None of this is true. His "rant" was a well researched memo with extensive links to state of the art research. You should actually read the real thing, once, instead of the maimed version published by the guardian.
But honestly it's better if you don't know, you're better adjusted to living in this world by remaining ignorant. Just keep reading Vox.
I read the whole thing word for word. I recognized the language and wording from scientific racism tracts. I also tracked down his fundraiser which I haven't seen covered in the news.
It wasn't "scientific racism". First of all its discussion of science pertained to differences in gender, not race. And the author did not argue that women were worse at engineering, but rather that gender differences affect preferences.
While other people may have used his memo to justify sexist beliefs about the capability of female engineers, attributing those words to the original author is at best intellectually dishonest if not outright dishonest.
100% agree. Of the people I know that read the memo (incl women), I know of none who disagreed with it. It's genuinely hard to disagree as he presented facts backed by research to support a theory on the gender balance in tech.
I will add that many people who only read articles paraphrasing and quoting it, did seem to react unfavorably, likely taking the opinion the article wished to portray.
I think it's more accurate to say his rant was a list from the era of a generation ago which might be the same as the scientific racism era? I don't know.
> As the most base example: the candidate pool for a company like Google is self-selecting. Taking research about women (which I'm accepting uncritically just for the sake of argument in this post) as a population (research which showed a very small, minor difference in certain narrow traits) and implying this tells us anything at all about the women who have applied, let alone been hired, by Google is completely unsupported by science. Women candidates, or engineers, are very far from random samples of the women population.
Damore said exactly this in the memo, your post only proves that you didn't really read or understand it.
> He misapplied science to make a point that's not supported by science
Perhaps other Google employees should have responded with "You appear to be making a flawed argument. Here's where we think your argument goes off the rails, and why."
Assuming Damore was arguing in good faith, such a response might have changed the minds of Damore or other like-minded employees.
But simply firing Damore was at best a missed opportunity, and at worst evidence that the majority view is simply a matter of opinion with no real justification.
Keep in mind that the majority of googlers according to a blind poll did not want him fired. Also the memo was circulated for a month internally. Damore didn't get fired until it was leaked to to media and they ran hit pieces that ranges from intellectually dishonest to outright dishonest. I put the blame for this fiasco on the highly slanted media coverage that put Google in a position where they had to fire Damore or get skewered for sexism.
I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "white supremacy" because you use it so often it seems like something nebulous.
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So it seems that "white supremacy" is a catchall term for anything that argues a biological basis for group differences. Thank you for the links and for not just being aghast that I didn't know this. :]
RationalWiki has a very opinionated take on things, but that article is very well-sourced (75 linked sources!) so you can read right up.
Now, it could fairly be said that his pro-KKK arguments were more "glib humor" than endorsement and I'd agree. I would also say it's part of the pattern of negative workplace behavior that got him terminated.
In a larger sense, its these "oh, [group A] isn't performing as well as [group B]... must be biological differences" arguments that often form the faux-scientific basis for discrimination. Read any racist literature, and you will find a lot of "science" claiming that [insert racial group] here is biologically inferior. And, yes, that includes much Nazi propaganda.... justifications used by American slave-owners, etc.
Just reading the section you linked, it sounds like he's autistic, not racist. If you didn't know that "Grand Dragon" and "Imperial Wizard" were KKK titles, you'd probably think they were cool - or at least that some nerds would think they were cool.
Hell, those titles being cool without their association to the KKK is why the KKK used those titles.
So it seems that "white supremacy" is a catchall
term for anything that argues a biological basis
for group differences.
(I think you're being disingenuous but I'll play along!)
No, not quite.
It's just that their history is inextricably linked.
We can all agree that there is certainly much valid research to be done here. For example, why is sickle-cell anemia so much more prevalent in African-Americans? What biological adaptations allow some populations (Nepalese, etc) to thrive at high altitudes? Nobody finds that sort of thing objectionable.
However, things get ugly fast when we start talking about the study of why one group is best suited for one task or another, or which group is superior in general.
There is a long and sordid history of biological arguments in favor of the superiority of certain groups of people, typically white European males. It should not surprise you to learn that these arguments come from white European males.
Not all studies of "group differences" have anything to do with white supremacy, but every white supremacy movement that has ever existed has claimed a biological basis for their views.
We sort of fought a world war over this (among other reasons) and a lot of people died. These sorts of arguments have also been used to justify slave ownership (a rather large war was fought over this as well) and the oppression of women.
His rant was basically just of a list of stock arguments from the scientific racism era.
After he got fired his fans started a fundraiser on a white supremacy website.
His arguments were stock white supremacy and the people who adopted him as a hero were stock white supremacists. This isn't hard to figure out.