The workplace diversity wars at American technology companies are intensifying.

Silicon Valley employees are predominantly white or Asian males: as of June 2017, 69% of all Google's employees were male, and 91% were white or Asian. Women, blacks, and Hispanics have historically been underrepresented, and corporate initiatives to promote diversity have yielded uneven results at best.

Some diversity initiatives have encountered pushback and controversy. Take the notable example of former Google (GOOGL  ) employee James Damore, for instance. In July of 2017, Damore, a Google employee, posted a memo to an internal Google (GOOGL  ) message board criticizing the company's affirmative action policies. In the memo, Damore made several dubious claims, including that women are inherently ill-suited for careers in tech.

Google fired Damore shortly after the memo went viral for "perpetuating gender stereotypes." Damore has now filed a lawsuit, claiming that Google discriminates against white men and people with conservative political opinions. Damore again lambasted Google's "politically correct monoculture." In February of 2018, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board cleared Damore's lawsuit, which seeks class-action status.

Damore isn't alone. Former YouTube recruiter Arne Wilberg also recently filed a lawsuit against Google for their hiring practices. Wilberg alleged that Google used a rigorous filtration and quota system for minority hiring, and would cancel interviews for candidates who weren't female, black, or Hispanic, when recruiting for technical positions. Wilberg refused to reject qualified white and Asian male job candidates by purging them from the applicant base, and was subsequently fired.

Google has staunchly defended itself by claiming to hire based on merit, not identity. But Google continues to face criticism even from staff supportive of pro-diversity measures. Ex-Google engineer Tim Chevalier claimed that Google did not protect its female, minority, and LGBTQ employees from harassment on internal message boards. Google is also facing lawsuits claiming that it has underpaid women, that it fired an employee for making pro-diversity blog posts, and that it has fostered a "bro culture" conducive to sexual harassment.

Some worry that Google's corporate culture has become irreversibly toxic. Anti-diversity employees have been reported for "goading" pro-diversity employees into making supposedly "inflammatory statements" on diversity-related matters, then submitting those statements to Human Resources as evidence that the latter group of employees has breached the company's civility code. Google managers have also been known to respond to conflict with deliberately neutral or passive strategies for fear that they, too, might be accused of discrimination. This paranoid atmosphere stifles the possibility of a productive dialogue.

Sexism and the "toxic bro culture" have long plagued the tech industry. Experts on the topics of prejudice and stereotyping claim that teaching empathy is the best path forward, and have cautioned that there are no shortcuts. To truly surmount the organizational and psychological obstacles that America's growing ideological polarization presents, empathy and complex thought must be encouraged for organizations to thrive.