Richard Hanania's "The Origins of Woke"

Summary

Podcast Summary: "If Books Could Kill" – Richard Hanania's "The Origins of Woke"

Release Date: July 11, 2024

Hosts Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri delve into Richard Hanania's provocative book, "The Origins of Woke," dissecting its arguments against contemporary notions of wokeness. Throughout the episode, they critically analyze Hanania's perspectives, highlighting both the content and the authors' reactions to it.

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1. Introduction to "The Origins of Woke"

Peter [00:00]:
"God, this book's so fucking stupid. I regret choosing it."

Michael and Peter open the episode with palpable frustration, setting the tone for their critical examination of Hanania's work. They express skepticism about the book's value, hinting at its controversial stance on wokeness.

2. Understanding Hanania's Thesis

Hanania's central premise revolves around the assertion that modern wokeness has distorted civil rights laws, transforming them into tools for enforcing ideological conformity rather than addressing genuine discrimination.

Peter [03:08]:
"This book is about the origins of modern wokeness... it's aimed at powerful conservatives, especially... the next Trump administration."

The hosts recognize that Hanania's target audience is primarily conservative policymakers seeking to rollback progressive reforms.

3. Key Arguments Presented in the Book

a. Disparate Impact

Hanania critiques the concept of disparate impact, where actions without explicit discriminatory intent can still result in legal liability if they disproportionately affect marginalized groups.

Peter [09:36]:
"Civil Rights act made discrimination in employment illegal, but it didn't define what counts as discrimination... Enter the Supreme Court."

He references the landmark case Griggs v. Duke Power Co., arguing that the broad interpretation of discrimination hampers businesses striving to hire based on merit.

Michael [11:03]:
"No company is disproportionately white male anymore. Because if you do that, they send a SWAT team."

The hosts challenge Hanania's portrayal, suggesting that the reality is more nuanced and that numerous studies have documented persistent discrimination despite policies.

b. Harassment Law

Hanania extends his critique to workplace harassment laws, claiming they have been overextended to regulate trivial or offensive speech, stifling free expression.

Peter [16:17]:
"Offensive language and pornography can constitute a hostile workplace, even if not targeted at any particular employee."

He cites cases where minor infractions are treated with excessive severity, using examples like restrictive sign policies and inappropriate internal memos.

Michael [23:03]:
"I can just have, like, porn posters in my cubicle?"

The hosts argue that Hanania misrepresents these laws, emphasizing that genuine harassment is harmful and not merely about offensive language.

c. Age and Disability Discrimination

Hanania asserts that age and disability discrimination laws conflict with meritocracy, particularly in high-performance industries reliant on cognitive abilities.

Peter [31:21]:
"Brains naturally deteriorate as they get older, meaning that the principle that one should not discriminate against the elderly is at war with the principle of merit."

Michael [32:00]:
"I'm advocating for firing at least some people who are totally fine and able to do their job just because they're old."

The hosts counter by clarifying that legitimate performance issues are not discrimination, and age/disability protections aim to prevent unjust termination based on inherent traits.

d. Race and the Social Construction of Categories

Hanania explores how government classifications of race have been shaped by activist agendas, arguing that these constructs perpetuate division rather than address true disparities.

Peter [36:00]:
"Hananya's arguing that the Hispanic label is popularized because the government endorsed it."

He references Christina Mora's "Making Hispanics," which details the political mobilization and identity formation among Mexican American activists during the civil rights era.

Michael [43:02]:
"If it's someone who's wealthy, it's easier for that person to be kind of welcomed into white culture."

The hosts critique Hanania's interpretation, suggesting that he overlooks the systemic challenges faced by various racial groups beyond mere identity labels.

4. Analysis of Hanania’s Approach and Critique

Michael and Peter consistently challenge Hanania's assertions, accusing him of misrepresenting legal principles and overlooking empirical evidence of ongoing discrimination. They highlight his tendency to present strawman arguments, where he oversimplifies or distorts the positions of those he critiques.

Peter [05:20]:
"He creates what I think is a straw man where he says, liberals believe that every disparity is discrimination."

Michael [47:21]:
"His solutions section... it's like you can just be racist and play porn at work."

The hosts emphasize that Hanania's portrayal lacks nuance and fails to acknowledge the complexities of enforcing non-discriminatory practices in diverse workplaces.

5. Discussion on Solutions and Future Implications

Hanania advocates for dismantling current civil rights frameworks, promoting free market principles as the solution to societal disparities.

Peter [46:35]:
"He wants to see the Civil Rights Act pared back until... it's illegal to do intentional discrimination."

Michael [48:44]:
"What if the hand that I use to masturbate in front of my colleagues at work is, in fact, the invisible hand of Adam Smith's free markets?"

The hosts critique this libertarian stance, arguing that relying solely on market forces overlooks entrenched biases and structural inequalities that necessitate regulatory intervention.

Peter [51:32]:
"Standardized processes... they're found to reduce the most obvious discrimination."

They counter by presenting empirical studies demonstrating the persistence of discrimination and the effectiveness of certain regulatory measures in mitigating biases.

6. The Controversy Surrounding Hanania

Towards the episode's conclusion, Michael and Peter address a pivotal controversy: Hanania's past association with white supremacist websites and his attempts to distance himself from those views.

Peter [56:28]:
"The Huffington Post ran a bit of an expose on Richard where they revealed... he used to post explicitly racist and sexist content under a pseudonym."

Michael [60:24]:
"I believe in all that stuff. I just say it differently now."

The hosts express skepticism about Hanania's reformation, questioning the sincerity of his renouncement of past extremist views and highlighting the continuity between his previous and current ideologies.

7. Conclusion: Evaluating "The Origins of Woke"

Michael and Peter conclude the episode by reaffirming their critical stance on Hanania's book, emphasizing the dangers of mainstreaming extremist views under the guise of rational critique.

Peter [60:37]:
"The real failure here is on the part of the mainstream media who platformed him both before and after he was exposed as this former white supremacist."

Michael [61:27]:
"These libertarian arguments are so funny because I don't think he realizes... he's essentially making an argument against the concept of rights."

They stress the importance of scrutinizing such works to prevent the perpetuation of harmful ideologies masquerading as legitimate discourse.

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Notable Quotes:

• Peter [00:00]:
  "God, this book's so fucking stupid. I regret choosing it."

• Michael [11:03]:
  "No company is disproportionately white male anymore. Because if you do that, they send a SWAT team."

• Peter [16:17]:
  "Offensive language and pornography can constitute a hostile workplace, even if not targeted at any particular employee."

• Peter [31:21]:
  "Brains naturally deteriorate as they get older, meaning that the principle that one should not discriminate against the elderly is at war with the principle of merit."

• Michael [43:02]:
  "If it's someone who's wealthy, it's easier for that person to be kind of welcomed into white culture."

• Peter [56:28]:
  "The Huffington Post ran a bit of an expose on Richard where they revealed... he used to post explicitly racist and sexist content under a pseudonym."

---

Final Thoughts:

The hosts of "If Books Could Kill" provide a robust critique of Richard Hanania's "The Origins of Woke," challenging its foundational arguments and highlighting the potential implications of its advocated policies. Their analysis underscores the importance of informed discourse on civil rights and the perils of oversimplifying complex societal issues.

Transcript

[Peter]

God, this book's so fucking stupid. I. I regret choosing it.

[Michael]

No zinger, just you complaining and bum, bum, bum, bum.

