James Damore

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"Google's Ideological Echo Chamber: How Bias Clouds Our Thinking About Diversity and Inclusion" is the title of a memo written in July 2017 by the software engineer James Damore, then employed at Google. The memo contains criticisms of Google's workplace diversity policies, and multiple suggestions on ways to increase women's representation in technology without using positive discrimination. The memo's publication led to a controversy across social media, and accusations of sexism were made against Damore. Damore was fired by Google in August 2017, because Google alleged his memo violated its code of conduct. While his initial attitude was questionable, and had attracted the plucky company of the sexist MRAs and white supremacists, his subsequent actions just further cast him as just another poor white dude who cries, "Come see the violence Inherent in the System! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

The memo

Damore begins the memo by stating that he values diversity and inclusion, he doesn't like stereotypes, and he's not a sexist. This part, however, might have been a later addition in response to the backlash, though this naked negation alone has made the alt-right recoil in shock and horror at his recanting… nah, they're still there. There is then a tl;dr run-down of the memo:

“” Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety. This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed. The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology. Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

The memo then lists some average personality differences between men and women. In particular, it asserts that women are more prone to "neuroticism (higher anxiety and lower stress tolerance)", agreeableness, and cooperativeness.

These claims are well-established in the scientific literature. Damore also says that since there are some gender differences that can't completely stem from societal expectations (such as some traits being universal throughout all cultures), this means women have particular biological personality traits that hinder, or at least discourage them, in the workplace (the memo's example being that women are underrepresented in the tech industry). While Damore makes token appeals that these differences overlap between the sex populations as opposed to being strictly confined to one gender, it doesn't take long for him to use his data to undermine goals pursued in order to fight discrimination towards women at the systemic level, as the implication is that women are biologically this way and there's nothing that can be done about that. Likewise, these findings are true in only the most banal sense, so he is ignoring that much of scientific literature has recognized that there is a difference between genders, but has downplayed their significance overall. Also, Damore ignores the nature versus nurture problem, as there was also a survey of genders across races, in which the results between white and Asian respondents differed dramatically, which suggests that some gender differences could be cultural rather than biological in origin. Perhaps then it is not surprising that he would find good company amongst the alt-right.

The memo also discussed the harm of Google's supposed discriminatory practices, stating that conservative viewpoints are shamed into silence, though the memo never gives a specific example of such a viewpoint and its consequence. It is likely that Damore is partly referring here to his own views as expressed in the memo. The memo portrays "the Left" and "the Right" using sweeping generalizations, as if those two are some hive mind entities at polar opposites, such as assuming people on the Left all love to protect the weak and give protections for women. It gives a long, detailed list of suggestions to increase women's representation and improve Google's workplace, one being removing or heavily altering minority outreach programs because those are allegedly discrimination. To attempt to support his proposals, he states that women's outreach groups for tech are just as bad as trying to get more representation of women among the "homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts." Regarding the gender gap, some of Damore's suggestions include making software engineering more collaborative and less stressful, endorsing part-time work, and allowing men to be more "feminine" instead of being tied to the traditional expectations associated with the male gender role. However, much ado was made about how he was overemphasizing the supposed genetic traits found in women that would presumably keep them from attaining higher roles in tech and leadership. In addition to implying that women were less skilled at their jobs at others, he inadvertently created the atmosphere of discrimination he claimed he was fighting against, for both women and POC. Furthermore, his answers gave no actual remedy to the lack of women and POC in higher positions that would give them equal footing with white men.

The memo cites eight scientific articles. a book from MRA idol Warren Farrell, and thirteen articles, including some from the likes of very fine people such as American Enterprise Institute stooge Christina Hoff Sommers, who has recently said that men getting fired for spanking their co-workers shouldn't be fired because it's not rape, Jonathan Haidt, whose infinite wisdom has led him to compare left-wing protests at college campuses to the current Republican agenda in the White House, and everyone's favorite right-wing rag, the New York Post, where the article even made the comparison of the act of hiding conservative viewpoints being similar to black people disguising themselves as white and gay people being in the closet.

Although it has been claimed that much of the data in the memo is "suspect, outdated or has other problems", all but two of the scientific articles cited in the memo belong to journals ranked in the first quartile of their fields, and on average they have been published less than 10.4 years before the memo. The issue within the memo, however, is how Damore interprets the results of the studies.

Origin and diffusion

James Damore wrote the memo on a flight to China. He was motivated to write the memo after attending a Google diversity program, where he heard things he "definitely disagreed with" and found that there was "a lot of just shaming" and "no, you can’t say that, that's sexist".

The memo was originally shared on Google's internal mailing list in July 2017. On August 5, the first public version of the memo was published on Gizmodo.

Responses

Google and its employees

Google, which concluded that the memo was a violation of its code of conduct, fired Damore on August 7, 2017.

