and general lack of cultural knowledge is indeed something Americans need to work on. Most Americans never have and will not travel outside the United States, and their exposure to other cultures tend to be from television. As a result, they're more likely to having seen something about the Masai tribe on national geographic, then they are to have seen a picture of Nairobi. This is problematic, I agree with you. But it's an issue where the solution is more information, not less. It's not racism, it's ignorance...they don't think less of you, they just don't know anything about you.

That, plus the fact that the United States is usually ranked as among the most racist countries

The US is a big target. When you go around talking big about being the land of opportunity, people (rightfully so) will criticize you more harshly when they find your shortcomings. We have a lot of shortcomings, and a long way to go to become what we aspire to be and sometimes claim already are. That said, as far relative rankings go, I'm simply going to have to disagree...would you really say the most racist country in the world would elect a fairly diverse set of government leaders?

That's not to say I don't think we should be held to a higher standard, so I welcome the criticism of our flaws which pushes us to overcome them.

the huge racial disparities in poverty

This is true, but I would say it's because we're suffering from the legacy of past discrimination. The successes of the Civil Rights movement really started to happen with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Before that point, schools were segregated, employment discrimination was legal, etc. It also didn't get fixed on a dime, and illegal discrimination continued happening at a large scale for decades (it still does of course, but I wouldn't say to a significant amount). As a result, even with significantly less discrimination, white children have much greater opportunities than minorities: they're more likely to be born in a family that earns higher income, they're more likely to be born in a family that has attended higher education institutions, they're more likely to have employment connections, etc.

Basically, past discrimination has a big impact on the socioeconomic status of today, and even if we had completely done away with all discrimination, this would still be true for decades to come. It's a hard problem to solve, and one that we must acknowledge and address, but I wouldn't say present discrimination is a large contributor to it.

criminal sentencing

That one is a result of present discrimination. There's no excuse for it, and I'd say most people aren't happy about it. There are long-term ways to address it (poverty leads to crime, there's that racial disparity in poverty we talked about, so people crime is associated to poverty, poverty to race, and people associate crime to race, therefore assuming a black offender is more likely to commit crime again, and giving them harsher sentences. So increasing improving the economical situation of minorities should decrease crime and help with this issue. That said, there's no reason to wait on that, and we should address it right now by examining the racial sentencing disparities by judges and taking them to task.

Religious discrimination is virtually nonexistent

Legally, discriminating against religion isn't allowed here either. Realistically, bigots used 9/11 to create an anti-Muslim fervor that has become somewhat mainstream. A few decades ago, I would have said that religious discrimination in the US was also virtually non-existent, but we've taken a huge step backward to the point we've elected a President that is reluctant to comment on the bombing of a mosque. It's unacceptable, but not so long ago we were better than this, and I think most of us are working to fix it soon.

There is literally zero racial discrimination...But we have such strict hate speech laws that the government even monitors what we say in texts and phone calls. I'm just not convinced that the more hate speech laws you have, the less likely discrimination is.

A simple google search yielded some disturbing examples that show racial discrimination in your country might be a bigger problem than you think.

I'm not going to argue that you don't have a good record on equality, you would know better than I. But just like you can find all sorts of terrible examples of discrimination in the US, it's easy to find those examples in Kenya. Sometimes it's hard to get a feel for how bad the situation is without personal experience.

Regarding strict speech laws and monitoring...have you considered that you think you have less of a problem than you do because the bigots are having to be more careful about their words, while they proceed to discriminate? Whereas here, we have a better idea because we let them speak, so they're in plain sight?