[Peter]

I had put in like a week of work into this before I was like, ah, shit, this was a mistake.

[Michael]

Yeah, for the first time, we're doing a bad book on the show.

[Peter]

Incredible.

[Michael]

A book that could kill one might even say.

[Peter]

It makes me so mad that this book is called the Origins of Woke, dude, instead of Wokeness.

[Michael]

It does sound vaguely like some sort of business self help book that we would also cover on this show. The Parable of. Great.

[Peter]

All right, ok. Um, Michael, Peter, what do you know about the Origins of Woke?

[Michael]

All I know is that this is going to be the first time we're doing an episode that requires not only an Internet connection, but a pair of calipers.

[Peter]

Alright. The Origins of Woke. This is a book by Richard Hananya, came out last year. Little look behind the curtain. When you go two or three months without releasing a podcast, what you want to do is come back with a book that no one's ever heard of.

[Michael]

And that our irritation with doing it is palpable. We don't want to be here.

[Peter]

A big problem for our show is that conservatives keep putting out books complaining about Wokeness.

[Michael]

Yes.

[Peter]

All of which are exactly the same.

[Michael]

The same way they're running out of ideas, we're running out of things to say about their ideas.

[Peter]

What makes this one interesting and I think worth covering? It's not about like the abstract cultural origins of quote unquote, Wokeness. Hananya does not talk about Foucault.

[Michael]

Oh, thank God.

[Peter]

Or like any other postmodern theory, he blames civil rights laws for the modern cultural context. And that is the premise of this book.

[Michael]

I'm imagining him quietly putting away a dog whistle and just pulling out a whistle. Look, we're just saying it at this point.

[Peter]

That is, I think, the purpose. This is not aimed at a popular audience. This is aimed at powerful conservatives, especially, I think, the next Trump administration. Yeah, which I think is why it's worth analyzing, despite the fact that we've talked about Wokeness before.

[Michael]

Although one thing I was going to say, I was going to try to turn this into a zinger, but like, you know how Lady Gaga has like Little Monsters and Taylor Swift has Swifties? I was going to say that, like, this dude's fans should be Henaniacs, but then that requires him to have fans, right? And like, other than fucking center left journalists who are like, these ideas are important to take seriously, I haven't actually Seen all that. Many conservatives say that they like this guy. I think there's something where like even conservatives can tell that someone like Hynania.

[Peter]

Is just a fucking worm appearance vampiric.

[Michael]

He has like the overall demeanor of like Robert Blake in Lost Highway. He's like a fucking haunted doll that you would find at like your grandmother's house. She dies under mysterious circumstances.

[Peter]

He does look like one of those creepy little ventriloquist dolls.

[Michael]

He really does.

[Peter]

But. But more. More reptilian, More snake like. Almost exactly.

[Michael]

Less likable.

[Peter]

If it was between living in a home with him and the doll from Goosebumps, I probably just choose the doll. We don't need to go into his background too much. He's a conservative writer, think tank guy. He's appeared in many op ed pages over the years. The Times, the Post, the Atlantic, all the biggies. This book is about the origins of modern wokeness. Blissfully, he does try to provide a workable definition of wokeness. Okay, he says that wokeness has three central pillars. I'm going to send them to you.

[Michael]

So the three pillars of wokeness.

[Peter]

1.

[Michael]

The belief that disparities equal discrimination. Practically any disparity that appears to favor men over women or whites over non whites is caused by some combination of past and present discrimination. Disparities that favor women over men or non whites over whites are either ignored or celebrated. This includes not only material outcomes like differences in income or representation in high status professions, but disparities in thought or stereotypes about different groups. 2. Speech restrictions. In the interest of overcoming such problematic disparities, speech needs to be restricted, particularly speech that suggests they are caused by factors other than discrimination or that stereotypes are true. 3. Human resources bureaucracy in the interest of overcoming disparities in regulating speech, a full time bureaucracy is needed to enforce correct thought and action. I like that we're already resorting to like things that annoy me.

[Peter]

Oh absolutely.

[Michael]

It's just like HR managers, the trainings we have to do.

[Peter]

So I will give him some credit, I guess, for providing something of a concrete definition here. His book is mostly built around the idea that what like woke liberals believe is that any disparity between demographics must indicate discrimination. Right. This is a very common argument from conservatives, though I don't think I know anyone on the left, at least anyone serious who actually believes this.

[Michael]

It's also, it's an interesting mirror to the conservative belief, which is that disparities must be caused by the inherent nature of those groups.

[Peter]

That's the, that's the irony here. Is that he creates what I think is a straw man where he says, liberals believe that every disparity is discrimination. Now even if you believe that that's what liberals believe, you can say that's wrong without adopting his position, which is basically any disparity is justified and pre exist and like you and you know, is the will of God.

[Michael]

It's also going to be very funny noticing the parallels between this and Yasha Monk, who's like, allegedly this kind of serious center left person. His definition of woke also had this like tripartite structure, like the three legs of the stool or whatever.

[Peter]

Yeah. When you can't provide like a clean definition of something, you have to be like, oh, it has three pillars.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

You just start like talking out your ass like, oh, it's not one thing. It's actually five elements.

[Michael]

It's actually a 10 minute sequence in a Terrence Malick movie where you're just sort of dreamily drifting through landscapes.

[Peter]

So this book has several components. I'm gonna focus on the elements that are targeting the workplace. We start off with an anecdote about the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964. He tells the story of how originally the law only forbid discrimination based on race, color, national origin, and religion. The reason that sex was added to that list was because an opponent of the bill, Howard Smith, propose it as an amendment. Smith was an opponent of the bill. He was adding gender in order to undermine its likelihood of passage.

[Michael]

Right. This is a famous like poison pill attempt.

[Peter]

Yeah. Hananya says the story of how sex discrimination became illegal and how the definition of discrimination changed over time tells us something fundamental about how the American system works. In the simplified version of constitutional law presented to school children, Congress passes bills, the executive branch enforces them, and courts interpret the law. But in the hands of bureaucrats, executive agencies and judges, the text can take on a life of its own.

[Michael]

Ooh, judges be out here doing interpretations.

[Peter]

So I guess his whole point here is that this is an example of how something can become law without really reflecting the beliefs of society or maybe even the beliefs of legislators.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

The problem with this story is that it's kind of half myth like Hananya. And a lot of people make it seem like this was an accident. He says it was proposed as a joke, and then just says, despite Representative Smith's intentions, the amendment passed, as did the Civil Rights act. Which, like, sort of leads to the question of why a joke amendment would pass.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Peter]

The answer is that when the amendment was proposed, Martha Griffiths, one of the few female representatives at the time rallies, support, convinces LBJ to support the amendment. They get all this momentum, and then it becomes part of the bill. So this story is told on the left as sort of like a tale of hubris. Right?

[Michael]

I do love the idea of like, this is so far out there. Pretty soon they're gonna start saying that women are unequal in society too. I'm gonna call your bluff.

[Peter]

They've been doing this forever where it's like, what's next? The way he's framing this is like, this is a weird fluke that this sort of tells us something about how off kilter discrimination law is. But, like, isn't this actually just a story of political will? Yeah. It's not an accident that the amendment gets passed. It's the result of people who support it mobilizing for something they believe in.

[Michael]

I do like the idea of some laws basically being mulligans. You're like, oh, this one doesn't count. Nobody really wanted this one.

