When Reasonable Objections to Diversity Are Viewed as Bias

A movement to crush dissent is under way and a good deal of it involves discussion and objections to diversity being declared illegitimate. Political and economic leaders and organizations speak about offense and intolerance taking place inside and outside their walls, but when we hear the actual content of those crimes, they appear far less than advertised. The cases above involved a Wall Street Journal story on “opposition” to diversity in Silicon Valley. It followed the Google memo affair and bore dismaying the headline “Diversity Is a Tough Sell in Silicon Valley.”

It seems that a bunch of white and Asian males at Google don’t want to hire any more women and non-Asian minorities. But when we get to the actual resistance taking place there, things go soft. The main event concerns a diversity initiative led by Danielle Brown, Google’s new diversity chief, and Intel’s former chief. She recounts her experience at Intel when she pushed diversity there and received abundant negative feedback. A sample:

Some of the comments questioned why Intel was devoting $300 million over a number of years to improve diversity or suggested managers would be forced to hire unqualified workers to satisfy goals, according to the former employee. Other comments said the initiative was just for good public relations.

Yes, that’s it. What strikes ordinary people as ordinary business questions rise to the status of opposition in the new diversity dispensation.

Here’s another example. A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had closed down an anonymous online discussion group for employees. The paper version bore the headline “Facebook Closed Offensive Forum,” and the online version read “Facebook Shut Down Employee Chat Room Over Harassing Messages.” The action took place last December.

CNET picked up the story and stated that “people were using the message board to “post racist and sexist messages.” When you read those summaries, though, you expect some nasty stuff to follow. But once again, we got one example of the putative harassment, and it’s laughable.

But FB Anon also attracted comments that many employees found offensive, people said. For example, some posts last year said Facebook lowered the bar to attract female engineers to boost its diversity numbers, one person said, provoking angry responses from others in the chat room.

Yup, that’s it. The Journal story gives us nothing more, and neither does CNET. Facebook’s “head of people” attributed the closure not to harassment, but because many of the users on the platform did not “use an authentic identity.”

What we have here, then, is lots of sensitivity and little bad behavior. Objections to diversity efforts on solid grounds of workplace standards get turned into a form of verbal assault. It’s melodrama, not fact. The old criterion of “reasonableness” when it comes to allegations of offensive behavior has given way to sore feelings.

This is a game diversity skeptics can’t win by argument. Sensitivity of this kind is irrational, and it won’t be won by rational argument and cold evidence. People are upset, and they won’t listen to the mild rejoinder, “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a bit?” The condition of “I’m offended” carries too much power for them to give it up.

But until conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals develop a response to this fraudulent set-up, it will continue to be used as a club to bring dissidents in line or oust them entirely.