site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's well established that there has long been a concerted effort by the left to narrow the definition of racism to ONLY apply when the discrimination is done against an oppressed racial minority. Under the revised definition, "anti-white racism" cannot be a thing. Although this redefinition may be fashionable among certain circles, it has never been reflected in anti-discrimination law within the United States. All the relevant civil rights laws I am aware of prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, full stop, without any qualifiers. Yet the "racism = power plus prejudice" crowd appears to be under the mistaken impression that discrimination against white people is legal.

A significant portion of the contemporary DEI training curricula is blatantly anti-white, and I've been curious why there have not been more legal challenges on that front. Part of it, I assume, is that any plaintiff who takes on this role will be subjected to a vicious public campaign of hate, as happened with Abigail Fisher in 2016, derided with nicknames like "Becky with the bad grades" and so on.

We haven't really had a case that dealt with the particular type of DEI training that became prominent after the 2020 summer protests/riots. One lawsuit recently filed in Seattle might be an interesting test case for this. Robby Soave covers this:

According to Diemert, a supervisor berated him for refusing to step down and yield his job to a person of color. He says he was asked, "What could a straight white male possibly offer our department?" And he says he was frequently made to participate in RSJI training, which involved insulting games and activities designed to address his alleged complicity in white supremacy.

[...]

RSJI's explicit mission statement was to inject race-based considerations into government work. One document summarizing the initiative's priorities listed colorblindness, not as a positive thing, but as a hindrance to be overcome. Another described colorblindness as "centering whiteness." Diemert says that his former colleagues took this mission very seriously. In fact, he discovered that one coworker had rejected a qualified white applicant from a public assistance program specifically because of the applicant's race. "I asked her, well, this doesn't make sense to me," he recalled. "Why did you deny this person? And she said, well, because they have white privilege." Diemert says he reported the matter to his supervisor—it was, in his view, obvious racial discrimination—but nothing was done about it.

I don't believe the legal system is a panacea, but it can offer a useful contrast in terms of how arguments that may be popular on Twitter get handled inside a courtroom. A related example that comes to mind was when a leftist activist tried to use a copyright lawsuit as a pretext to punish Sargon of Akkad but instead lost badly and was forced to pay $38k in attorney's fees. So I'm excited to see a real life lawyer try to defend Seattle's anti-white training in court. Should be fun.

Chris Rufo has been championing legal challenges of this sort:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Arealchrisrufo%20%22civil%20rights%20law%22

Yep, so has David French. I agree with their efforts.

Another one is Mark Perry, who goes around suing colleges, but he says the colleges don't care and just keep doing it.

Interesting, thanks for linking. I can understand colleges not caring to change themselves, but does he ever describe whether the colleges are ignoring court orders?

At 15:00 he says that in the over 400 complaints he submitted resulting in over 200 federal investigations, there has never been a fine, a penalty or even an apology from a university.

They just keep breaking the law until somebody points out that they are breaking the law, and then they change their program to stop the violation, and probably start another similar program within a few years.

A significant portion of the contemporary DEI training curricula is blatantly anti-white, and I've been curious why there have not been more legal challenges on that front. Part of it, I assume, is that any plaintiff who takes on this role will be subjected to a vicious public campaign of hate, as happened with Abigail Fisher in 2016, derided with nicknames like "Becky with the bad grades" and so on.

Probably because cases take money and time, and no one is going to do pro bono a civil case in which the likelihood of success is low.

True but has it been established that the likelihood of success is low? SCOTUS already explicitly prohibited discrimination against men. @YouEssAyyy posted an example of a white man winning a $10 million verdict for anti-white and anti-male discrimination. Apples are there to be picked.

How many legions hath the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court has ruled a number of times that the law cuts both ways. If the EEOC and lower courts don't want to enforce that most of the time, what can the Supreme Court do about it? Not a thing; they can't take every case the lower courts refuse.

A couple years back, several red state legislatures adopted bills designating certain employees (in particular, public university employees) as "mandatory reporters" of sexual discrimination under Title IX. At first it seemed a bit odd because normally boosting the Title IX office isn't a Republican priority, but in thinking about it, it seems that it was likely done at least partially to hang a nice-sounding Sword of Damocles over anyone attempting to run such a curriculum.

I don't know if I can comment on it's success, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it expanded to include racial discrimination in the future. There is also that outstanding SCOTUS case about affirmative action that may substantially shake things up.

Can you provide examples of the legislation you're describing? I've never heard of it before. By making Title IX employees mandatory reporters, was the hope that they'll start focusing on discrimination against men? Why would anyone think this was a viable plan? Just yesterday Stanford University denied a request to open a Title IX investigation into Professor Michele Dauber for bias against males despite fairly blatant evidence.

The example that came to mind was Texas with SB212. I can't immediately find matching legislation or executive policy in other states, but requiring almost all employees be mandatory reporters seems a common-but-not-universal setting. There is even a controversial effort by the federal DOE to make this universal, so perhaps it's not as polarized a notion as I thought.

On the other hand, I don't really have a good explanation why Texas decided to pass SB212, although I suppose it could also be related to the student-athlete scandal at Baylor a few years back.