[Peter]

He's trying to make this argument that, like, elites and bureaucrats have taken the simple law and turned it into something much more sprawling and pernicious than. Than anyone at the time has envisioned. This is like the big theme of his book, that this is all very divorced from the will of the people. These liberal bureaucratic elites have taken control of Civil rights law. He focuses on four outputs of the Civil Rights Act. Affirmative action, Disparate impact, Harassment law, and Title 9. For our purposes, we are going to focus on the middle two again. Disparate impact and harassment law. There is a section titled Disparate impact. Everything is illegal.

[Michael]

Yep, I remember this from Civics. The anti purge.

[Peter]

So basically, Civil Rights act made discrimination in employment illegal, but it didn't define what counts as discrimination. Really? Everyone knew that you couldn't just say whites only in hiring anymore, Right? But like, what about job requirements that aren't explicitly discriminatory but still disproportionately impact black people, for example? Right. Enter the Supreme Court.

[Michael]

I have a podcast to recommend about this institution.

[Peter]

I'm going to send you something. This is a quick summary that Hananya provides.

[Michael]

He says the Supreme Court sanctioned this approach in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. Which ruled that intelligence test on which blacks scored lower than whites could not be used in hiring without creating a presumption that the employer was discriminating based on race. The new doctrine of disparate impact did not require any discriminatory intent on the part of the firm as long as something the firm did benefited one group at the expense of another, it could potentially face legal liability. This sounds roughly true.

[Peter]

No, he's not providing the best faith framing, but this is more or less true. He's basically saying, like, look, companies should be allowed to require that their employees take aptitude tests of various types and they should be able to hire on merit. Thanks to the Supreme Court, companies that hire based on merit are just being punished if it turns out that they hired a disproportionate number of white people, even though they were just trying to hire the best people.

[Michael]

Yeah, that's why no company companies are disproportionately white male anymore. Because if you do that, they send a SWAT team.

[Peter]

I think it's instructive here to take a look at that Supreme Court case, Griggs. Ananya sort of quickly glosses over it. He just mentions that this company had an intelligence test as part of their employee evaluation process. But he leaves out some key details. Prior to the Civil Rights act being passed, this company had an express policy forbidding black people from working in any positions other than manual labor.

[Michael]

Jesus.

[Peter]

On July 2, 1965, they start requiring that anyone who works wants to transfer out of the Labor Department to a more senior department, take and pass two intelligence tests. The significance of July 2, 1965 is that that is the day that the Civil Rights act went into effect. Okay, so Hananya wants to be like, look, they took this really well meaning anti discrimination law and they turned it on innocent companies who just wanted to hire good people. And it's like, okay, but that's not what's happening here. Right. What's happening is that everyone in the country knows that racist companies are going to try to end run around the new laws to the best of their abilities by implementing various tests and so forth that look non discriminatory on the surface, but are in fact designed to be discriminatory. So the Supreme Court basically says if you implement a test like this as part of your hiring process, it can't be arbitrary. It needs to be like, reasonably connected to the actual job.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

If you allow companies to just start coming up with creative ways to discriminate.

[Michael]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Peter]

They will inevitably succeed.

[Michael]

Also, lawyer question, Isn't the whole thing that like, determining company intent is just very difficult? Yeah, whereas determining the outcome is pretty easy.

[Peter]

There's multiple problems. One is that it's just hard to identify when someone is intentionally discriminating because people know not to say it out loud for the most part. And two, to some degree, it doesn't really matter. The outcome is the same. Right.

[Michael]

This reminds me of, like, an aunt of mine or great aunt or something who talked her son out of applying to medical school because she's like a white male getting into medical school these days.

[Peter]

Impossible.

[Michael]

I just want to show her statistics of, like, no white males are going to medical schools. It's the same sort of thing here where it's like, you can just look at corporate America. Like, do we have C suite types that are just wildly, disproportionately, like, black and women and trans and all the other groups?

[Peter]

Right, right.

[Michael]

That person was me. And now I'm a podcaster. I'm brave for not going to medical school and podcasting instead.

[Peter]

The only place where white men are still accepted.

[Michael]

Thank God. Thank God.

[Peter]

You can't take this away from us. Woke. So the second part of the argument against disparate impact laws is that this is all contrary to the will of Congress. They never intended for the law to be used so broad. This again, very big theme throughout the book. He says, with a few exceptions, a bureaucratic and legal elite made most of the major decisions regarding what discrimination actually meant, whether the state should be in the business of regulating dating and humor in the workplace, and whether and how major institutions classify people according to ancestry.

[Michael]

Okay.

[Peter]

There was a lot of back and forth about the meaning of the law until the Civil Rights act of 1991, which Congress passed and officially made disparate impact part of the law. Which, like, makes this whole argument fall apart because he spends page after page talking about how this isn't really what Congress actually wanted. No, Congress passed a law saying this is what they wanted. And, like, he is aware of this law. He references it throughout the book. He knows that that's what it does, but he just sort of ignores that whenever it undermines the argument that he's making.

[Michael]

Yeah, I feel like the entire originalism argument just boils down to not like that.

[Peter]

Exactly.

[Michael]

We should listen to the founders unless wanted. Woke. Shit, we should. We should look to the past. Unless it was woke.

[Peter]

So that was an Anya spiel about disparate impact and discrimination law. And I was sort of like, is this just going to be like a rehash of, like, big picture conservative arguments against discrimination laws?

[Michael]

Yeah, I'm a little worried about how borderline reasonable he sounds. Or at least like, in keeping with.

[Peter]

Boilerplate conservative orthodoxy, he's not deviating particularly. Far from, like, the Republican Party platform.

[Michael]

Yeah, give me the calipers, Peter. I want the word brain pan to appear in the next five to seven minutes.

[Peter]

What's interesting is that he doesn't veer into, like, express racism as much as he reveals himself as someone who doesn't have normal opinions about what human life should be like.

[Michael]

Oh, good. Oh, good.

[Peter]

So he starts to talk about harassment law. Okay, this is the most bizarre portion of the book. Because his vision of what a good workplace looks like is so detached from the opinions of a normal person.

[Michael]

Fuck yes.

[Peter]

That it's like, it's hard to parse. So throughout the book, he consistently argues basically, that workplaces used to be, like, cool collegial spaces where everyone could be friends and joke around, but now, because of harassment laws, you can't even tell jokes anymore. Hell yeah. You can't even try to fuck your co worker.

[Michael]

You can't use the word sugar tits at meetings.

[Peter]

His basic argument here is the same as it is with discrimination laws. The original idea was fine, but then courts and bureaucrats have, like, steadily expanded the definition of harassment to the point where it's unworkable and ridiculous. So to give you a basic understanding of federal harassment law, we're talking about hostile work environment claims. And under the law, someone's conduct in the workplace is harassment only if it is severe and pervasive.

[Michael]

Right. This is why all these anecdotes of, like I said, a colleague's hair looked nice, and the next thing you know, I heard from her lawyer. That's why all those stories are bullshit and they never check out.

[Peter]

Exactly.

[Michael]

Because there's no way any court would determine this is an environment.

[Peter]

But it's a great opportunity for bad faith arguments from conservatives. Because when you sue for this, you, of course, would list out every incident. Right?

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

Some of which, in isolation, might not look very severe.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

They might look very minor. So for many years, conservatives who don't like these laws have cherry picked out the most, like, inoffensive examples from these cases and held them up as proof that the whole system has gone too far. So Hananya does some of that, and he also just gives examples that, like, any person would find offensive. So I'm gonna send you a little bit.

