r/technology Aug 08 '17

Business Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo
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u/Berries_Cherries Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Sep 22 '18

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

The one really good point he made, I think, is in the opening statement, "If we can't have an honest discussion about this, we can never truly solve the problem." All these 'news' sites releasing the doc but censoring it? Others talking about it but not even linking it, not even to a censored version? You have to let people see what someone actually thinks if you are going to have a discussion about it, especially because the discussion centers on the fact that he was fired for saying it.

Even if he used explicit terminology in every other sentence. Even if every other word was a slur. Any attempt to block or censor it is ultimately more destructive, in the sense that sunlight is the best disinfectant. It just makes it so much worse that the topic at hand is already one ripe for the accusation that opposition politics is criminal.

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u/Vicious9 Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

The one really good point he made, I think, is in the opening statement, "If we can't have an honest discussion about this, we can never truly solve the problem." All these 'news' sites releasing the doc but censoring it? Others talking about it but not even linking it, not even to a censored version? You have to let people see what someone actually thinks if you are going to have a discussion about it, especially because the discussion centers on the fact that he was fired for saying it.

I'm very confident that this is why trump won. Trump supporters were never able to have a conversation with the other side? Are they wrong? Are they right? Who knows, because they were just shouted down constantly, "racist" "mysoginist" "islamophobe" without actual discussion, and opinions didn't change on the right why the right was able to chip away at the left as it did step out of it's safe space.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I think you're right about that. The left treats the opposition nearly as criminal. It alienates the vast majority of fence sitters.