Picture this scenario. You're in a race to the top of the mountain. Everyone is on their marks waiting for the blast of the starter pistol, and you notice that you and half of the other racers are at the bottom of the mountain, poised for the climb, and the other half of the racers are at their marks starting halfway up this mountain. Wait a moment, you may think, this isn't fair. Can't we all start from the same position? Can't we all start from halfway up the mountain?

White conservative men in this country claiming discrimination are those racers starting halfway up a mountain complaining when everyone else gets to start in the same place they do. An equal playing field suddenly looks like a disadvantage to these men, when in reality, it's just that they're not at an unfair advantage due to their gender and skin color. They are blind to the privilege of their situation because it's always been there.

This leads to some perceived 'loss' on their part when others gain some of the same opportunities they've always had. These people (usually men but I won't pretend women aren't guilty, too) are like the children who cannot imagine life without Wi-Fi and air conditioning. They seem to have become accustomed to this culture where being both white and male guarantees you certain things over other people and now that this fact is finally starting to be remedied, they can't handle it.

James Damore is a former Google employee suing the company for discrimination as a white conservative male, and he is basically the person complaining that the other people in the race get to start from the same mark he does. Damore reportedly sent a memo in which he expressed feelings about the biological inferiority of women in the engineering field. The memo is 10 pages long and covers a lot of topics and it also assumes quite a lot without actually citing any scientific data to back up his "truths". He asserts that "women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men" which leads me to believe that he's never discussed with his theories with any female colleagues because I don't think he'd find them very agreeable in that discussion.

Now, his whole argument in the memo appears to be based on his belief that this highly generalized perceived difference in temperament is due solely to biology. In his world, it has nothing to do with the fact that females have been and still are conditioned to feel inferior and therefore behave in a way that supports that conditioning. In other words, he would have us believe that the historical ownership of women and the abuse of women who asserted themselves has nothing to do with anything.

That the historical and current cruelty of men is a symptom of female "weakness" rather than a cause of the perception and belief of female weakness. While Damore claims to be removing the bias of the "left" with this assertion (when he says, "In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards protecting females.") what he's actually done is just put the bias of the far "right" onto the issue. And yes, he just called women weak.

Don't even get me started on the fact that he speaking so VERY clearly about white men and white women with no thought to the systematic oppression of People of Color, especially Women of Color. The idea that any sort of specific skill would be passed down biologically is completely idiotic. Of course, there are personality traits and biological things, like hormones, that can affect personality but to equate these differences that occur from person to person to a specific skill is just baffling to me.

I applaud Google for not putting up with Damore's intolerance, especially in the midst of the wage gap lawsuit they're currently facing. To the people like Damore who claim that there is no sexism or racism keeping women and POC out of power, let's look at this year's Golden Globes as an example. The Golden Globes have been around for 75 years. There has been one - yes, one - woman to win the best director in 75 years of these awards. Are we to believe that something in the Y chromosome creates better directors? Uhh, no. That's ridiculous. It's because women in the industry, just like most other industries, have access to fewer resources and face sexism in the workplace on a daily basis (more evidence of modern sexism here, here, and here) .

Plain and simple. The 2018 Golden Globes awarded Sterling K. Brown with the best actor in a TV drama, and he is the first African American to win this award. In 75 years. Are we supposed to believe that melanin effects acting ability? F***, no. It's very simple. People of Color systematically have access to fewer resources and fewer opportunities.

I know a lot of people already know all of this, but apparently we have to keep talking about it. As evidenced by Damore, and this year's Golden Globes, and our current president, and a million other things (click here, here, and here for more evidence), apparently we have to keep proving that racism and sexism exist. We must keep talking about it, keep fighting it. Keep denying the Damores of the world.