[Michael]

UCLA law professor Eugene Volok lists a large number of court cases and bureaucratic decisions at the state and federal levels that have found in constitutionally protected speech evidence of a hostile work environment. Colon signs with the phrase men working, draftsmen and foreman as job titles. Pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and a burning American flag in a cubicle. An ad campaign using samurai, kabuki and sumo Wrestling to refer to Japanese competition.

[Peter]

Alright, so let's go through some of these. Of these examples, I'd say that one of them is both true and a decent example of government overreach. In the early 90s, a state agency in Kentucky compelled a company to change its Men Working signs, even though it's unlikely that they actually violate the law. I'm happy to admit that I think that's a little bit excessive.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

You know, these are legally required signs and they cost a lot to replace. And they said Men working. And the state agency was like, well, that's not inclusive enough. Right. Yeah.

[Michael]

But on the other hand, we now have all these signs that say road work ahead. And we can say, I hope it does when we drive past the.

[Peter]

God, just. No, just please cut that dude RIP.

[Michael]

Vine videos on YouTube are like 80% of my evening entertainment.

[Peter]

The thing about examples like that is they aren't really coherent arguments against the law itself. Like, you can find instances of jaywalking laws being enforced in absurd situations.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

It doesn't say much about the utility of jaywalking laws or, like, whether they are good on the whole.

[Michael]

I feel like whether they're good on the whole is a really good example of the kind of thing they won't let you say in today's woke workplaces.

[Peter]

He also makes it seem like a government body found that using job titles like draftsman and Foreman are illegal. The case that that's about, though, involves a woman whose colleagues made consistent sexual comments, put up pictures of naked women around the workplace, catcalled her. Right? Yeah. She complains about all of this. And then in addition to that, she complained that several people used gender terms like Foreman even though they were not the official company titles.

[Michael]

Right. And this gets boiled down as like, oh, she sees the word Foreman and she melts down.

[Peter]

Right, Right. So she complains about this and gets fired. So the case is not about, like, whether having the job title Foreman is illegal, because it's not. What's illegal is all of the surrounding sexual harassment. So there's also the example of someone putting up a picture of Ayatollah Khamenei and an American flag burning in their cubicle.

[Michael]

This feels like it was somebody targeting a. A specific colleague.

[Peter]

Shocker. That you immediately clock this.

[Michael]

Yeah, it's like, fuck you, Susan. And then you start doing these things and then you're like, oh, I guess you can't even put up posters anymore.

[Peter]

This was in the mid-80s, like, relatively fresh off the hostage crisis, tensions with Iran high there's an Iranian person working there and someone is like, intentionally putting up pictures of Khomeini and the flag burnings in Iran to harass the Iranian colleague. Also, also, the lady lost the lawsuit. The court said this was not enough.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

And then there's also the case where he mentions, quote, an ad campaign using samurai kabuki and sumo wrestling to refer to Japanese competition.

[Michael]

That one just seems, like straightforwardly racist to me.

[Peter]

This company had a Japanese competitor. They made racist ads about them, and they circulated internal memos and correspondence that used slurs for Japanese people when refer to their competition. And so a Japanese employee was like, this feels like a hostile work environment. And I guess I'm woke because I agree, it does sound like a hostile work environment. What the fuck? Dude can't even circulate slurs anymore with pictures of sumo wrestlers. Right?

[Michael]

I mean, this is similar to the case where the guy was fired for saying Hurricane Katrina. More like Hurricane Tortilla.

[Peter]

This is what's crazy about this is like, I'm sure that there are many, many examples of, like, relatively frivolous cases where a plaintiff won. Because in every type of law, there are relatively frivolous cases where a plaintiff wins. That's just how it goes. But, like, the fact that when you're hunting for those examples, you can only come up with shit like companies where they circulate samurai swords and slurs.

[Michael]

Also, I've noticed this, this, like, flock of sea lions trend among conservatives where they'll constantly do this thing. They're like, name One thing J.K. rowling has said that's transphobic. They're like, oh, she says, like, trans women are men, right? And they're like, why is that transphobic? And then it just leads you down this fucking tedious thing of, like, what's wrong with that? Oh, so you think anyone can identify as anything? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, no, it's just very straightforwardly racist to do this about Japanese people. Like, I don't know how to explain to you.

[Peter]

So. So Hananya points out that originally, sexual harassment law primarily prohibited quid pro quo harassment, basically asking for sexual favors. But over the years, it evolved to the point where we are banning, quote, practically any behavior or speech potentially offensive to women. The evidence he gives for this is that, quote, offensive language and pornography can constitute a hostile workplace, even if not targeted at any particular employee.

[Michael]

Oh, so I can just have, like, porn posters in my cubicle?

[Peter]

I guess he wants us to think that this is all ridiculous. Like, I can't even. I can't even watch untargeted porn at work anymore.

[Michael]

I love the weird lawyer brain thing, too, of being like, well, it's not porn directed at you.

[Peter]

Right?

[Michael]

Like, I'm watching bondage porn, and Marie isn't even into bondage.

[Peter]

Your Honor. Yeah, I was blasting pornhub all day, but it wasn't Arie. He's referring to a specific case which I looked up, and it's a workplace where several men consistently referred to female customers as a, quote, fucking bitch or fucking whore.

[Michael]

Oh, God.

[Peter]

There were conversations about the bodies of female colleagues, conversations about masturbation and sexual experiences, consistent sexual jokes, sexually explicit music being played, and, yeah, porn. Yeah. Normal people don't think this is a good or desirable. The idea that he's like, this will resonate with the public. You can't even watch porn at work.

[Michael]

I love the idea of going around my job and asking everybody what kind of porn they watch so that I can make sure that I'm watching the generic stuff at my desk.

[Peter]

If you don't wanna watch porn, don't work at autozone. Yeah, there is one more case that he mentions that I want to discuss. Okay, I'll send you this in two parts. Cause Zoom is forcing me to.

[Michael]

I love that you've been Hobbs pilled on. Like, every single time they do these sort of stripped of context, little anecdotes that are like, one sentence long. You're like, I don't know, man.

[Peter]

And also like, I don't know. I was an employment lawyer. Like, when they're like, it's illegal to have the job title Foreman. Now I'm just like, no, it's not. I've seen that job title, like, where we are.

[Michael]

Our brains are broken from doing podcasts about this shit. But also, you think people like book editors and other pundits would also have the same capacity to just look at these anecdotes and be like, no.

[Peter]

Right?

[Michael]

It's not that hard.

[Peter]

What we're doing, you have to. You have to do inclusive. Inclusive job titles. Like, it can't be four men. It has to be four person.

[Michael]

It's for they now for they them.

[Peter]

You can't even be a foreman. You have to be a trans man.

[Michael]

All right, okay, so he says a 2021 verdict shows how conduct that should be settled by private parties or at most result in compensatory damages can to crushing penalties for a Corporation. In 2015 and 2016, a Black father and son named Owen Diaz and Dmytrik Diaz worked at a Tesla plant. Oh, no. They sued the company for racial discrimination, with the father's claims alone making it to trial. Racial slurs were used in the presence of Diaz, and he saw racist graffiti on a bathroom wall. It appears that the workers allegedly responsible were mostly or all minorities themselves, and each time an allegation could be verified, the employee was punished. Tesla claimed that they had taken enough steps to address the concerns of Diaz and also that he was a temp worker and not their employee, so the company was not responsible for protecting him from discrimination. Anyway, a jury disagreed and awarded the plaintiff $137 million, an amount that the judge reduced to $15 million. In response to the verdict, Tesla released a statement pointing out that witnesses confirmed that the slurs were used in a friendly manner, usually by African American employees and without hostile intent. Questions such as whether there can be such a thing as the friendly use of racial slurs and the parameters of what kind of flirtation is acceptable were once settled by private parties. Now they are matters of federal law. You can't even call people slurs as a joke anymore.