The first public response of Google to the memo came on August 8 from the Google's VP of Diversity, Danielle Brown, who said "Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws". Then, Google's CEO Sundar Pichai wrote to Google employees, supporting Brown's response, but also adding, "there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK."

Damore said he received private thanks from other Google employees who supported his points but were afraid to speak out. A female Google employee said she considered the memo a personal attack, and other women employees said they were preparing to leave Google by interviewing for other jobs. Some of Google's employees were disciplined or fired for their comments on the memo.

The media

The coverage of the memo by the media was rather poor. As pointed out by Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic, many headlines, including ABC News, BBC, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, The Huffington Post, Time, and PBS, characterized the memo as "anti-diversity". The Washington Post wrote, "The memo said that 'biological differences' may explain 'why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.'" and called his online conduct (particularly, his questions about the "coolness" of KKK titles) into question. CNN wrote that Damore "argued that women are not biologically fit for tech roles", while the memo actually argued that fewer women than men are biologically suited for tech roles, a very different claim. Slate even asserted that Damore aligns with "white supremacists",, since while the memo did not explicitly endorse racism, it pushed back against minority outreach groups and labeled them as race discrimination. The unsavory conclusion is that when the memo was saying "stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races", it meant those programs and classes. He may not formally have any allegiance to whatever outlandish agenda white supremacists have cooked up these days, but his goals in undercutting those with less chances to begin with, based on unchangeable factors like race and gender, which leaves them vulnerable from the outset, as well as an emphasis on fighting for conservative white men based something as covert and unimportant to the workplace like politics, to say nothing of his later bizarre statements he made concerning the KKK, have left him in an uneasy limbo.

In an interview with CNN Tech, when asked about his intentions in writing the memo, he said he wanted to start a debate on the role of women in tech, that he wasn't looking to provide an in-depth answer. In the face of the claim that many scientists acknowledged the difference between men and women biologically were minimal at best and that using their findings as proof of any relevant biological difference is like using an axe in a surgical operation, he restated his position that individuals shouldn't be discriminated against whatsoever, but still maintains that biology is a big part of it as opposed to under-representation being a wholly systemic problem. The final nail in the coffin is that when asked about how the number of women studying computer science increased until the mid-1980s, he said that much of computer science back then was just accounting. He was asked if he was saying that famous women computer scientists were only outliers as opposed to the norm, and he said he wasn't saying that, nor was he saying female Google programmers were any worse than men, but didn't give an answer that lessened the implications of what he was saying. His downplaying of the achievements of these women all but dashes his reading of history.

The scientists

Among the scientists who expressed support for the scientific content of the memo were clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson (of course), sexual neuroscientist Debra Soh, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, and social psychologist Lee Jussim. Other scientists disagree with the science in the memo: neuroscientist Gina Rippon, psychologist Rosalind Barnett, Suzanne Sadedin, organizational psychologist Adam Grant, and personality psychologist David P. Schmitt (though Schmitt does agree with more open discussion about biological sex differences that may account for variations among men and women workplace experiences).

A great deal was made about how the memo was either unsourced at times, or outright misrepresented the sources it cited. There were also reports that a good number of the memo's claims were outright false, especially when he was prone to taking information directly sourced from Wikipedia without giving any indication as to whether Wikipedia had a source for the claim.

There have been studies conducted in more gender equal countries, namely Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. It was found that, paradoxically, as more gender-equal measures were implemented, gender differences actually increased. For example, in the Netherlands, STEM representation is a mere 20%, four percent lower than the US. By contrast, in the UAE, where gender expression was limited, STEM representation was an astounding 40%. The conclusion from the study was that in more egalitarian nations, women chose safer careers, which accounted for their life choices, while in countries with less freedom, women chose STEM even with its supposed "limits" because they felt other choices did not provide for them economically in the same way. The study even seems to confirms Damore's claim that women are better suited to part-time work, as more women in female-friendly countries do work part-time, even high earners. The answer can't simply be boiled down to women giving up their careers to have a family, as apparently it's also a practice shared by single women and women who otherwise don't wish to have kids.

However, this study doesn't take into account the full picture. Women choosing to do mostly part-time work is apparently a cultural tradition. Also, the wage gap in the Netherlands is particularly high, the US is only two places behind it - likely a result of so many women choosing part-time work in comparison to men. A possible counterpoint is that in Norway, there is a draconian law that requires at least 40% women in a company's corporate sector or the company will be shut down, no questions asked. Despite this law, there are still far more men than women in positions of senior management. It's also important to note that women work part-time more than men in every nation in the world. By the same token, however, women still do a great deal of unpaid work related to childcare and chores. This difference isn't as stark in more gender-egalitarian countries, because men also have freedom to engage in part-time work and help their spouses, but it's still present. On the other hand, in more male-dominated countries like India, Mexico, and Turkey, the pressure is far higher on women. The controversy of supposed biological determinism affecting STEM careers has to do with the treatment of women as opposed to men, especially with respect to the surprising statistics from countries where gender inequality is higher. Women often state that they have faced hostile treatment in scientific careers, unlike men. Also, men tend to be allocated (and to take) less paid paternity leave, necessitating them having larger work roles instead of the relative freedom afforded to women.

