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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32428 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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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.

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.

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