> He was very clear that he was talking about the group not any individuals.
Since when does that excuse anything? If he'd written "Jews are, in general, hateful monsters. Not the Jews who work here, they're great, but most of the rest" does that statement become acceptable?
More importantly, Mr Damore does not know all the women at Google personally. He cannot. So when he says "In general, women are less suited to/interested in programming careers", he cannot possibly implicitly mean "but clearly that does not apply to every woman currently employed at Google, who were all hired because they are the best in the world at their jobs". Damore asserts that Google practices discriminatory hiring practices. For this to be true, Google must have at least once hired a woman where a better male candidate was available, and more importantly must do so more often than they do the reverse.
If you are going to make general statements about a group of people, then you should not be surprised when individuals in that group assume you mean that statement to apply to them.
Since when does that excuse anything? If he'd written "Jews are, in general, hateful monsters. Not the Jews who work here, they're great, but most of the rest" does that statement become acceptable?
More importantly, Mr Damore does not know all the women at Google personally. He cannot. So when he says "In general, women are less suited to/interested in programming careers", he cannot possibly implicitly mean "but clearly that does not apply to every woman currently employed at Google, who were all hired because they are the best in the world at their jobs". Damore asserts that Google practices discriminatory hiring practices. For this to be true, Google must have at least once hired a woman where a better male candidate was available, and more importantly must do so more often than they do the reverse.
If you are going to make general statements about a group of people, then you should not be surprised when individuals in that group assume you mean that statement to apply to them.