Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: ACLU Accuses Asian Attorney of Using 'Coded' Racism; Fires Her;
 ACLU Sued by Government
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2024 20:15:19 -0400
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 231
Message-ID: <20240325201519.00001292@example.com>
References: <Z7adnT2Sdef_TJz7nZ2dnZfqn_ednZ2d@giganews.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Injection-Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2024 01:15:22 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="6c7cec04f4e053156d822e3d1b8165a8";
	logging-data="1473362"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19OVOfWJh4/0UACZcUhAQHPN3JhsDLPnuA="
Cancel-Lock: sha1:HPvu+A+qdQ8bHBN68nQ3KLZ2KMg=
X-Antivirus: Avast (VPS 240325-8, 3/25/2024), Outbound message
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 4.2.0 (GTK 3.24.41; x86_64-w64-mingw32)
Bytes: 12998

On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 19:32:50 +0000
BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

> So now expressing fear of one's boss or describing his behavior as
> "chastising" is racist if the boss is black.
>=20
> And this is the ACLU we're talking about. Anyone who still thinks the
> ACLU is the constitutional rights advocate that it used to be needs
> their head examined. It's nothing but a shill for the most extreme
> and radical woke policies.
>=20
> ---------------------
>=20
> https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/us/politics/aclu-employee-fired-race-b=
ias.html
>=20
> The civil liberties group is defending itself in an unusual case that
> weighs what kind of language may be evidence of bias against black
> people.
>=20
> Kate Oh was no one's idea of a get-along-to-go-along employee. During
> her five years as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union,
> she was an unsparing critic of her superiors, known for sending long,
> blistering emails to human resources complaining about what she
> described as a hostile workplace.
>=20
> She considered herself a whistle blower and advocate for other women
> in the office, drawing unflattering attention to an environment she
> said was rife with sexism, burdened by unmanageable workloads and
> stymied by a fear-based culture.
>=20
> Then the tables turned and Ms. Oh was the one slapped with an
> accusation of serious misconduct. The ACLU said her complaints about
> several superiors-- all of whom were black-- used "racist
> stereotypes". She was fired in May 2022.
>=20
> The ACLU acknowledges that Ms. Oh, who is Korean-American, never used
> any kind of racial slur, but the group says that her use of certain
> phrases and words demonstrated a pattern of willful anti-black animus.
>=20
> In one instance, according to court documents, she told a black
> superior that she was "afraid" to talk with him. In another, she told
> a manager that their conversation was "chastising". And in a meeting,
> she repeated a satirical phrase likening her bosses' behavior to
> suffering beatings.
>=20
> Did her language add up to racism? Or was she just speaking harshly
> about bosses who happened to be black? That question is the subject
> of an unusual unfair-labor-practice case brought against the ACLU by
> the National Labor Relations Board, which has accused the
> organization of retaliating against Ms. Oh. A trial in the case
> wrapped up this week in Washington, and a judge is expected to decide
> in the next few months whether the ACLU was justified in terminating
> her. If the ACLU loses, it could be ordered to reinstate her or pay
> restitution.
>=20
> The heart of the ACLU's defense-- arguing for an expansive definition
> of what constitutes racist or racially coded speech-- has struck some
> labor and free-speech lawyers as peculiar, since the organization has
> traditionally protected the right to free expression, operating on
> the principle that it may not like what someone says, but will fight
> for the right to say it.
>=20
> The case raises some intriguing questions about the wide swath of
> employee behavior and speech that labor law protects-- and how the
> nation's pre-eminent civil rights organization finds itself on the
> opposite side of that law, arguing that those protections should not
> apply to its former employee.
>=20
> A lawyer representing the ACLU, Ken Margolis, said during a legal
> proceeding last year that it was irrelevant whether Ms. Oh bore no
> racist ill will. All that mattered, he said, was that her black
> colleagues were offended and injured.
>=20
> "We're not here to prove anything other than the impact of her
> actions was very real-- that she caused harm," Mr. Margolis said,
> according to a transcript of his remarks. "She caused serious harm to
> black members of the ACLU community."
>=20
> Rick Bialczak, the lawyer who represents Ms. Oh through her union,
> responded sarcastically, saying he wanted to congratulate Mr.
> Margolis for making an exhaustive presentation of the ACLU's
> evidence: three interactions Ms. Oh had with colleagues that were
> reported to human resources.
