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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   12386 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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I want to discuss a recent tweet:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19537f87-70fe-4627-b5b7-e99e4855c933_606x519.png

The humor, I’m not sure if it’s intended, is that “Griggs v. Duke Republicans” are an almost entirely online phenomenon. They don’t have a mass of voting power in the real world. Republican politicians, to the extent they’re aware they exist, would be fine losing the few votes they have, many of which are locked in deep blue areas. They’re not serving in the Trump administration. Very few have actual influence on policymakers. Chris Rufo does. Richard Hanania, maybe a little.

The Roe v. Wade Republican is comfortable in the Republican coalition. He’s the type of guy nobody is surprised to learn votes Republican. The Griggs v. Duke Republican is cross-pressured; he’s white and male but also educated, irreligious, and urban. The Roe v. Wade Republican watched the Republican convention speeches. The Griggs v. Duke Republican didn’t because, deep down, he knows the speeches were not for him. It’s not really his party. But then he logs on to an online community of other Griggs v. Duke Republicans and fools himself into thinking people like him are a notable part of the Republican base.

Sometimes the Griggs v. Duke Republican is sufficiently disgusted by the low-class and religious portions of the Republican base that he angrily denounces it and becomes a centrist or even a left-winger. The Republican reaction is … nothing because they don’t even take any note of such people.

My message to Griggs v. Duke Republicans, from a Griggs v. Duke guy who used to be a Republican, is this. There is a difference between voting for a party and being part of that party’s coalition. Richard Spencer voted for Kamala but is not part of the Democratic coalition. You, Mr. Griggs v. Duke Republican, are not part of the Republican coalition. Maybe that will change someday. Maybe Griggs v. Duke Republicans will start running for office. Maybe you can be the change you want to see in the world and do that. But right now, you’re on the outside looking in.

I'm no fan of disparate impact jurisprudence but Griggs is a weird case to be hung up on. Just a few months ago an employer had me take the Wonderlic, the exact same test Griggs was about (fwiw it was insultingly easy and I think most people here would have gotten a near perfect score in middle school). Outside of that I think the widely hated IQ proxy tests used in the software field do a pretty shoddy job of filtering out the lazy and incompetent.

Of course it's pretty likely that for many within this extremely niche online subset, the specific nuances of Supreme Court history are less important than the signalling value of having something to point to when they want to remind the religious right that they aren't allowed at the based table because Catholics are too nice to nonwhites or whatever.

My ruling on that particular case would have been something along the lines of "Before the Civil Rights Act, Defendant explicitly excluded black people from the higher-paid jobs. Therefore, the Court can conclude that Defendant harbours animus toward black people. Defendant did not require white people to pass any kind of test before hiring them. Therefore, by revealed preference, Defendant had no objection to a low-scoring white person holding higher paid jobs. Therefore, Defendant's imposition of the testing requirement, on the same day that the Civil Rights Act took effect and defendant could no longer exclude people on the explicit grounds of skin colour, indicates that,

  1. Defendant is attempting to keep black people sub-ordinate to white people (the exact thing Congress just outlawed), and
  2. Defendant apparently thinks that they can pee on Uncle Sam's leg and tell him it's raining."

I dunno but Trump has made some very positive promises about ending racial discrimination in education which is pretty Griggsy

While your red tribe normie doesn't particularly trust IQ tests, to the extent that he's aware of griggs he's probably not in favor on the basis that it's an excessive labor market regulation/affirmative action/the meat of the issue is adequately covered by existing antidiscrimination law.

I am a “Roe v. Wade Republican” who also opposes Griggs v. Duke. The 2024 RNC publicly diminished pro-lifers’ influence. This is probably a consequence of Dobbs, and while I am annoyed at the squishy middle of America on the issue, I am grateful for the win that inspired the blowback.

It is true that opposition to Roe has a discrete constituency, whereas opposition to Griggs does not. But I think that opposition to affirmative action is almost universal among red- and gray-tribe Republicans. To the extent that the median Republican voter understands disparate impact analysis, he doesn’t like it.

I think your “Griggs Republican” is in a tough spot for two reasons, one shared with “Roe Republicans” and one not. Like pro-lifers, opponents of Griggs have the problem that a lot of elected Republicans are in fact blue tribe and are thus either hostile to the issue or indifferent and unwilling to spend any political or social capital on it. But I think what distinguishes your image of a Griggs Republican is not just opposition to Griggs; it’s also membership in the gray tribe. And it’s true that gray-tribers are a small part of the Republican coalition.

I don't understand what the message is here? Yes I am blue tribe through and through no matter how racist and pro-White I may be. I am disgusted by the low class vulgarity and tastelessness of Republicans. I am aware that in light of the election Republicans seem more interested in being the party of the uneducated and the party of men than the party of Whites. But what am I supposed to do with this information?

What's is Griggs, and why does it define different types of Republicans?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

Basically the supreme court decision that outlawed blanket IQ testing for jobs because of its disparate impact on blacks.

The first major court case on disparate impact. Here, it's standing in for educated white voters who hate affirmative action.

At this time, I would like to steelman disparate-impact legislation.

Some people decide that they don't want to hire (or sell to, or admit to their schools) black people (or women or Chinese people or Irish people...), but are forbidden by law from having such a policy. They then impose a standard that many white people can meet, few black people can meet, and that they most likely wouldn't give a rat's arse about if it were un-correlated with race, and in some cases didn't give a rat's arse about when they were allowed to discriminate openly. (Sometimes they go further, and enforce a zero-tolerance standard on black people while ignoring violations by white people.) The government than comes in and says "That sounds like a whites-only sign with extra steps; I thought we had made it perfectly clear that you are not allowed to do that! What part of 'do not discriminate on the basis of race' did you not understand?"

