Richard Hanania explains why both the social and legal system keep ratcheting up stricter and more totalitarian standards of Wokeness and punishment for Wrong Speech.

[F]ew regulators and lawmakers responsible for the state of civil rights law intended to create a world where schools are teaching that punctuality and hard work are racist. But by getting government into the field of social engineering and making hurt feelings a matter of law, they set us on the path to modern wokeness. …

A black father and son named Owen Diaz and Demetric Di-az (not sure what happened with the last names) worked at a Tesla plant in Fremont, California in 2015 and 2016. They sued the company for racial discrimination, though in the end only the father’s claims made it to trial. Diaz in particular seems to have been a malcontent who couldn’t get along with anyone, as can be seen in the judge’s order ruling on a series of motions for summary judgment (NYT coverage here).

One time, he became confrontational with a safety inspector who asked him to put on his required vest and shoes. In another incident, Diaz got into an argument with a Hispanic co-worker while they were in the same elevator, and witnesses thought they were about to fight and had to separate them. Diaz claimed he made a racial slur, and the other guy denied it. A few months later, he got into a fight with another black employee, who allegedly was so frustrated with Diaz that he threatened to shoot him. Although that guy denied making the threat, he was fired for the incident.

Throughout their time at the factory, Hispanic and black co-workers would occasionally use the n-word, though there are no allegations of whites doing so in the record. For example, one time Di-az (the son) and others took too long on a meal break, and one Hispanic supervisor said “All you n—–s need to hurry the fuck up.” The father once saw racist graffiti on a bathroom wall. A different Hispanic worker admitted to drawing the picture and said he was “just playing.”

In March 2016, Diaz got to take a week off because his mother had died. When he was supposed to come back, he didn’t show up to work, and was fired. When they told him, he was “‘mad, upset’ and ‘cussing,’ because he wanted to continue working at Tesla, in part because he was making good money.”

Whether Tesla could be sued depended on the legal question of whether they were acting as an employer, and the judge found it was a question a jury could decide. They did, and awarded Diaz $137 million.

Tesla and the other defendants appeared to have been hesitant to fire their employees over allegations that couldn’t be proved. For example, the Hispanic guy in the elevator was let off with a verbal warning because witnesses could not confirm what he had allegedly said. But when something was verifiable, Tesla or the other defendants took action, as the guy who admitted to drawing the racist cartoon got a three-day suspension. Other allegations were supposedly taken less seriously. Tesla says that Diaz made three complaints to the company, and they resulted in two people being fired and another getting suspended.

Let’s for the sake of argument take the claims of Diaz and Di-az at face value. How would a rational system handle them? Perhaps the law can have strict rules like “If an employee says certain words, you must fire him or be legally liable.” You can do the same for racist cartoons. Seems harsh, but it would at least provide clear guidance.

Instead, you have a completely subjective system. The Iraqi mukhabarat did not tell you what phrases or words to avoid in order to be left alone. And the government never passed a law saying everyone must worship Saddam. Likewise, civil rights law never explicitly said you have to invite Robin DiAngelo to talk to you about how she has no time for your white woman tears. It just gives you some vague standards, empowers the most sensitive individuals, and creates huge payoffs for attorneys looking for racism along with serious penalties for businesses that fail to guess what will or won’t be declared discriminatory after the fact.

Lawyers and judges like to pretend we have something called the “rule of law.” The judge in the Diaz case writes the following on the standard that applies to an anti-discrimination case in California.

To make a prima facie showing of a hostile work environment under section 1981, Diaz will have to prove that: “(1) he was subjected to verbal or physical conduct because of his race, (2) the conduct was unwelcome, and (3) the conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of his employment and create an abusive work environment.”… The environment must be both objectively offensive to a reasonable person in the protected class and subjectively offensive to the plaintiff… “Simple teasing” and “offhand comments” may not be sufficient even where the conduct is “offensive and inappropriate.”

This is all the guidance you get. It’s literally based on feelings, what a “reasonable person in the protected class” thinks is offensive, but “simple teasing” doesn’t count. These definitions are completely circular. When something isn’t that bad, we call it “teasing,” when it seems bad, we call it “hostile”; on which side of the line any particular conduct falls is for the jury or bureaucrat to decide.

The entire debate over “cancel culture” revolves around what it is or isn’t reasonable to be offended about. For corporations and non-profits, this is a legal question. But although being too aggressive in rooting out “racism” will never cost you $137 million, being not anti-racist enough might. …

In America, the working class has adopted the relaxed approach to race relations, and more educated Americans have gone with the paranoid style. To liberal elites, this makes the working class seem hopelessly racist, being unable to understand that they exist in a world in which racial slurs don’t have the same effect and racism isn’t that big of a deal in modern American life. It’s sort of like how a lower class individual might hear college educated women use more “classic” swear words and come to the conclusion that they’re disgustingly vulgar, not realizing that they speak a different language and come from a culture without the same taboos (see McWhorter on old and new forms of profanity).

Each approach to race relations must ultimately be rooted in the personality and cognitive traits of the class that adopted it. The upper class way is more feminine, and probably ill suited for blue collar professions made up of high testosterone men. Hyper-sensitivity under such conditions would likely lead to a great deal of violence. Women are better at reading emotions and navigating complex social relationships, so the paranoid approach may actually work in a more female-dominated environment. The same might be true about white collar men who are high in intelligence and low in masculine traits, a group that disproportionately goes into fields like academia.

In a free and diverse country, then, we’d have different institutions and professions organically building the kinds of rules and norms that suit them best. This is exactly what civil rights law will not allow. Instead, a feminized and neurotic elite is using the power of government to push its rules and norms onto a lower class with a different cognitive profile.

Going back to the judge’s order, note that the “environment must be both objectively offensive to a reasonable person in the protected class and subjectively offensive to the plaintiff.” In other words, you adopt working class norms and brush off racial slurs, you get nothing. Become like elites, and you just might get $137 million. With incentives like that, it’s amazing any vestige of the working class culture still exists. One of the main limiting factors preventing the complete triumph of wokeness seems to be that there aren’t enough lawyers and journalists to make sure the paranoid style of race relations dominates in every workplace and profession in the country. The fact that they tend to focus on the deepest pockets helps explain why the biggest corporations are usually the most woke.

RTWT