[Peter]

He says that these slurs were used in a friendly manner, usually by African American employees and without hostile intent. Right. So I think that what he's trying to do is frame this as, like, black employees were using the N word toward one another in a casual, colloquial, friendly manner.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

And then, due to wokeness, Tesla had to pay millions of dollars. Right now, this is extremely not what happened, which I know, because this was probably the most widely publicized discrimination case of the last decade. The actual allegations here are that these supervisors of these employees repeatedly use the N word in a derogatory manner, including shit like, n words are lazy. I wish I could get all you N words fired.

[Michael]

Holy shit.

[Peter]

These supervisors were not black. Pananya tries to be sneaky by saying that the perpetrators were mostly or all minorities themselves, which seems to imply that they were black. The primary perpetrators were Hispanic, which, like.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

I don't know what to tell you. It's still illegal for Hispanic people to do discrimination. I don't think that's right. That's still illegal. Not to mention at least one guy's.

[Michael]

White, but whatever, they were actually bisexual. So as a member of a minority.

[Peter]

I guess to his credit, he does mention the racist graffiti, which also involved the N word. Swastikas. There was, like, a racist caricature. On top of all this, there were almost no investigations into the conduct, despite many complaints. Those two people were, like, two of several plaintiffs and some of the allegations that other plaintiffs had were worse.

[Michael]

What the fuck, Richard, we're talking about.

[Peter]

Like, way outside of the bounds of a normal workplace, to the point where, like, I was shocked that there were workplaces like this.

[Michael]

Same, same, same.

[Peter]

You're like, rationally, someplace like this exists, but when a large company has a problem like this, as someone who's been an employment lawyer, it's just like that. If you gave me that case, that would have been the worst case I had ever seen by a mile.

[Michael]

And then Hanania's like, you won't believe the overreach of anti discrimination law.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael]

Wait, okay, sorry. I have. I have a baby beef with this too. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So this is another thing that these large settlement amounts, $137 million, always get reported in the media. And then in almost every case, especially when there's a large corporation involved, they always get whittled down. So Hanania mentioned that the award got whittled down to 15 million. I just googled Diaz racial settlement, and it was then whittled down again to $3.2 million.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael]

He then settled out of court for presumably even less.

[Peter]

No, it's never close to the headline amounts.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's also supposed to be this, like, huge injustice, but this guy did not get enough money for Tesla to meaningfully want to stop this behavior.

[Peter]

Also, like he says, one of his complaints about this is that these questions were, quote, once settled by private parties. Now they are matters of federal law.

[Michael]

Yeah, that's not true at all.

[Peter]

What Hanania really means is that before civil rights laws came around, employers had a right to do this sort of shit. And if you complained about it, you were fired.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

The bottom line here is very simple. He thinks that this stuff should be allowed.

[Michael]

There's no workplace environment that he would characterize as hostile.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael]

Unless it's hostile to conservatives.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Michael]

Because even if you want a super duper duper steel man, his fucking argument, the idea that someone can repeatedly call you slurs as a joke is a terrible argument. If someone was calling me faggot at work all the time, and they're like, huh, I'm only joking, dude. That's really fucking hostile.

[Peter]

Michael, if you want to sue me, just sue me. We don't have to keep hashing this out on the bottom.

[Michael]

You caught it. You caught it. That was my intention, Peter. You do know my intent.

[Peter]

You know, I think what's interesting about the discussions of harassment are that it's no Longer about, like, merit. Right. When they're talking about discrimination, generally, they can be like, oh, this is really about merit. We want to hire the best people. And if you implement this test and it turns out that white people are the best people, then so be it. That's what merit is. Right. But when it comes to harassment, you don't have that to fall back on. It's just sort of like, yeah, I don't know. I think you should be able to play porn on the TV and say the N word of your colleagues. So next he turns to age and disability discrimination. Now, I immediately zoned in for this because as someone who worked in this field, age and disability claims are often some of the most obvious.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Peter]

This is the one area where managers will sometimes just straight up say it. They'll be like, well, yeah, they're old. We need someone young and fresh. Well, yeah, they have this disability. They can't do the job quite as well.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

This is just an area of the law where I don't think the discrimination is worse, but it is, I think, to some degree, more open.

[Michael]

Yeah. Joe Biden is currently being discriminated against simply because of his age.

[Peter]

All right, now I'm gonna send you.

[Michael]

Something he says Congress has also made age discrimination illegal, first in employment in 1967 and then in 1975 in programs receiving government assistance. Brains naturally deteriorate as they get older, meaning that the principle that one should not discriminate against the elderly is at war with the principle of merit, particularly in fields that rely on higher levels of cognitive performance. It is therefore unsurprising that tech companies like IBM, Oracle, and Google have been legally targeted in recent years.

[Peter]

I mean, so I guess he's saying that because brains deteriorate with age, you should be able to just fire older people without repercussions.

[Michael]

Yeah, but obviously they deteriorate at different rates and in different ways, and it depends on the job.

[Peter]

Again, just a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of how these laws work. If someone is bad at their job because their brain sucks, it's not discrimination to fire them. But if you fire them because they're old. And so you are assuming that their brain sucks.

[Michael]

Yes.

[Peter]

You're advocating for firing at least. At least some people who are totally fine and able to do their job just because they're old, what else would discrimination be?

[Michael]

Of course, the best argument for this is Donald Trump, but I imagine he's not arguing for Trump to be disqualified.

[Peter]

Or if someone wanted to fire people who look vampiric. And slimy at the same time. I don't think he would like that. That rule very much at all.

[Michael]

The thing is, there is like, a little part of me every time people talk about him being like a haunted doll or like a worm. I'm like, hey, just because someone's demeanor is deeply unsettling and makes everybody uncomfortable doesn't mean they're a bad person. No, as a member of the unsettling.

[Peter]

Community, you're on the right track with the beard.

[Michael]

That's true. I'm aging out of my haunted doll phase.

[Peter]

Ever see a goblin with a beard? I don't think so. Alright, now then he turns his sights on disability discrimination. I'm gonna send you.

[Michael]

What counts as a disability is constantly in dispute, particularly when it comes to psychological conditions without clear physiological markers. An entire area of law has developed, for instance, focusing on issues such as when and under what conditions employers must accommodate alcoholism. Questions in this regard include what separates an individual who drinks too much from one who has a disease that makes him eligible for civil rights protections and at the same time more difficult to fire. Peter, I don't think this is real.

