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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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The kinds of people running cancellation campaigns do not see "flirting with Marxism" as a demerit.

Those are not the people who need to forgive Hanania. The people we need to forgive him are the Republicans in Conservatism Inc. Typically, they go along with left-wing cancellation campaigns, then brag about how much better than the left they are for ousting the "bigots" from their ranks, while still engaging with the bigots on the left. The smart people who do this like Ben Shapiro are acting in bad faith, but most Republicans are just too stupid to notice the contradiction on their own. If Hanania points it out, there's a chance some of them will get it. And we NEED conservatives to read his upcoming book. Mass awareness of Griggs v Duke is the key to getting it overturned, which is the key to defeating wokeness.

The smart people who do this like Ben Shapiro

I have never seen or heard an intelligent comment come from Ben Shapiro. Why do you think he deserves to be listed as one of the "smart people"?

"He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2004, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in political science and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Afterwards, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2007 with a J.D., cum laude."

The smart people who do this like Ben Shapiro are acting in bad faith

Uh, Ben Shapiro has personal reasons for being very concerned about the right embracing old school racial doctrines.

Yeah, the reason is that the people paying him (the Kochs) tell him to care.

I know that you're implying it's because he's Jewish, but no smart person will believe that embodying all of the negative stereotypes about Jews is less likely to encourage anti-Semitism than allowing white people to have the same level of racial consciousness as Jews. I don't think most progressive Jews or cuckservative Jews no better, but Ben Shapiro and Jonathan Greenblatt do. That they behave in this manner anyway makes them a bigger threat to the Jewish people than to the white race, not that they're friendly to either. They care about their own career and nothing more.

The problem with Griggs is that disparate impact can be discrimination as not permitted. For example, assume UNC wanted to continue to practice AA. They could pick a random attribute (eg single parenthood) that correlates with being black and provide a bonus for that. The goal is to find a facially neutral category but one you know isn’t in fact evenly distributed.

The problem with Griggs v. Duke is that idea that any disparate outcome against minorities shifts the burden of proof to “there is discrimination.”

Under current law, the right question is “does this policy have a truly reasonable relation to the X it is measuring.” So an IQ test for an intellectually challenging job? It has a reasonable relation and therefore the disparate impact is irrelevant. If on the other hand some firm institutes some policy about giving preferences in difficult jobs to people whose parents received SNAP benefits then that would be discrimination.

This of course assumes the government should even give one iota about discrimination by non government companies. But my suggestion deals with the statute as-is.

The idea that disparate impact is something we need to look out for is what created wokeness.