Recently fired Google engineer James Damore told Reason Magazine that the internet company sent regular “microaggression” memos to employees, citing examples of non-compliant behavior in the workplace.
Until a few weeks ago, James Damore was a Google software engineer, but he made a critical error, according to the company, when he authored a ‘diversity’ memo criticizing the internet company’s hiring policies with regard to gender, suggesting that they celebrate the biological differences between men and women, and insinuating that the company had fallen victim to a censorious culture of political correctness.
He was fired the day after the memo went public. Google claims they let him go because of a violation of internal company policy.
Damore recently did an in-depth interview about his ordeal with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro.
In a one-on-one with Reason columnist Cathy Young, Damore said that Google would regularly call out its own employees for minor incidents that the company claimed were harming the tender sensibilities of its workforce, like using politically incorrect pronouns or “offensive” photos of physically attractive women.
Young asks, “You also mentioned the policing of “microaggressions.” In the published responses to your memo in internal Google discussions, someone mentioned people being shamed for using the phrase “guys” for a mixed group. Was there a lot of that going on?”
“Yes, ‘microaggressions’ are being taught and compared to actual violence,” Damore responded. “There’s also a weekly email that goes out to about 20,000 Googlers where people submit examples of these.”
When asked if the alleged perpetrators are ever identified, Damore replied, “Sometimes they are, and other times it’s obvious to whoever reads it.”
It is incredible that the company would attempt to put pressure on these politically incorrect offenders, shaming them into making complete changes to their behavior. What is even more astonishing is the type of infractions that would earn the ire of the Google managers, forcing them to issue the corrective memos.
Damore recalls a single instance, “One was complaining about someone suggesting to use a picture of an attractive person on an ad to increase the number of clicks. Which is apparently a case of ‘lookism.’”
“Lookism,” if you’re wondering, is a new buzzword coined by social justice warriors to identify “discrimination” based on objective physical attractiveness. It refers to preferring people who look pretty over people who are less attractive. Not only is calling a choice of photo a “microaggression” censorship, but it flies in the face of basic marketing: humans prefer to look at photos of other pretty humans.
Young then asked Damore, “Were the diversity initiatives already in place when you joined, or did they begin (or intensify) sometime after?”
He emphasized, “I think they intensified.”
If Damore’s allegations are true, it means Google, a public company, intentionally embarrasses and harasses its own employees with emails in the name of political correctness. It’s no surprise, then, that conservative content creators are suspicious that Google may be censoring them through their search engine, social media platforms, and of course, on YouTube.
When a company publicly shames their own employees in the name of political correctness, they are promoting a culture of intimidation and censorship, and that will no doubt leak into how it enforces its policies against its users.