[Peter]

I love that he puts disease in quotes. He's like, first of all, first of all, we all know that alcoholism is not a real disease. That's just liberal bullshit. Like, he's living in, like, 1974 with his opinions about this. Right? But all right, more importantly, he seems to be pretty heavily trying to imply that, like, due to disability discrimination laws, businesses need to tolerate someone who's like, frequently drunk on the job just because they're an alcoholic, right? No, not how it works. The law has always been that businesses do not have to tolerate someone who is inebriated on the job or in possession of, like, drugs on the job, for example. A good example of what might protect someone who is an alcoholic under these laws would be like, let's say that you are an employer who frequently lets people leave at 4pm to go to doctor's appointments, right? And then someone who's an alcoholic says, I have an AA meeting and I need to leave at 4pm, right? If you said no to that, that's the sort of thing that might qualify as discrimination. Very narrow circumstances. You don't just have to like, tolerate someone coming in late and they're like, sorry, I'm hungover, I'm an alcoholic. That's not how it works.

[Michael]

When I worked at my human rights organization in Denmark, at one point they sent out some kind of rote email saying, like, it's now A non smoking campus. So like you have to be whatever, 50ft from a door to have a cigarette. And one of our colleagues wrote like a reply. All this like thousands of word long thing that was like, how ironic that this is a human rights organization and yet you're violating my human right to smoke where I want to.

[Peter]

Hell yeah.

[Michael]

This whole thing, that's what's up how it was done. Injustice. And everyone's like, just don't smoke near the doors, man. It's not that.

[Peter]

Sure, it seems. It seems crazy in isolation, in a vacuum, but without people like that fighting for just a little sliver of their rights, then all of society collapses. The human rights apparatus is built on the backs of men like that. There is one section of the book that is actually sort of interesting, or at least like conceptually interesting. It would be more interesting in the hands of someone who is a little more nuanced.

[Michael]

I'm so livid that you're actually doing the interesting parts of this book. Rather than just dunking on his physical appearance.

[Peter]

This is his chapter about how the government created certain racial categories.

[Michael]

Okay.

[Peter]

Basically for various purposes, the government will recognize certain people as constituting a race. Right. It's useful for things like the census. It's also used in discrimination laws. But this is very tenuous because race is a social construct. You can't really say where like one race ends and another begins, which leads to very weird outcomes sometimes. Right? Yeah. One that Hananya points out is that for affirmative action purposes, people of Middle Eastern descent qualify as white. Hanania says that this is basically due to an ineffective activist lobby. I think that's plausible enough. People of Middle Eastern descent are a very small percentage of this country. And you know, perhaps that has just led to them having less political power. I think if you stopped there, fine. You know, we've fair enough point that there's imprecision here. Me personally could have benefited from. Yeah, I was just gonna say being qualified as you thought that I was non white, but no, it turns out I'm white.

[Michael]

I mean, I kind of guessed from how much you bring up Martin Scorsese and Taylor. Taylor Swift.

[Peter]

So he has this thesis basically that the government creates these racial classifications, usually at the behest of activists with the assistance of government bureaucrats. And then over time, those classifications become real. They sort of manifest in our broader culture. He focuses mostly on Mexican Americans and the example of the term Hispanic, which he says is first used, used as a matter of government record keeping before being utilized in the census. And then eventually getting wider acceptance and usage. He claims that this is essentially like a cynical project of social engineering. Oh, gonna send you something, he says.

[Michael]

As late as the 1960s, Mexican American activists rejected the idea that they should be labeled non white. By the 1970s, however, when the federal government was classifying citizens and then distributing benefits and imposing costs based on those classifications, they were taking a different position. Rather than government responding to social realities, social realities were being shaped by the federal government, which was being lobbied by organizations that were largely unrepresentative of those they claimed to speak for. Yeah. So he's basically saying this entire category is fake.

[Peter]

Yeah. I mean, there is an element of this that is true, at least theoretically, which is that because race is a social construct, it can be constructed by actors within our society. Right. Someone telling you this is your race for long enough can result in you believing that it's your race. Right. I don't want to say there's like, no truth to this at all, but what he's saying is that when being deemed white was beneficial, Mexican Americans wanted to be deemed white. But then the civil rights era comes and suddenly they're like, oh, it's beneficial to be non white. And so they sought to create this new racial category to designate themselves as non white and enjoy the delicious spoils of non whiteness that all minorities enjoy in this country. Because, of course, if you're a conservative, you believe that it just rules to be a minority in this country.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah. As a gay person, I just get my check from the government and my Obama anal beads every month.

[Peter]

And the history of the term Hispanic is interesting. I mean, it's largely true that for the first part of these 20th century, Mexican Americans often fought to have themselves considered white, because being white came with, like, express legal benefits. In 1930, the census included Mexican as a racial category, but Mexican American activists and the Mexican government itself lobbied to have that changed. And then it wasn't until 1970 that you see a similar racial category appear again in the census, and then Hispanic appears. In 1980, Christina Mora, a sociologist at Berkeley, wrote a book about how this all came to be called Making Hispanics, which Henanya uses as a source here, although I think he mostly ignores her actual conclusions. She says that essentially Mexican American activists were inspired by the success of the civil rights movement, and they strategized and coordinated with Puerto Rican and Cuban activists, who mostly at the time existed on the east coast, to build a coalition. From there, they operate as more or less a single political organization and also start to Develop a shared cultural identity. So she talks about how there used to be like Mexican American TV stations and Puerto Rican TV stations and they start to merge them and create this single cultural space for Spanish speaking populations in America. Hanania is arguing that the Hispanic label is popularized because the government endorsed it. I don't think that's totally wrong, but I do think it's highly oversimplified. Right. Makes the movement seem top down. And he's pretty express that he believes this is driven by the government and like elite activists who didn't really speak for their population. Right, right. I think in reality you can argue that it just as effectively that it's a bottom up movement. And there's also this implication in the chapter that the Hispanic identity movement was actually counterproductive because Hispanic populations were in the process of happily assimilating. And then activists step in and they claim they're not white. And all of that assimilation grinds to a halt. So I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you the opening paragraph of this chapter.

[Michael]

He says. In the early to mid-1950s, I Love Lucy was the highest rated TV show in the United States. It centered around the life of Ricky Ricardo and his wife Lucy. Ricky ran a nightclub and his heavy Cuban accent, especially when he became upset at his wife's hijinks, was a source of much of the comedy on the show. Despite CBS executives fears, Americans did not think it objectionable that the most popular show in the country featured what some might have considered an interracial marriage. It was only in Loving v. Virginia, decided in 1967 that the Supreme Court would invalidate anti miscegenation laws in the last 16 states that still had them supported laws to maintain the purity of the white race. Regularly welcomed Lucy and Ricky into their homes without giving the issue of race much thought. Oh, this is just like you say, Americans are racist and yet they're watching black people play baseball. Doesn't like mean anything?

[Peter]

There is some truth to this in the sense that the perceived whiteness of certain Hispanic people. There's definitely something going on there that he's sort of poking at. But the implication that he's trying to make here is that before the government established the Hispanic identity, Hispanic people were like in the process of assimilating into American culture. People didn't even think their marriages were interracial, potentially to a point where like he's sort of implying that they didn't even really experience discrimination.

[Michael]

I like that we've reached the point in the episode where we're Like, Richard Henania does not have an intersectional lens on the social construction of race. Because what he's really talking about is class here.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael]

That if it's. If it's someone who's wealthy, it's easier for that person to be kind of welcomed into white culture.

[Peter]

I think what he is trying to say is that this otherness of, like, the Hispanic label was manufactured by activists who just wanted to reap the rewards of the civil rights regime.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

What was actually happening was that those activists were identifying discrimination against their people and then identifying people in different spaces across the country, culturally similar to them experiencing the same types of discrimination and saying, well, hey, we have common cause here. Why don't we unify our political forces? That is normal politics, and it's politics that is aimed at correcting very real, very severe discrimination.

