Silent Manifestos and Careless Whispers
Thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee Psalm 119:11
This week's national outrage, yeah we're up from monthly, is a 10-page manifesto by Google engineer James Damore who opines about the biological differences between men and women, among other things, and the unintended consequences of the diversity movement in corporate America.
The inner ballast that for centuries allowed our most specious thoughts, ideations, prejudices and incendiary beliefs to lie dormant in our hearts and minds has forever spilled over its banks. Like the young lad with his finger in the dike to prevent it from bursting, technology's ubiquitous spillage has become Frankenstenian and Machiavellian. Our long-held, not so secret ( many of these ideas find themselves embedded in socio-economic policy) beliefs can be found in Google's pending wage discrimination lawsuit and certain sexual harassment litigation to follow. This revelatory manifesto that is getting surreptitious support from other employees and right of center echo chambers is incongruent with the founders of the company motto: "Don't Be Evil.
This whole scrum is symptomatic of a larger challenge in our nation's culture. We are indoctrinated at a very young age to believe and perceive certain things about not just people groups and gender, but capacity to adequately occupy a profession. The demographic that makes up most of what we perceive to be Silicon Valley is either, white, Asian, Asian-Indian and male.......period. On Wall Street the archetype is white and male. In military and commercial aviation, same thing. I brought up those particular environments because I have been peripherally involved with all three. If I asked you the question, what image pops in your head when I list these professions: Software Architect, Urban Planner, Venture Capitalist, Hedge Fund Manager, Commercial Pilot, Fighter Pilot, Cruise ship captain, Silicon Valley maverick, Nobel Laureate, Ambassador to a nation......still thinking about it?
When the population of a workplace is homogeneous, the opinions tend to be as well. Points of access to the ruling class or centers of relevance are only questioned when that homogeneity seems to be disrupted by liberal ideology or if we are honest about perception- victim culture rhetoric. Questionable, if not specious, research from social scientists, biologists, neurologists and others have pedantically sought to justify racial and gender stratification in everything from education, housing to professional endeavors. Our patrician culture, evolving from Father Knows Best to Modern Family, George Washington as the Father of this nation to the almost radioactive response to the election of this republic's first black President has been a segue to clarion calls of grievance to the crushing of the status quo.
This backlash is not seen as malevolent. Oh no, like Dr.Samuel A. Cartwright's hypothesized, conjectural mental illness he entitled drapetomania ( a belief that slaves that ran away were mentally unstable) this indignant response to the feminization and browning of corridors of power or centers of relevance is simply believed to be a conservative stand. After all, Bruce Hornsby was prescient in the lyrics to his hit "The Way It Is" when he wrote", That's just the way it is, some things will never change, that's just the way it is........... aah, ..don't you believe it!
