Media Reaction to Google Manifesto Proves James Damore Was Only Half-Right
Lack of ideological diversity is a problem that pervades far more than one, gigantic tech company.
The Internet has done a lot of incredible things; the proliferation of ideological echo chambers is not one of them.
It’s probably inaccurate to say the World Wide Web started it, but the rise of social media and the fall of barriers to entry in journalism have done (hopefully not) irreparable damage to diversity of thought. Services like Facebook and Twitter allow users to wall themselves off from any discussions or ideas that challenge preconceived notions with one click of the block button. Meanwhile, the demise of newspapers has given rise to the chase for clicks and now, even once-admirable news outlets like The New York Times have caught on to the Fox News model: Nothing performs quite as well as a little outrageous tweak backed by a heaping helping of preaching to the choir.
The result has been an increasing tolerance for conspiracy theory garbage, especially on the right (e.g. Pizzagate, #SethRich, Clinton murders, etc.), coupled with an increasing intolerance for opposing viewpoints. Even on college campuses where open, honest debate was once sacred.
Few stories in recent memory have spotlighted the media’s role in this intellectual regression like the so-called “Google Anti-Diversity Manifesto.”
For the uninitiated—and I can’t imagine there are many—the short version is a software engineer, named James Damore, wrote a memo criticizing Google’s left-leaning echo chamber as well as the theory behind and execution of the company’s efforts to increase diversity in the workplace. In so doing, he used widely-but-not-universally-accepted scientific studies to support the idea that biological differences, on average, between men and women might explain part of the gender gap in employee representation and compensation common to the high-technology industry. It was this latter argument that caused significant turmoil at the search-engine behemoth, went viral after someone leaked the memo and eventually got Damore fired.
Let’s pause here to make a few things clear.
First, Damore never suggested women didn’t belong in tech-related fields or leadership positions, or were otherwise inferior to men. That’s simply not in the memo and only a tortured reading of it would lead someone to such a conclusion. He made a handful of claims — some supported by citations of scientific studies, others not — about biological and psychological differences between the male and female genders that arose when the two groups were aggregated and reduced to averages.
Second, presumably because Damore knew he was flirting with danger, he went out of his way to emphasize he wasn’t against diversity and harbored no prejudices against women or minorities: “I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more.” Instead, he championed the need to judge people on their individual merit: “I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals…”
Indeed, roughly three pages of the memo were devoted to suggestions for, in Damore’s opinion, non-discriminatory ways in which Google could increase diversity, particularly with regard to female representation in hi-tech.
The former Googler explicitly stated he was “not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are ‘just.” He further acknowledged that “[m]any of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.” You might even argue he belabored his I’m-not-a-monster point in anticipation of backlash: “I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority.”
Third, thus far, nobody has argued or presented evidence that Damore, while at Google, ever discriminated against anyone, behaved inappropriately with colleagues, manifested prejudice in any way or created any problems outside of disseminating the now-infamous memo.
Most of the media reacted exactly as you would expect. I’m focusing on the left-leaning eruption because it seems to have more credibility in the eyes of most Americans (for now). The right-wing reaction is also, unbelievably, closer to the mark on this one, though many (like the jackass in the video above) are going overboard by claiming Google is essentially calling Damore a Nazi, burning him at the stake, channeling Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984, etc.
The most common reaction on the left has been to sinisterly mischaracterize the memo’s content.
Gizmodo, one of the first to jump on the story, called it “anti-diversity screed” and omitted the citations to scientific research used by Damore to validate some of the more incendiary claims. Motherboard, another of the first responders, and ABC News followed suit. MSNBC labeled it “anti-women” while claiming he argued men and women have different skill sets. Salon called it “sexist” and dismissed its justifications as “ugly” and “pseudoscientific.” CNN jumped on the bandwagon with this tweet:
You see the trend.
Those are all gross distortions of what Damore actually wrote. He repeatedly and specifically stated he was in favor of diversity, but objected to the way Google went about achieving it. He repeatedly and specifically stated he was not talking about inherent differences in all men and women, and advocated for judging people as individuals, not members of monolithic groups. He certainly never said women aren’t “biologically fit for tech jobs.” Unless the pundits know him personally or evidence arises that he allowed his personal beliefs to color his professional judgment/conduct, there’s no reason to doubt the plain English of the memo and impute such heinous claims to him.
As for the science James used, several experts questioned on the subject say he got it right, though possibly overstated some studies’ conclusions. Of course, there are also plenty of studies and experts who say he got it wrong. Furthermore, just because legitimate studies support some of his points does not mean his overall position is correct. As Chanda Prescod-Weinstein put it in Slate, science is not a synonym for truth. Science has treated innumerable ideas as true right up until the moment it announced, oops, guess not. Nevertheless, dismissing Damore’s citations as pseudoscience simply because the scientific community isn’t unanimous on the subject is surrendering to confirmation bias.
Regardless, the point here is not whether you agree with the memo’s overall argument or conclusion. I certainly do not.
For one thing, talking about average men and women at a place like Google seems irrelevant.
Given its reputation and success, the company is pulling from the exceptional part of the distribution. If we’re talking about a woman with exceptional skills in mathematics, coding, whatever, then there’s no reason to think her neuroticism, ability to handle stress, assertiveness, etc. is any less exceptional. Additionally, I’m not sure how you can separate nature from nurture enough to conclude a particular difference observed in men and women is strictly biological. American society has, for centuries, emphasized certain attributes as masculine and others as feminine. Unless you’ve quarantined a set of boys and girls from social influence and given them uniform messaging, then how you can conclusively say (for example) a man’s interest in things over people versus a woman’s interest in people over things comes down to biology, no matter how otherwise rigorous the study?Especially when, as traditional gender roles and gender stereotyping erode, there seems to be more female interest in traditionally male-oriented pursuits (e.g. sports like mixed martial arts) as well as stronger performance by women in math and science.
Finally, the American job market is not a pure meritocracy where everyone gets a chance based on what they know. Who you know counts for something and usually it’s a huge something. I doubt Google is any different. If the grand tragedy is a female or minority applicant gets a foot in the door over a marginally more qualified white male, oh well. Better that than because of who his or her mommy or daddy knows since even Damore agrees that increased diversity is a noble pursuit.
The key here, though, is that, like most of the punditry, I am not an expert on any of these subjects. I’m willing to consider the Google echo chamber memo on its merits, to push back on its substance and to entertain the possibility that I’m wrong. After all, people tell me there’s a first time for everything.
Growing swaths of the our society are no longer willing to entertain such blasphemy.
Instead, they meet any contrary perspective with allegations of sexism, racism, stupidity or some other flavor of misanthropy. Google did it. Many in the media did, too. There’s no benefit of the doubt, no substantive dialogue and no engagement of the other side to try to understand the perspective or demonstrate, in good faith, why it is misguided. Just rally the pitchforks and get back to howling into the echo chamber.
As a consequence, yet another chance for progress disappears.
