The vast majority of the histrionic reactions on social media and elsewhere to a memo by a now ex-Google employee about diversity have misrepresented not only what the memo says but also its purpose.
David Harsanyi writes:
Most of the mainstream media refers to the former Google engineer’s leaked internal memo as the “anti-diversity memo.” Recode calls it “sexist.” And Google fired James Damore for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” But in reality, the problem isn’t diversity; it’s that a senior software engineer admitted, perhaps unwittingly, to pondering three of the most scandalous thought crimes of contemporary American society.
The first crime is proposing that a meritocracy might be healthier for a company than bean-counting race, ethnicity and sex. The second is pointing out that ideological diversity matters. The third and most grievous of all is suggesting that men and women are, in general, physiologically and psychologically different, and thus they tend to excel at different things.
“On average,” asserts Damore, “men and women biologically differ in many ways.” He then has the temerity to accuse women of generally displaying a “stronger interest in people rather than things,” of having empathy and “openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics,” and of being less pushy and having less interest in status than male colleagues. Women, this guy says, are “more cooperative” than men and search out better “work-life balance.”
There’s much more, but I don’t want to further upset any female readers.
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