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That seems to broadly concede the point, doesn't it?
Imagine, say, the NYT was taken over by a Norwegian billionaire who had really strong opinions on what should be done with Norway's national fund. It's kind of a regional issue that most non-Norwegians don't have much of a stake in and he therefore carefully vets his hires for top editorial positions to make sure they have the correct stance and strong ties to his faction. Naturally, this means that they are all Norwegian.
Probably these picks have strengths beyond being Norwegian! They write well, they're bright, they're personable. Some of them have a good reputation and industry awards. You can't get a job in the new NYT just by being Norwegian, and being Norwegian is only one of the reasons they were on the short list.
But when you get right down to it, the editorial team got hired because they were Norwegian.
It seems to me that those of us who are not Norwegian have a right to ask whether this counts as illegal discrimination, and if not why not. We also have a right to ask clearly, in public, what it means for our information ecosystem that one of the main sources of information is now being run largely by and for Norwegians, without getting fired for anti-Norwegianism. Yes, it's more complicated than that, but that doesn't mean you can't draw a pretty clear conclusion.
(Apologies if it turns out we are in heated agreement.)
Right, I don't disagree that rich Jews tend to stick together. I am not surprised Ellison hired a Jew. Obviously if he explicitly stated "I'm not considering any non-Jews" that would be illegal, but--he probably would consider a small handful of non-Jews.
In your Norwegian example, I would find the choice of a Norwegian unsurprising, and while I guess if I were in the industry I'd grumble about it, I wouldn't be overly exercised about it if non-Norwegians weren't being shut out.
Unless, of course, I subscribe to some dark conspiracy theory that, since the cold dark days of å dra på viking, Norwegians have been ever raiding and warring against Europeans and to this day seeking to undermine the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock.
Then maybe I'd be obsessed with posting about Da Noorse.
Isn't there a reasonable spectrum in between? Like, you're really not supposed to act like this, not in the West. If everyone I hired was a white English national I'd get it in the neck for God's sake, we've had decades of trying to root out any in-group preference at this point, with massive collateral damage in the process. You don't have to be a dark conspiracy theorist to object to someone buying a major news organ and stuffing it with their co-ethnics to influence public opinion towards their ethnostate, you just have to be a regular person. And if you're a would-be journalist with all the same talents or better but you're shut out purely because you don't give a shit about the Norse it's even worse!
There's also the issue that this kind of thing is literally what dark conspiracies are. "Norwegians are buying major newspapers to control the coverage of Norwegian issues" is a conspiracy theory in its own right, even if NOG never comes into the story once. Again, there are points on the spectrum in between 'this is ok' and 'Vikings have been ruling over us for a thousand years, ever since Harard secretly conquered Britain in 1065'.
Yes. If a Jew hires only Jews, I would expect him to be sued for discrimination. But the fact that a lot of Jews rise to elite ranks doesn't require more than the usual amount of networking between people who know each other (we talk a lot here about Jews and Indians helping each other network, but I've seen Mormons, Catholics, and evangelicals do the same thing), and Jewish success being disproportionate for reasons we've also discussed.
What I expect is that Ellison was inevitably going to hire some strongly pro-Israel, which made it highly probable it would be someone Jewish.
We do seem to be in furious agreement, right up to the bit where your train of logic ends: 'and therefore it's annoying but basically fine'. I get that you can't make an 'ought' from an 'is' but I don't want to be ruled over and shut out of good positions by a cabal of people who don't like me much, especially when nobody else gets to play the same game.
(Yes, it happens to some degree with other groups too but a) rarely quite with such chutzpah and shamelessness, and b) if you make up a big majority of the local population then at least your news output or whatever is aligned with them and not so many people are getting shut out).
Didn't Trump just roll back disparate impact protections?
Maybe, I didn't follow it. What happened?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/restoring-equality-of-opportunity-and-meritocracy/
Thanks.
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