There has been a viral news in the media regarding a memo that has caused resentment among the employees of Google. The memo opposes the anti-diversity initiatives taken by Google for its employees belonging to different facets of the society.
The memo named “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” emphasizes that rather than hiring more women than men and trying to reduce the inequality between different stratified groups, Google should invest its resources on “ideological diversity”. The initiatives taken to bridge gaps between racial diversity should be halted and a proper pragmatic approach must be taken that ensures that the holistic aspect of Google’s ideology is taken into consideration.
According to the memo, the Google’s engineer complained that the disparity between the number of men and women employed is because of biological differences between the two sexes. The memo criticized Google’s strategy to offer jobs on easy terms for underrepresented racial or gender minorities.
While some Google employees have agreed to the points made in the memo, some racial minority groups have opposed such thoughts and views. Google’s new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity, and Governance, Danielle Brown, also issued her statement stating that discussion and communication are the most suitable ways to defuse such situations.
She said,
“I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. “If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately, our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber,”
This 10-page document has stirred a new controversy where a majority of workforce opposes such beliefs regarding diversity in the workforce, but there are proponents of the memo who strongly believe that it is unjust with the workforce when preferences are given during job hirings based on race or any other form of stratification. Department of Labor is currently investigating Google for the issue of gender pay gap because, in recent years, Silicon Valley has been under a bad limelight for encouraging pay differences and gender biases at workplaces.
The memo has also highlighted significant issues in Google like the political beliefs of employees being targeted, enmity against the ‘leftist’ school of thought, and trying to shape the perspectives of employees’ forcefully.
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