The "American people"

A Harvard-Harris poll survey (which has no connection to Harvard) among 2,263 registered voters reported that 55% said Google was wrong to fire James Damore, including 61% of Republicans, 56% percent of independents, 50% percent of Democrats, and 56% of women. Thus, Americans seem quite split on Google's decision, regardless of their political views and/or genders. This was seized upon by wingnut news sources, including the frothing Newsmax and the rabid FrontPageMag, who used the poll to proclaim that "the contempt for freedom of expression [...] among younger age groups remains one of the biggest threats to freedom in this country."

The complaints about freedom of speech are flawed, because Google is a private company with at-will employment. Freedom of association works both ways in the US: Google can choose to have any code of conduct it wants, and Damore could in principle either choose an employer that fits his political viewpoints, or choose to express his more controversial political beliefs outside of the workplace, in a context in which no-one would assume he was speaking on behalf of his employer.

However, in practice Damore has found it difficult to secure further employment in the tech field due to the controversy his case has generated.

Damore's later actions

Blaming autism for rotten ideas

“”So few people understand us, so we’ve become both a punching bag and an excuse for dangerous, harmful bullshit.... And now, James Damore is eager to cast autism as something that magically turns you into a racist, sexist bigot, all so he can skirt responsibility.

—Jennifer Unkle, autistic woman

Damore is on the autism spectrum. An author at The Guardian suggested that this must be the reason he has such abhorrent beliefs. While autistic people can be socially clueless and may come across as insensitive, that's very different from being sexist and from refusing to learn from your mistakes. "When my autistic friends have hurt me and I told them, they apologized and didn’t do it again. Shocking, I know," writes Marykate Jasper.

People have pointed out that blaming autism for sexism and other issues is ridiculously unfair to autistic people, who already face unfair stigma, bullying, and ostracism.

Sex and drugs and the KKK

Damore himself gained notoriety for the memo, being received poorly by the left but hailed as a free speech hero by the right. He was interviewed by such lovely people as Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, and Milo Yiannopoulos. Damore also set up a fundraiser on WeSearchr, a crowdfunding website founded by alt-right activist Chuck Johnson.

Adding insult to injury, Damore posted some since-deleted tone-deaf statements about the KKK, first saying that titles like "Grand Dragon," and "Imperial Wizard," are cool, then later posting a poll asking if people agreed with him, with one of the answers being, "No, that's racist," which in light of his push against outreach minority programs and later statements, was inflammatory at best. Later he would claim that demonizing the KKK is like teaching kids about sex and drugs without acknowledging that they can be fun. "If you make the actual KKK the only place where you can acknowledge the coolness of Dungeons & Dragons terms, then you’ll just push people into the KKK." (It should be mentioned that "Grand Dragon" and "Imperial Wizard" are not terms used in D&D.)

White men can't sue

In 2018, Damore filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming they discriminate against conservatives and white men. His partner in the suit is David Gudeman, another former Google employee who used an internal forum to question a Muslim co-worker's account of being targeted by the FBI on the basis of his religion, suggesting they had legitimate reason to interrogate him, as well as having previously been cited by HR for comparing a female Google manager's advice on how white men should respond to bias, to something "slave owners would have written for their slaves to help them understand how to interact with their masters." How charming and twee.

In addition, the complaint lists under the anti-conservative discriminatory offenses an anonymous meme that said, "I think all of Trump's supporters are deplorable for backing an openly racist candidate, but that's none of my business," and under the anti-white discriminatory offenses an anonymous comment that tells white, male, and straight people, "there are times to just shut up and listen. Try for some empathy. You'll learn a lot." Google's CEO Sundar Pichai later attempted to explain their political speech policy and why Damore was fired by saying that employees can express themselves at work on political issues, but that does not mean anything goes. Additionally, earlier in April of 2017 before the whole memo business blew out of hand, a Department of Labor official accused Google of practicing systemic discrimination against female employees, to the point that the federal government sued Google for refusing to share compensation amounts and other data. Google also maintains an online graphic of its employee demographics, during which in August of that same year it said that:

— Women make up 25 percent of the company's leadership — Women hold 20 percent of technology jobs — Overall, 31 percent of Google's employees are female — 56 percent of employees are white, 35 percent are Asian, 4 percent are Hispanic, 4 percent are mixed-race, and 2 percent are black

Tiptoeing the lines of political correctness

When offered the opportunity to reject the alt-right, sometimes he does so, such as in his interview with CNN, while at other times he has been more wishy-washy than a laundromat he should be. After being terminated from Google, he accepted a photoshoot from photographer Peter Duke on the grounds that he should have more flattering photos than the ones used by the media. It wasn't until later that he learned Peter Duke was known as the Annie Leibowitz of the alt-right. To his credit, he still later balked at the idea of any of the photos that had been taken being used publicly. However, when asked if he regretted having been interviewed by Milo Yiannopoulos, he simply said that he didn't know and that he wasn't aware of any of the possible repercussions of his actions.

