Here is what the Daily Mail says he said
in an interview with Teledyne Marine:
'When I started the business, one of the things you'll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners and they — you'll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,' he said.
'I wanted our team to be younger to be inspirational, and I'm not going to inspire a 16 year old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25 year old, you know, who's a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational.
'So we've really tried to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we're doing things that are completely new.'
Rush explained: 'We're taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, is related to safety and some of the preponderance of checklists, things we do for risk assessments and things like that are more aviation-related than ocean-related and we can train people to do that.
'We can train people to pilot the sub, we use a game controller, so anybody can drive the sub.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...50-year-old-white-guys-NOT-inspirational.html
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Here is the interview with Teledyne Marine
If you listen to him talking about industry vets telling him he is nuts for letting inexperienced pilots in a submarine in the Pugent Sound he claims the vets don't know how great multi beam sonar - which he uses - is. The impression he is giving off is not that he won't hire old White guys, it's that he wants younger people, to inspire other young people, and he bucks the trend in the industry on how things are done. The 50 year old White guys is just euphemism for the traditional civilian submarine industry veterans.
For the pertinent portion where he mentions the 50 year old White guys, skip to around
26: 45. He never says he won't hire 50 year old White guys, he only says he tries to hire younger people. He even says that a 16 year old isn't going to be inspired by him because of his age but the 16 year old will be inspired by a 25 year old employee of the company.
The tabloids and internet culture warriors are misrepresenting what he said. This reminds me of people on right leaning forums blaming the issues with the F35 and the Boeing 737 Max on diversity hires without any evidence to back up their claim.
https://geo-matching.com/content/interview-with-oceangate-ceo-stockton-rush