>=20
> "I would note, and commend Ken, for spending 40 minutes explaining
> why three discreet comments over a multi-month period of time
> constitutes serious harm to the ACLU members, black employees,=E2=80=9D he
> said. "Yes, she had complained about black supervisors, Mr. Bialczak
> acknowledged, but her direct boss and that boss's boss were black.
> "Those were her supervisors," he said. "If she has complaints about
> her supervision, who is she supposed to complain about?"
>=20
> Ms. Oh declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing case.
>=20
> The ACLU has a history of representing groups that liberals revile.
> This week, it argued in the Supreme Court on behalf of the National
> Rifle Association in a 1st Amendment case, but to critics of the
> ACLU, Ms. Oh's case is a sign of how far the group has strayed from
> its core mission-- defending free speech-- and has instead aligned
> itself with a progressive politics that is intensely focused on
> identity.
>=20
> "Much of our work today," as it explains on its website, "is focused
> on equality for people of color, women, gay and transgender people,
> prisoners, immigrants, and people with disabilities."
>=20
> And since the beginning of the Trump administration, the organization
> has taken up partisan causes it might have avoided in the past, like
> running an advertisement to support Stacey Abrams' 2018 campaign for
> governor of Georgia.
>=20
> "They radically expanded and raised so much more money-- hundreds of
> millions of dollars-- from leftist donors who were desperate to push
> back on the scary excesses of the Trump administration," said Lara
> Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco who has
> been critical of the ACLU. "And they hired people with a lot of
> extremely strong views about race and workplace rules and in the
> process, they themselves veered into a place of excess. I scour the
> record for any evidence that this Asian woman is a racist and I don't
> find any."
>=20
> The beginning of the end for Ms. Oh, who worked in the ACLU's
> political advocacy department, started in late February 2022,
> according to court papers and interviews with lawyers and others
> familiar with the case. The ACLU was hosting a virtual
> organization-wide meeting under heavy circumstances. The national
> political director, who was black, had suddenly departed following
> multiple complaints about his abrasive treatment of subordinates. Ms.
> Oh, who was one of the employees who had complained, spoke up during
> the meeting to declare herself skeptical that conditions would
> actually improve.
>=20
> "Why shouldn't we simply expect that 'the beatings will continue
> until morale improves'," she said in a Zoom group chat, invoking a
> well-known phrase that is printed and sold on t-shirts, usually
> accompanied by the skull and crossbones of a pirate flag. She
> explained that she was being "definitely metaphorical".
>=20
> Soon after, Ms. Oh heard from the ACLU manager overseeing its equity
> and inclusion efforts, Amber Hikes, who cautioned Ms. Oh about her
> language. Ms. Oh's comment was "dangerous and damaging", Ms. Hikes
> warned, because she seemed to suggest the former supervisor
> physically assaulted her.
>=20
> "Please consider the very real impact of that kind of violent
> language in the workplace," Ms. Hikes wrote in an email. Ms. Oh
> acknowledged she had been wrong and apologized. Over the next several
> weeks, senior managers documented other instances in which they said
> Ms. Oh mistreated black employees.
>=20
> In early March, Ben Needham, who had succeeded the recently departed
> national political director, reported that Ms. Oh called her direct
> supervisor, a black woman, a liar. According to his account, he asked
> Ms. Oh why she hadn't complained earlier. She responded that she was
> "afraid to talk to him".
>=20
> "As a black male, language like 'afraid' generally is a code word for
> me," Mr. Needham wrote in an email to other ACLU managers. "It is
> triggering for me." Mr. Needham, who is gay and grew up in the Deep
> South, said in an interview that as a child, "I was taught that I'm a
> danger." To hear someone say they're afraid of him, he added, is like
> saying, "These are the people we should be scared of."
>=20
> Ms. Oh and her lawyers have cited her own past: As a survivor of
> domestic abuse, she was particularly sensitive to tense interactions
> with male colleagues. She said she was troubled by Mr. Needham once
> referring to his predecessor as a friend, since she was one of the
> employees who had criticized him. Mr. Needham said he had been
> speaking only about their relationship in a professional context.
>=20
> According to court records, the ACLU conducted an internal
> investigation into whether Ms. Oh had any reason to fear talking to
> Mr. Needham and concluded there were "no persuasive grounds" for her
> concerns.
>=20
> The following month, Ms. Hikes, the head of equity and inclusion,
> wrote to Ms. Oh, documenting a third incident-- her own. "Calling my
========== REMAINDER OF ARTICLE TRUNCATED ==========