His answers in the wake of the Charlottesville attack have also proven problematic, as when asked whether he intends to participate in pretentious alt-right meetings that were made to condemn the violence in Charlottesville and later disbanded on the notion that they were being attacked by the "alt-left", he only answered, "No, not really." While he has outright come out and said that he does not support the alt-right, he has yet to condemn their more egregious actions.

Additionally, he has written a piece on Quillette (an online magazine that pushes far-right pseudoscience) that is similar to his Google memo. He analyzes diversity in the same impersonal manner as he analyzed sex difference relations in the Google memo. He says that diversity, when it comes to gender and race, is a far more complicated issue and intends to come up with an answer. However while he provides an in-depth look at the business perspective of including diversity, as whether it's good for profits or whether it's effective on a team environment, and compares and contrasts gender and racial diversity versus the diversity of viewpoints, he quickly dismisses moral arguments for advocating diversity. He states that bigotry and systemic biases are too often blamed as the sole cause of a lack of gender and racial diversity, without specifying who's doing the blaming; it isn't the scientists.

Also, one of his sources for attacking affirmative action is focused on a problem within the collegiate level in the context of California ballot Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action and similar programs from being used to use race as a factor in admitting applicants. The article in question makes a convincing case for stable graduation levels of African-Americans and Latinos both before and after the implementation of Prop 209, stating that the ban sorted less-qualified applicants for elite schools at places where they can flourish as opposed to being left behind. However, it ignores the elephant in the room of the low enrollment levels of African Americans and Latinos present at said prestigious institutions relative to whites, both before and after Prop 209, which reinforces the complaint of systemic bias present in the system. Damore also argues that institutions, whether at the collegiate or work level, should take into account class as opposed to race if they intend to advocate diversity. However, much of the time the two tend to be joined at the hip rather than mutually exclusive. On the other hand, positive racial discrimination attempts may only attract the cream of the crop of minorities, who may already have a leg up in some form (such as rich African foreign students) while ignoring those who for whatever reason don't (such as poor African-American students), so Damore does have a point here.

Much of his polemic against diversity in the workplace is focused on speculation about whether or not diversity is maintaining an effective workplace, as opposed to actually advocating for said outgroups as a matter of justice against a system which has historically discriminated against them. Also, he cites another article in order to accuse affirmative action of discriminating against Asians at the collegiate level. However it doesn't take long for said study to declare that it's hard to substantiate any discrimination against Asians. Also, it says that when affirmative action and similar programs are not being used, that Asians are over-represented at the collegiate level relative to their numbers in the general population, unlike African Americans and Latinos who are underrepresented. Also, many Asians in fact support affirmative action. So much for claims of social justice stigmatizing Asians.

Ironically enough, the ultimate takeaway from all this history is that he wants justice for what he wants and shirks any substantial counterpoints that impact his propositions far more than any speculative criticism he's leveled at the left, but will never make a serious argument about the systemic biases that impact women and minorities. Instead he'll take potshots at current programs designed to help the underprivileged, which his demographic isn't part of, and make random suggestions as an alternative to whatever progressive program is currently in place like when he suggests blind hiring instead of affirmative action without seriously analyzing his new proposal with rigorous thought. All the while he avoids committing to any real solution to chronic underrepresentation of women and minorities that would seriously upset the playing field and give the underprivileged (who aren't white male conservatives) a fighting chance.

See also

• Cognitive differences between sexes
• Google
• Sexism
• Political beliefs of academics; discusses about similar perceived "anti-conservative" "racism".
• Reverse discrimination

External links

• The "Google memo", also hosted here and here.
• Fired for Truth James Damore's official website. See also: Badger's Law
• Google discrimation practices according to the WSJ
• The truth has got its boots on: what the evidence says about Mr. Damore’s Google memo A good point-by-point rebuttal to the memo from a fellow scientist.
• So, about this Googler’s manifesto Another rebuttal, this time from someone who is both a former Google employee and an actual engineer. It's particularly relevant as it's main attack is on Damore's recommendation of pair-work for women and his weird people vs. things dichotomy on one of his main points in the memo as the differences between gender.