Texas politics is conservative but doesn’t always fall on clear partisan lines, and attempting to model broadly popular legislation based on the assumption that republicans unilaterally control every step of the process(they don’t) or have a plan to achieve conservative goals with every piece of legislation(also not true) would simply result in confusion.

Its simpler than that. In the event someone wins an antidiscrimination suite It gives the red state legeslature legal standing to go after the rest of the staff for failing to report thier comrades.

Not race but gender related a big payout happened in North Carolina when a man won a discrimination lawsuit on the basis of gender.

Wouldn’t surprise me at all to these types of cases come up for both gender and race.

https://www.wistv.com/2021/10/28/male-hospital-executive-wins-10m-discrimination-lawsuit-after-being-replaced-by-women/?outputType=amp

My impression is that employees pushing this stuff don't bother asking the in-house attorney because they don't even suspect that it's illegal.

A significant portion of the contemporary DEI training curricula is blatantly anti-white, and I've been curious why there have not been more legal challenges on that front. Part of it, I assume, is that any plaintiff who takes on this role will be subjected to a vicious public campaign of hate, as happened with Abigail Fisher in 2016, derided with nicknames like "Becky with the bad grades" and so on.

Not just plaintiffs. Plaintiff's lawyers. Very few will want to take these cases lest they be subject to cancellation. And often enough to get to court one must get through the adminstrative agencies, and they all either act as if discrimination against white people is legal and that's accepted precedent, or they apply very different standards of discrimination based on race. The lower courts ALSO tend to do this. So a lawyer is looking at a long slog to exhaust administrative remedies, then to get by the lower court's deference and double-standards, to finally MAYBE reach a court that knows that when Scalia said that the "The 14th Amendment protects all races" and not "only the blacks", he was expressing settled law and not a minority opinion. There are safer, more lucrative and prestigious ways to practice law, and the client is likely better off taking the "L" and going elsewhere anyway.

Even if individual lawyers want to take these cases, they have to convince their firms to let them, and those firms almost certainly have DIE policies that favor certain races/genders. Given that partners at law firms have already been shown the door just for privately "harboring evil thoughts" like being pro-life, I can't imagine firms are going to be encouraging this sort of thing.

I don’t buy this argument at all. Law firms represent all kinds of people/companies. If murderers, rapists and big tobacco can find legal representation i’m sure employees with documented discrimination will be able to.

Murders, rapists, and big tobacco are the far group, not the out group. In any event, I would have agreed with you ~5yrs ago; the zeitgeist that legal representation /= condoning the perspectives/actions of others used to be quite strong. It has been gradually weakening, and it's gradually being viewed more as material support.

Look at the case of Paul Clement (widely considered the greatest Supreme Court advocate of our generation), who left his firm after it decided to stop taking 2nd Amendment cases after he won the Bruen case. The top firms definitely make political choices about who to represent.

they apply very different standards of discrimination based on race. The lower courts ALSO tend to do this.

Can you provide any examples?

The Seattle case I linked above is being pursued by the nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation. They're also responsible for similar cases, like litigating anti-Asian discrimination at Thomas Jefferson High School and California's "women in boardrooms" quota law. Somehow they seem immune from the spectre of cancellation you're describing. What do you think explains their unique bravery?

Pacific Legal Foundation

They are an explicitly right-wing (by modern standards) organization. That the effect exists, however, should really be beyond dispute. Consider the case of the lawyers who won NYSRPA v. Bruen; essentially rebuked by their firm which said they wouldn't be taking such cases any more. They were forced to either leave the firm or stop representing NYSRPA. Winning a case at the Supreme Court does not normally carry a penalty; rather the opposite. Right-wing causes are deeply, deeply unpopular in much of the legal profession.

I don't deny what happened to Clement and Murphy was very odd and reprehensible, and I agree that getting booted from Kirkland & Ellis was definitely a set-back. Nevertheless, their new boutique firm seems to be doing well and growing fast.

Still curious about these questions:

  1. You said that lower courts tend to apply very different standards of discrimination based on race. Can you provide any examples?

  2. You said that very few attorneys are willing to take these cases lest they be subject to cancellation. What is it about the Pacific Legal Foundation that lets them thrive despite this spectre? What can other organizations do to replicate their resilience?

You said that lower courts tend to apply very different standards of discrimination based on race. Can you provide any examples?

Not off the top of my head. What I remember is that there are rules about proving that a policy caused particualized harm to the plaintiff which are enforced against white plaintiffs but not black, where any sort of anti-black policy is presumed harmful towards any blacks present.

You said that very few attorneys are willing to take these cases lest they be subject to cancellation. What is it about the Pacific Legal Foundation that lets them thrive despite this spectre?

They're in the enemy camp.

What can other organizations do to replicate their resilience?

The way things are you have to choose a side. You can either be a prestigious law firm which gets its pick of high-profile clients and top law students, or you can do law for conservative causes, not both. This will apply to the lawyers too; once you've worked for a conservative group you're going to be radioactive, at least for a while.