[Michael]

Right.

[Peter]

Here's a passage from Christina Mora's book, which, again, he's using as a source here. Along the U.S. mexico border, Mexican American families lived in shanty towns where houses lacked running water and public schools lacked electricity. Mexican Americans also faced severe levels of racial discrimination across the Southwest, where they were systematically segregated. They were barred from entering all white public and private spaces, and Mexican children were often relegated to all Mexican schools. That is about the 1960s and the era preceding that. So, yes, there are interesting conversations to be had about, like, the perceived whiteness of Desi Arnaz.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Peter]

But the inference that he wants you to make is that, like, holistically, Hispanic people were on their way to being perceived as white, and then the government fucked it all up.

[Michael]

Right? No, no, this is also something. I mean, I guess you could say the same thing with, like, the autistic community. Right. That there's always been autistic people, but because, like, the diagnostic criteria was so bad, and they're, you know, they were all totally medicalized and treated like shit, and their parents were running the entire quote, unquote rights movement. But all of a sudden you have this. This community of autistic people who are fighting for more accommodations and more rights and more kind of recognition in schools, et cetera. But that doesn't mean that it's fake.

[Peter]

Or the LGBT community. Right. His part of his complaint here seems to be that, like, this Hispanic identity didn't exist before, which is true. It's also true that it was the output to some degree, of politicized thinking. Meaning they were like, we would be stronger as a political body if we united with people from Puerto Rico and Cuba. Right. That's what the Mexican American Activists were thinking, just like it's true that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people all have notable differences. And yet they were like, well, we have enough in common.

[Michael]

Chapel Roan. We have Chapel Roan in common. Everything else is different.

[Peter]

Just like. Just like. Sorry, you've really distracted me with chaplain. I've been listening. Just like, for example, there are differences in black communities across the country. Right. The fact that there are also groups who recognize that there is a singular political movement underneath them is not like social engineering. Right. It's just politics. It's just how politics works.

[Michael]

And also, it's fine to have a strategy. It's fine to think about this stuff and be deliberate about it.

[Peter]

How can we advance the cause of this discriminated against minority is just not. Not gonna ever ring to my ears as evil. You know what I mean? Like, this is just their way of trying to undermine the political movement more broadly.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Now all of this together Hananya sees as wokeness run amok, right? Yes.

[Michael]

You can't watch porn at work and people are Hispanic.

[Peter]

He then has a chapter that lays out a course of action very specifically and using charts. He doesn't advocate expressly for repealing the Civil Rights act of 1964. He basically wants to see it pared back until, like, the only thing in it is that it's illegal to do intentional discrimination.

[Michael]

Oh, my God.

[Peter]

I'm not entirely sure that he even wants that. But that's sort of what he is saying if you read his chart.

[Michael]

I was gonna say the only thing these guys accept as discrimination is like, literally calling people a slur. But he's already established that. He doesn't even think calling people a slur is that much of a problem. If you're joking, he thinks that's the coolest. So you have to call them a slur in a mean way.

[Peter]

So I want to be clear. His, like, solutions section of this book, it seems quite obviously directed at, like, policymakers, judges, et cetera, to hit the high notes. He wants disparate impact to be eliminated by overturning that Supreme Court case and repealing the Civil Rights act of 1991. He wants damages reduced for discrimination cases, wants to defund the federal agencies that target discrimination, of course, as well as state agencies that facilitate diversity, things like that. Right. This is also the part of the book that, like, makes it clear who this is for. This is not for normal people. This chart includes which executive orders should be withdrawn.

[Michael]

Oh, God. Right, okay.

[Peter]

Which laws should be repealed. This isn't for Some Fox News grandma. Right. This is for Republicans in positions of power and whoever takes the reins in the next Trump administration. Very specific. Specifically. Right. I guess that leads us to the question of where this would leave us. His final chapters talk about this, including a section called Imagining a Non Woke America.

[Michael]

We had that.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Michael]

Isn't that just this fake 1950s thing that they always go back to?

[Peter]

Right. Mississippi burning, but from the other perspective, but without as much typhus, Ms. glowing, as they call it. So the basic premise that he lays out here is that free markets are the best way to sort out all of this good shit.

[Michael]

Yeah. What if the hand that I use to masturbate in front of my colleagues at work is, in fact the invisible hand of Adam Smith's free markets?

[Peter]

He says, quote, large socioeconomic disparities that are not based in underlying differences in productivity cannot exist in a market system. Longtime libertarian argument, of course, that you don't really need discrimination laws because markets are efficient. So if you discriminate against quality workers just because of their race, for example, you will lose in the marketplace.

[Michael]

That's why our country had so much equality when we had much less regulation.

[Peter]

This is something that we basically objectively know is not true. I always go back to the resume audit studies when I'm talking about this because they're the simplest and clearest examples of how discrimination manifests. We've talked about this in bonus episodes, but I think it's worth just going through some of the. Of the literature here. So there have been dozens of studies now that follow this model where basically you send out resumes that are functionally identical except for the names, and you measure the frequency of responses based on whether the name sounds male or female, white or black, et cetera. These are some of my favorite studies, in part because they're so clear and also because you need to go full send on the names so that it's clear which race they are. So it's always like J. Kwon versus Blake.

[Michael]

Yeah, Yeah, I was just reading about this. The researchers oftentimes hire J.K. rowling to do this. They're like, ooh, Cho, Chang, Kingsley, Shacklebolt. It's a little too obvious, Joanne.

[Peter]

So back in 2003, there's a very famous study where a couple of researchers sent out about 5,000 resumes in response to help wanted ads and found that resumes with white sounding names got about 50% more interviews than those with black sounding names. There have been a bunch of similar studies, especially since then. In 2017, there was a Meta analysis of similar research that found that white applicants received 36% more callbacks than equally qualified black applicants. And also that there has been no change in that gap since 1990. A 2021 paper was published where researchers sent applications 80,000 plus resumes to large employers. They found that the gap is actually much smaller at large employers, generally about 9%. But also that both race and gender discrimination were highly concentrated in a few employers in a handful of industries. So sales, jobs, retail were more discriminatory. The auto industry was the worst offender. They also found that having centralized HR operations was found to reduce discrimination.

[Michael]

Yeah, that makes sense. Standardized processes.

[Peter]

Exactly. So keep in mind that was one of the central pillars of wokeness, according to Richard. Turns out that's one of the things that reliably reduces the most obvious discrimination.

[Michael]

And of course, one flaw with these studies is that it's only the first stage of the process.

[Peter]

That's right.

[Michael]

It's only who gets invited for an interview. But of course, there's all kinds of other barriers once you get to the interview.

[Peter]

And it's also important because it shows the opposite of what conservatives claim is happening. Conservatives argue that companies are hiring unqualified minorities over qualified white candidates. Right. But the reality that we can see through the data is that they aren't even hiring equally qualified minority candidates, let alone less qualified candidates. Right now. I'm gonna send you. God, he really fucking loses his mind, he says.

