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From: shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.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 17:59:52 -0400
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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.
>
>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.
>
>---------------------
>
>https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/us/politics/aclu-employee-fired-race-bias.html
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.

And there is the major issue. It does not matter what she thought but
only what others thought or at least said they thought. Been there
done that where I was accused of something similar by someone who
remained nameless but who I'm sure I know because she was known to be
a troublemaker. Luckily in my case it wasn't taken as seriously given
that there was no evidence I did anything, but in Ms Oh's case it
doesn't matter that she did nothing wrong, but that her complaints
ended up bothering her colleagues enough that they finally complained.

So her complaints did not matter but their complaints did. How does
that happen?

>"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."

He doesn't address if her complaints had any basis in reality. If her
complaints did have a basis does it still matter if the others felt
she caused them harm?

>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.
>
>"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,” 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?"

Wait, so the complaint is that she complained to HR about her
supervisors over months, but not to others? How is that even an issue
that should lead to her firing? Isn't HR's role to help mitigate those
sorts of interpersonal issues.

>Ms. Oh declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing case.
>
>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.
>
>"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."
>
>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.
>
>"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."
>
>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.
>
>"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".

Ah, she made the mistake of saying what she was thinking and so made
herself a target for more beatings.

>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.

This should have seen the ACLU laughed out of court for suggesting
such a thing.

>"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.
>
>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".
>
>"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."

Again a case of someone reading into what was said instead of taking
it in without asking why she was afraid. Perhaps because of her
experiences with her previous boss as the report says he was abrasive.
Instead it appears this new boss took to email to denigrate Ms Oh
which again leads to a reason she should win this case against the
ACLU.

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