Further to the eye-widening James Damore saga of August last year, an update of possible interest: 

James Damore, the Google engineer who was fired after arguing that the gender gap in tech may be partially explained by sex differences among men and women, just filed a class-action lawsuit against Google in the Santa Clara, Calif., Superior Court. Damore came to fame after he wrote the now-infamous “Google manifesto,” where he pointed out that “differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech.” Filed Monday morning, the class-action lawsuit argues that Google discriminates against white conservative men on the basis of their “male gender” and “Caucasian race,” further alleging that there is “open hostility for conservative thought” in the Google workplace…

The lawsuit also alleges that Google employees were awarded bonuses for arguing against Damore’s views. In one example of this, a female employee was awarded a bonus for speaking out against the “wretched hive of scum and villainy” allegedly represented by Damore’s memo. Email excerpts sent among Google employees after Damore’s memo went public also illustrated pervasive hostility towards conservatives. “I intend to silence these views; they are violently offensive,” wrote senior engineer Colm Buckley in a message to his co-workers. He also wrote to co-workers that there are certain political views “which I do not want people to feel safe to share.”

The details of the lawsuit can be read here and some of the allegations are worth perusing. For instance, those regarding the widespread and enthusiastic use of “shitlists” to exclude and punish employees deemed insufficiently enthused by identity politics; and the apparent indifference of Google’s managers and HR department to harassing, demeaning or racial rhetoric when the targets of such language were white. A phenomenon illustrated by a manager, Chris Busselle, urging white employees – described as “schmucky” and “cheesy” on account of their pallor – to decline invitations to attend conferences; and by another manager, Liz Fong-Jones, who openly professed, in writing, that she “could care less about being unfair to white men.” A view she subsequently described as “absolutely reasonable.”

Update: 

For those so inclined, and via Chris, there’s a crowdfunding option to help out with legal expenses.