[Michael]

Because the beauty of markets is that people are free to make such decisions for themselves. As with many other things, some women like to be in an environment that accepts sexually charged jokes, while others find it distasteful or even frightening and disturbing. Beyond matters of the heart, some individuals like an environment in which they are surrounded by different kinds of people they can learn from, while others feel more comfortable with those like themselves. There's no justification for saying that those who have one set of instincts on each of those questions are good people, while those on the other side are bad and should have no ability to act on their preferences. The bureaucrats, lawyers and judges who brought civil rights law to its current state managed to start from a premise that the vast majority of Americans agreed that instruments of state power should not be used to repress others and turned it into an excuse to micromanage people's lives. Some people like racist workplaces and some people like non racist workplaces.

[Peter]

Some ladies love porn at work.

[Michael]

Yeah, look, we should let them decide the free freedom of choice.

[Peter]

So note that we've sort of shifted here from like, markets Will fix discrimination. And talking about how outright bigotry is bad to suddenly being like, yeah, some people want to be with people who are like them, and that's okay.

[Michael]

Look, I want to be called slurs as long as someone's joking.

[Peter]

There's a lot of weird shit going on here. First of all, it's sort of. It's completely disconnected, like we said, from how finding a job works. Like, you don't. It's not this perfectly efficient process where you're like, I'll just choose the exact workplace I want. Want. You don't know what you're getting into. You only have limited options in your area. Whatever. Right.

[Michael]

These libertarian arguments are so funny because I don't think he realizes, or maybe he does, that he's essentially making an argument against, like, the concept of rights.

[Peter]

Right, Right.

[Michael]

Once you have this, like, well, some people prefer to get groped at work, and some people prefer not to get groped at work. You might as well just do, like, well, some people prefer to have safe workplaces. Some people prefer to work in places where they might die.

[Peter]

There's also this, like, big picture complaint here that I just don't understand. He at one point describes the modern workplace as sexless, androgynous, and sanitized. It's like, I don't know, man. Just picturing him being like, oh, what's the problem with the modern workplace? And he's like, sexless.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Like, he's always sort of hinting at this idea that maybe harassment laws are preventing workplace relationships, first of all, like, oh, bro, yeah, if it weren't for the. For Title 7 of the Civil Rights act of 1964, bro, I'd be getting so much pussy.

[Michael]

It's also very funny seeing all this fucking. This bullshit consternation as a gay person where I've always worked in industries where, like, 80% of my colleagues are women to begin with. And, like, just statistically speaking, there's not that many other gay guys around. So, like, dating at work has never been a possibility for me. And, like, I don't mind. I don't think of work as a place where I need to get laid and date and flirt and ask people out. I just, like, exist in a world where that's never really been an option and I don't fucking care.

[Peter]

The thing is, though, if there is anything that has been good for male female workplace relationships, it's the Civil Rights act making it illegal to discriminate against women.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And now they work with you, dude. Like, survey results, like, Vary pretty wildly on this, but, like, a majority of people have had workplace romances and, like, one in five married couples met at work. So, like, yeah, Richard, I know you're not getting laid at work.

[Michael]

Yeah, but that's because he's a moist little fascist. Maybe if you didn't have the looks and personality of the licker from Resident Evil 2, the interns would like you more.

[Peter]

So that's the gist of the book. That's his sort of, like, vision for the post woke world. We're gonna repeal all the civil rights laws, and you can just be racist and play porn at work and, like, to the rhythm of free at last, folks. Porn at work. Porn at work.

[Michael]

These guys all just very openly want to go back to a world that we've already had.

[Peter]

So I guess we have to talk about it right before the book was published.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

The Huffington Post ran a bit of an expose on Richard where they revealed and listeners at home, you're never gonna believe this.

[Michael]

I'm ready.

[Peter]

He used to post on white supremacist websites. Between 2008 and 2012, he posted explicitly racist and sexist content under a pseudonym. We don't have to get into the details, but it did include such hits as advocating for the sterilization of low IQ people and opposing interracial marriage.

[Michael]

I can't believe the guy who wrote a whole book about how we should be able to say slavery thinks that other races are, like, not as superior as his own.

[Peter]

I mean, I was taken aback.

[Michael]

Someone whose stated values align with white supremacist ideology at every opportunity.

[Peter]

The expose comes out, Hananya writes a response where he basically says, like, yeah, I used to be awful and bigoted. I find my old views repulsive. Okay?

[Michael]

I find my more polite restatement of them much more palatable.

[Peter]

He gets a lot of support, especially from conservatives. David Frum, the old neoconservative, who we will be forced to do an episode on one day, said that we should embrace the road back from extremism to normality.

[Michael]

That is true. And totally irrelevant.

[Peter]

Irrelevant.

[Michael]

People have to change their minds for us to do that, David. Right. You have to change.

[Peter]

So a lot of people on the left, Jamelle Bowie, Jonathan Katz, a freelance journalist, basically wrote to be like, well, not only does Hanania post racist things online still, which, by the way, like, go to his Twitter feed if you want to subject yourself to it, but what is the difference, right? At best, he has sort of dressed up what was once outright racism into something nominally more Palatable. But to me, I guess the question is, if an open white supremacist wanted to present a more palatable version of his views in order to mainstream them them, what would be the difference between that person's output and Richard's? It feels like the people who want him to be forgiven are just asking for us to play dumb and like, no thanks. You know, by the way, one of the publications he wrote for in his more racist heyday was VDare, openly white supremacist right wing website. He cites Steven Saylor, who's a current VDARE writer. In this book. In this book. I think that what this book tells me is that the people who want power on the right right now and who are close to achieving the level of power they need really do have visions of a harsher world. And like, whatever you thought the outer boundaries of their vision might be, I promise you, it's worse. I think that most people would say, like, oh, yeah, they are. They don't like DEI, but it's not like they're gonna repeal Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act. And it's like, well, I can tell you that they're talking about it, you know, they're talking about it in these little books that they write to each other. So I wouldn't be so sure. Yeah, the real failure here is on the part of the mainstream media who platformed him both before and after he was exposed as like, this former white supremacist.

[Michael]

Yeah, that's the thing, right? Yeah.

[Peter]

So, like, I guess what I would want is some evidence that his denial is sincere. And I'm not sure that I have any. But more importantly, I'm just not sure that it matters because the gap between VDARE and the far right of conservative punditry is very small.

[Michael]

I feel like the redemption arcs are getting shorter and shorter where it's like you guys say, this young man has all these white supremacist beliefs, but he's reformed. He just came out with a book about how we shouldn't have the Civil Rights act anymore.

[Peter]

Well, it's not about whether this guy should be canceled or whatever. But it is funny that people still talk about cancel culture when all he had to do was put out one article being like, no, yeah, no, I don't believe that anymore.

[Michael]

I believe in all that stuff. I just say it differently now. It is. I mean, the real question is, like, what's it gonna take?

[Peter]

Jesus. I really regretted reading this one. I gotta say.

[Michael]

I can't believe this is the first time this has happened.

[Peter]

I will say between I was like partway through this when I was like, is this worth giving air? And then I sort of talked myself into like. No, I think it is because I think you're shining a light on this sort of like, dark corner of the right. I definitely wouldn't have done it after a two or three month hiatus if I had realized what I was getting into.

[Michael]

The only thing I've actually learned from this episode is that you're just as white as I am, Peter. Everything else went over my head.

[Peter]

I have always said that my whiteness fluctuation fluctuates very heavily depending on the level of conflict in the Middle east at any given moment. Which makes me. Makes me pretty low white right now. Pretty low white.

[Michael]

The thing is, it's the same thing with me and gayness. But because it's Pride month and I have to deal with gay people more than usual, I'm both more gay and more homophobic than any other month of the year.