A Stitch in Haste

Wal-Mart has informed the major law firms it hires — all 100 of them — that they must impose racial and gender quotas on the "relationship teams" it assigns to the mega-retailer:

The company's general counsel has told its top 100 law firms that at least one person of color and one woman must be among the top five relationship attorneys that handle its business.
...
[Wal-Mart's general counsel], whose department spends about $200 million a year on outside legal services, said he realized he had to do something when he saw that 82 of the top 100 relationship partners handling the company's business are white men.
...
Wal-Mart's new policy signals a growing determination by corporate legal departments to pressure outside counsel. It is no longer enough, the general counsel at the symposium said, to raise the numbers of women and minority lawyers in a firm's lower ranks if its upper echelons remain an exclusive club for white men.

Now I have long been a defender of Wal-Mart in other contexts (one example here), and as a private company they are of course entitled to spend their legal budgets as they see fit. But I wonder whether this new trend is the best approach.

All the classic arguments against reverse discrimination apply to Wal-Mart no less than they apply to government: better qualified candidates are unfairly passed over, those filling the quota — including those qualified for the job — may question their own achievements and status, discrimination is economically inefficient, and so on.

And in the special case of the legal profession, is it realistic to lament the "oppression" of female and minority lawyers? Just how "oppressed" can any lawyer at a top firm — minority, female or otherwise — truly be? (This was a key issue in the recent Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), which upheld open-ended racial preferences, but not quotas, at the University of Michigan Law School.)

In the majority opinion of that case, Justice O'Connor [sic!] wrote the following:

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

I wonder what those 100 law firms will look like 25 years from now, and how much of the difference will be attributable to Wal-Mart and how much to general "progress."

POST SCRIPT: Oh, and why no "gay lawyer" quota?

UPDATE: Eh Nonymous of Unused and Probably Unusuable has a lengthy comment up. Make of it what you will -- I'm still trying to decpiher it.

Mike at Crime & Federalism, responding to this post at another blog, thinks lawyers should never use the word "niggardly" in a brief:

Words like "niggardly" are a distraction. Yes, I know the etymology of the word. But when I see it, it distracts me. It sounds like the n-word. As a legal writer, you do not want to distract the reader. You want him focused on your arguments.

I respectfully dissent. Here's the comment I left at his blog:

What about the rule that one always writes for one's target audience? Briefs are read by judges — judges who happen to hold the client's well-being in their hands. I would think that: (a) they know the meaning of "niggardly" and (b) they would be pleased to know that I know that they know its true meaning.

Banishing the n-word from our language is a perfectly understandable and probably wise idea. But there is no reason to idly accept linguistic collateral damage, or to insult people's intelligence or vocabulary skills, merely for the sake of "sensitivity."

Taking too many words out of the dictionary is double-plus ungood.

Suggested Reading:

...the W-word being, of course, "Walloon" --

Belgium's history of linguistic bickering between Flemings and Walloons entered a new phase this week when police arrested a Flemish woman for calling her Walloon husband lazy, Belgian media said Thursday.

The 48-year-old husband filed a complaint for racism against his spouse for scratching him and calling him "a lazy Walloon, a slave and an inferior creature," De Standaard daily said.

The 47-year-old woman will appear before a magistrate later Thursday to face charges of racism, the newspaper said.

Of course, the fact that there is such as crime as "racism" in Belgium and that someone — even a spouse — can face criminal charges for mere words is no laughing matter, nor is the fact that Europe has no First Amendment.

Curtailing free speech in order to combat racism — the ultimate manifestation of the cure being worse than the disease.

New York Times wordsmith William Safire makes an interesting prediction:

An American Psychological Association report notes that homosexual "has been associated in the past with deviance, mental illness and criminal behavior," which has led to a "negative stereotype." As that connotation wears off, I expect that the noun — a Standard English synonym for the now widely used "same-sex" — will make a comeback.

I very much doubt it.

Safire provides no example of a pejorative term, or even a neutral term that was widely used in a pejorative manner, ever "making a comeback." So why should homosexual be any different?

For example, Negro is, fundamentally, a neutral word. But I don't see it "making a comeback" any time soon. Or how about cripple — we would not hesitate to say "the ship is crippled" — so why not say "the ship's pilot is a cripple"?

No, I think words like Negro, cripple and homosexual will always tend to fade from everyday vernacular, if not because they're derogatory, then because they're clinical. They connote an empirical, analytical context, as if being homosexual warrants being studied in a laboratory. And that comes too close to the line between a characteristic and a condition, which itself comes too close to a defect.

Let's just stick with same-sex and gay.

More thoughts at Queer Law Watch.

I've blogged previously in defense of the word niggardly, which some people believe should never again be used, since it is too much like the n-word and either offends, or at least distracts the reader and is therefore ineffective as a word.