In practice, though, disparate impact is often used not only for concealed racism, but for any policies that does not produce the desired ratios, where desired means "at least as many nonwhites as the population that we're drawing from." But that can mean that simple hiring based on competence means that people can fall below the definitely-not-quotas, and so they would be legally vulnerable.

In theory, it's a nice feature to capture concealed racism. In practice, it's a generic cudgel that can be used to punish ordinary behavior, should you get out of line. And legally (assuming we're talking about Title VI here), it's a complete fabrication, and is used to make people break the text of the law itself.

Oh, certainly. I was not identifying as a 'Griggs Republican' myself. I tend to think that the idea of disparate impact can be followed off a cliff (e.g. Kendi-style arguments that any inequalities in outcome are evidence of unequal treatment), but at the same time, it's obviously true that facially neutral policies can be chosen and applied strategically in order to achieve a discriminatory outcome.

They then impose a standard that many white people can meet, few black people can meet, and that they most likely wouldn't give a rat's arse about if it were un-correlated with race.

Do you genuinely believe that businesses do not have a preference for intelligent employees over non-intelligent employees? Like, all else being equal I can’t think of any reason (except maybe that smart employees are likely to expect/demand higher pay and better working conditions) to not value intelligence as a factor in hiring. If less black people are meeting that standard, that’s unfortunately on them.

Do you genuinely believe that businesses do not have a preference for intelligent employees over non-intelligent employees?

No, I was attempting to present the strongest possible case for disparate-impact laws. Thus, in the situation I described, the standard wasn't 'must be more mentally capable than McNamara's 100,000' so much as 'must have 'professional-looking' (i. e. white) hairstyle' or 'must be able to lift 50 pounds' for a desk job that won't involve lifting anything heavier than a full cup of coffee.

But then it turns out they apply a wholly different standard when discrimination against white people is involved (linked in a top level post) and your steelman collapses into a pile of rust.

This is the first time I've ever heard about Griggs v. Duke, and I grew up around Roe v. Wade Republicans. Mostly because they were government workers or independent contractors, never managers or small business owners.

I'm not sure what to do with this new information.

I'd have Vance and Musk both pegged as more Griggs v Duke than Roe v Wade. Same for RFK Jr. Hell, is Trump even a Roe v Wade Republican?

Trump is a Smoot-Hawley Republican. RFK Jr. is a Republican only nominally (not a "Republican in name only" because that refers to a different subset).

Vance is probably more Roe v Wade than Griggs. Trump has a muddled middle view on abortion, RFK and Musk are pro-choice at least in theory. Musk is the main one I'd point to being anti-Griggs. The powerful governors are almost universally anti-Roe and more-or-less pro-Griggs.

Vance is definitely a Roe v. Wade Republican, see: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1722311695140298978. Musk is just an average Fox News watcher at this point. RFK Jr. is not a Republican at all.

Yes, it's a ridiculous comparison. Just about every Republican politician will happily talk about getting rid of DEI and disparate impact policies, even if they don't have a realistic plan to do it.
Would Kamela Harris repeat the 14 words if Spencer asked her to? (unless he replaced "white" with "BIPOC" of course)

I’m pretty squarely within the “Griggs v. Duke Republicans” camp, if such a thing exists, and I agree with this basic analysis. I didn’t watch any of the RNC speeches, and would have been deeply embarrassed if I had. You are, of course, correct that the party, from Trump on down, is ashamed of my support and would be relieved to be able to fully jettison and disavow it in favor of “Enrique and Jamal”.

Like @Primaprimaprima, though, I wonder what you actually want me to do, in practical terms. I’ve already said that my long-term hope is that the Democrat Party can be remade into something like my image; I’ve joined Bluesky to try and add my small contribution to the conversations happening among a certain dissatisfied segment of the online center-left. If this slow conversion of smart liberals to the anti-Civil-Rights side is going to happen at all, though, it’s going to take a full generation or more. I’ll be lucky to see a true “platform shift” in my lifetime, if I’m being honest with myself. So while that’s happening, why shouldn’t I vote Republican?

The man in the picture is an NYSRPA v. Bruen Republican, of course. But it wouldn't be out of the question for him to know about Griggs; he almost certainly knows about affirmative action and who is on what side.

Sometimes the Griggs v. Duke Republican is sufficiently disgusted by the low-class and religious portions of the Republican base that he angrily denounces it and becomes a centrist or even a left-winger.

This would be very rare, because someone who has taken the Duke Power side is going against the core beliefs of the modern left. There are of course dozens of libertarians of that sort, but they're essentially barred from the left.

So… what exactly is the suggested course of action here? Abstract theorizing about who is and isn’t part of the coalition is all well and good, but what do you want me to do about it? Because I’m sure as hell not voting Democrat.

Be more critical of Trump and his administration and movement. Don't be the partisan for a tribe you aren't even really part of.

Vote Libertarian, obviously.

Ah yes, let me vote for the party that can't help itself raise people who want even less borders and more multi-culti weed orgies or whatever.

Where do people like me (religious, anti-abortion, but also opposed to nonsense like Griggs) fit into your perception of political alignments?

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