Crisis magazine offers this satirical take on the Google political-correctness imbroglio.
To: All Google Employees
From: Unoi’m Carasee, Vice President of Mutually Exclusive Propositions
Subject: The Recent Outrage
Dear Google Employees:
In light of the horrific assault on Google values recently made by a former employee, we feel it is necessary to add a few further propositions to the official Google List of Mandatory Beliefs. In order to retain their positions, all Google employees must assent to the following two Statements of Fact:
1) For the purposes of employee non-discrimination policy, there is no such thing as a male brain or a female brain. Any suggestion to the contrary is rank bigotry.
2) For the purposes of transgender policy, each person’s brain is either male or female. Any suggestion to the contrary is rank bigotry.
Perhaps the first reaction of some of you will be that the two statements above cannot both be true. That is Western, patriarchal, non-intersectional thinking. Such thinking is merely a sign that your brain has not been fully Googleized. Accepting the truth of what used to be called “mutually exclusive propositions” can be difficult for the uninitiated, who bitterly cling to outdated ideas. But once you internalize contradictions, affirming the logically impossible becomes easier and easier every day. As an exercise in proper thinking, I myself assent to at least three impossible contradictions every day before breakfast.
There's more at the link. Good for a giggle!
The sad thing about the infamous memo and Google's reaction is that the whole thing shows the insularity of Google management. They literally seem incapable of recognizing their own failure to comply with the fairness and inclusivity standards they preach. Their institutional blindness is mind-boggling.
Peter
3 comments:
Yeah, they sure have come a long way from their "Do No Evil" mantra!
Heh, good one! :-)
I spent a year there on their main campus, they suffer badly from the bay area echo chamber, the vast majority of their employees have never had any other job, they were hired directly out of school (frequently with a masters or PHD, so even longer in academia), and have never had a job in the real world.
google and other bay area companies provide onsite meals, not just because they are trying to attract employees, but because the state of traffic and restaurants in the area is so bad that to empty the google campus out for lunch would require a 4-hour 'lunch hour'. But it's now 'traditional' and even if they were to move to where this wasn't the case, employees would rebel if they weren't fed for free.
I was there during the time Eich was fired from Mozilla, and the foaming at the mouth about how evil he was to support prop 8 (which was approved by the majority of Californians) was something to see.
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