Yet I never hear anyone say the same thing about the sn-word:

Five years into an Administration of sniggering mendacity, George Bush apparently feels his staff needs a mandatory refresher course on ethics...

Now here's the interesting thing about sniggering as opposed to niggardly: the very definition of sniggering is "snickering." They're essentially the exact same word.

...Sniggering, snickering, sniggering, snickering...

Okay, so why bother with sniggering at all? Why not just use snickering and avoid any questions of political correctness insensitivity? To eradicate niggardly, you need an entirely different word with an entirely different phonetic flow (my first choice is usually miserly).

But sniggering versus snickering? Since absolutely nothing is lost, either denotationally or phonetically, by using snickering instead of sniggering, why not just opt for snickering instead?

Any thoughts?

POST SCRIPT: My blogging software's spell checker flags sniggering but not snickering. All the more reason to use the latter.

...as is bureaucratic incompetence:

A Manhattan judge has ordered a city housing agency to reconsider findings that would evict 31 tenants, most of them Jewish, from apartments in a Brooklyn development to make room for nonwhite families, primarily Hispanics.
...
"Such conduct cannot be condoned," the judge wrote in a harshly worded 13-page decision. "Violating one minority group's due process rights is not the way for a government agency to meet its commitment to another minority group."
...
Hispanic tenant activists contended for years that Jewish tenants illegally passed leases on to distant family members to keep Hispanics from getting the apartments.

The judge said [the housing authority] admitted that apartments for the Hispanic families in Clemente Plaza were to be found by passing over 16 white families on the development's waiting list.
...
The tenants, "who relied on leases issued to them by [the managing agent], are now in the position of being ousted from homes they have settled in, at the height of New York's rental market, simply because [the managing agent] failed to comply with the regulations it was obligated to follow, and [the housing authority] allowed it to do so," the judge wrote.

Some hasty stitches:

--Are Jews a racial minority or a religious minority? Can they be either in Brooklyn? And isn't it sad that such questions still have major policy implications in the Twenty-First Century?

--Wouldn't it just be easier to switch from trying to prioritize "Hispanic rights" versus "Jewish rights" to just thinking in terms of individual rights (putting aside for the moment the overarching question of whether there is an "individual right" to public housing)?

--I don't know what the criteria are for getting on this housing waiting list, but regardless, why even have one if the whites on it can be summarily passed over to "make way" for Hispanics?

--While there is no such thing in America as "squatters' rights," there is such as thing as "estoppel." If the hack bureaucrats of the housing authority screwed up, and these Jewish families relied in good faith and to their detriment on that screw-up, then they are (or should be) allowed to enforce that contract. This is not a case of two bidders squabbling over a empty house; these families already live there — these are their homes, at least for the duration of these leases. Is there really a "net social gain" from disrupting as many as 31 families' lives to engage in brazen social engineering?

--Is it "judicial activism" to correct "bureaucratic activism"? How about bureaucratic incompetence?

A story about diversity quotas (i.e., reverse discrimination) at major law firms is making its way around the blawgosphere:

At a minority counsel conference earlier this year, one speaker told the crowd that his former company, McKesson Corp., had cut a prominent firm out of the bidding for its legal work.

Though Arthur Chong says he didn't name the firm, he did explain his reason to the audience: "It had been highlighted in a legal magazine for not having much diversity."

Chong was followed on stage by Wal-Mart General Counsel Thomas Mars, who, Chong and others say, told the audience: "I know who that firm is, and I am going to speak to them."

Analysis, mostly negative and indignant, from Overlawyered, WSJ Law Blog, Crime & Federalism; Sui Generis posts a response.

The phenomenon of big clients requiring diversity of their big law firms is not new news. I blogged about it over a year, in this post from July 2005.

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Wal-Mart has informed the major law firms it hires — all 100 of them — that they must impose racial and gender quotas on the "relationship teams" it assigns to the mega-retailer:

The company's general counsel has told its top 100 law firms that at least one person of color and one woman must be among the top five relationship attorneys that handle its business.
...
[Wal-Mart's general counsel], whose department spends about $200 million a year on outside legal services, said he realized he had to do something when he saw that 82 of the top 100 relationship partners handling the company's business are white men.
...
Wal-Mart's new policy signals a growing determination by corporate legal departments to pressure outside counsel. It is no longer enough, the general counsel at the symposium said, to raise the numbers of women and minority lawyers in a firm's lower ranks if its upper echelons remain an exclusive club for white men.

Now I have long been a defender of Wal-Mart in other contexts (one example here), and as a private company they are of course entitled to spend their legal budgets as they see fit. But I wonder whether this new trend is the best approach.

All the classic arguments against reverse discrimination apply to Wal-Mart no less than they apply to government: better qualified candidates are unfairly passed over, those filling the quota — including those qualified for the job — may question their own achievements and status, discrimination is economically inefficient, and so on.

