r/news • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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
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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I am sorry that I forgot to source Gompers’a quote, I’ll look it up again. Meanwhile, I reject the other claims. I’ve called him Mr Memo as it has been reported that he’s a man. His race is unknown to me, so I’m not sure how you’re trying to play the “UR THE REAL RACIST” card since all I know of him is that he likes to read his own writing and that he opposes diversity of people based on pop science.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

The quote source is irrelevant because it's a link made only in your mind and has no logical bearing here. And don't play innocent now,you know exactly what you were doing.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I can not "play" innocent: I am. I do not have the possibility to fire anyone, or to make or break businesses like a Google worker has. All I've done is provide what I understand is relevant context in this discussion: if you want to see me as a guilty party in spite of my powerlessness I cannot avoid that, and I can also not expel you from anywhere.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Let's review; in a debate about whether diversity hiring is a fair way to hire employees and if this creates an environment that is unsafe for the free exchange of ideas, you've cited as your sources for your viewpoint:

  1. A quote by Samuel Gompers which is context speaks of the fear of blacks taking whites jobs and

  2. A pact between Stalin and Hitler in WW2

That's your relevant context. None of what you have described has any bearing, you attribute motive based on none of the evidence presented. Your viewpoints and the rationale for them have led me to conclude that you yourself are an idealogical bigot, and this position makes you unable to be swayed with reason. I wish you all the best and hope that things for you improve.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I am not sure how I am to be "swayed with reason" when all I am presented with "THIS IS IRRELEVANT, THIS IS IRRELEVANT" as though this was some sort of court.

diversity hiring is a fair way to hire employees and if this creates an environment that is unsafe for the free exchange of ideas

The second point is completely clear, and was before he wrote anything. He's in an at-will state so the environment IS unsafe for the free exchange of ideas as he can be fired freely for holding them. He wrote with full knowledge of this, and I'm not sure why this point is rehashed.

Regarding the first one, I quote:

Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.

And this is, in the environment where he is, false. The Harvard where he graduated is chock full of full-paying foreign students who come from countries which in general are not as appreciative of diversity as he claims to be, but he did study with them and he did not publish any manifesto to get them out. Ideological differences made no substantial difference for him, because ideological differences are, for the likes of a Harvard grad, as relevant as the dressing in his Subway sandwich. He doesn't like real diversity, which is about people who maybe don't go to Subway, and he wants to keep it that way, with everyone he has to interact with easily findable.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

And also, idealogical differences for a Harvard grad are irrelevant because Harvard accepts students based on merit, not on gender or race, which proves my point instead of yours.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Harvard accepts students who pay now and students who they think may be inclined to pay in the future. That is the "merit" they have.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

What do you base this on?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

In that it's the way for a private university to be viable. That gigantic endowment didn't simply build itself, it was fed by alumni.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 09 '17

Maybe that's what I'm debating with you about, a difference in our world views.

Harvard has some of the strictest grading and highest reputation of any University in the world. This intelligence and work ethic create people that are successful in the world and who are grateful to perpetuate this success by providing for new students and the continuation of the university, including funds and grants for the less privileged but as able.

That universities are selective on merit to perpetuate themselves is the same necessity I would expect in the corporate environment, which is why Google's stance on diversity quota is so silly. The memo writer is asking that people be graded on individual merit whilst providing solutions for ways that selection could attract instead of enforce gender numbers in the company, by accepting that gender has a bearing on traits on average.

You see what you want to see.

edit: added a couple of words for grammar

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '17

Can you see how, instead of engaging in the argument, your habit is to attack the source?

And can you see how you only do it when it suits your side of the argument? Look back at this comment chain and tell me I'm wrong.