And in the special case of the legal profession, is it realistic to lament the "oppression" of female and minority lawyers? Just how "oppressed" can any lawyer at a top firm — minority, female or otherwise — truly be? (This was a key issue in the recent Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), which upheld open-ended racial preferences, but not quotas, at the University of Michigan Law School.)

In the majority opinion of that case, Justice O'Connor wrote the following:

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

I wonder what those 100 law firms will look like 25 years from now, and how much of the difference will be attributable to Wal-Mart and how much to general "progress."

POST SCRIPT: Oh, and why no "gay lawyer" quota?

Having solved all other problems, the New York City Council may now take on racial discord:

The city council is considering a symbolic resolution calling for New Yorkers to stop using the n-word, and supporters say Black History Month is a relevant time to call attention to the racial slur.
...
National attention increased after an incident last year involving actor Michael Richards, who played the Kramer character on "Seinfeld." Richards blew up at black patrons in a comedy club with a profane tirade that included the slur.

Okay, I confess, that was a bait-and-switch ("race-bait-and-switch"?): the "symbolic resolution" is geared not toward racist whites but at blacks themselves:

Queens Councilman Leroy Comrie spearheaded the nonbinding measure before the New York City Council Thursday. He appeared with hip-hop pioneer Kurtis Blow Walker on Thursday and said the slur has gained a level of acceptance among entertainers and youths that is troubling.

"So I challenge the hip-hop community, I challenge you to abolish that word during the month of February — Black History Month — and beyond," Walker said.

For centuries, the slur has been used to humiliate and degrade blacks, but more recently it also has become a term of endearment and camaraderie among some.

All tastes and preferences — and tolerances — are subjective, so far be it from me to pass judgment on what urban blacks do and do not choose to call themselves in the privacy of their own "camaraderie."

Having said that, I have never bought into the logic of "disempowering" a word by using it. Jews didn't overcome anti-semitism by "disempowering" the word (i.e., calling each other) kyke. Women didn't overcome discrimination by calling each other bitch or cunt. Asians, to the best of my knowledge, don't call each other gook. And so on. As a matter of simple empirical history, blacks choosing to call each other the n-word doesn't seem to make much sense.

But that's all besides the point: Why do the local hack politicians of New York City feel a need to even be discussing this issue? Either because they have nothing better to do, are not smart enough to find something better to do, or — most likely — both.

Can't we all just get along — without dumb ideas from hack politicians?

More thoughts from Eric (a/k/a Southern Boy) at MetrobloggingNYC.

UPDATE: The resolution passed. Black teens, meanwhile, mock the measure.

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Making the obvious cognitive leap:

[Brian] Thornton's work at the Lesbian & Gay Community Service Center of Cleveland and his presidency of the group that organizes Cleveland's gay Pride festival inspired a moniker that captured his incomparable queerness: Faggoty Ass Faggot.

"Amongst my group of friends, we're pretty free-using of that word [faggot]," said Thornton, whose nickname eventually evolved into his [recently defunct] online alter ego at faggotyassfaggot.com.
...
But faggot and the most reviled racist slur in the English language share a legacy of hatred, and appear to be headed toward a similar fate, said Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy, author of "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word."

"Each of these words has been used to humiliate people and sometimes terrorize people," Kennedy said. "When they're used in that way the people who use them should be ostracized."

I repeat: I see no basis in history for believing that "disempowering" a slur is an effective tactic. So, gay or straight, if we ever meet, please do NOT use the rhymes-with-maggot-word around me. Thanks.

For Discussion: Anyone care to chime in on the word "queer," which also rubs me the wrong way, but certainly not to the extent that the rhymes-with-maggot-word offends me. Ditto for gay men referring to each other as "girlfriend" — I have no use for it.

More thoughts at InterstateQ.

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Let's cook up some more debate:

A pub sparked fury by serving a 'Barrymore Pie' — and describing it on the menu as: "Faggots swimming in gravy."

Gay rights groups called for the dish to be scrapped at Mad O'Rourke's Pie Factory.

Peter Tatchell, co-founder of Outrage! said: "This may have been intended as a joke but homophobia is not a subject of fun in the same way racism is not appropriate for a joke."
...
[The pub's owner responds,] "These people say this is not funny but their behaviour is turning it into a joke. I am sorry that they are upset but I will not be bullied."

Faggots are a traditional meatball dish particularly popular in the West Midlands.

A party at comic Michael Barrymore's Essex home in 2001 ended with guest Stuart Lubbock, 31, being found dead in a swimming pool.

Again, I don't think it's the place of a [presumably straight] U.K. pub owner to tell gays what they should and should not find humorous, especially when a tragic death is involved. Thoughts?

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Let's end on a light-hearted note:


Do they even make "Nut 'N Honey" cereal anymore?

A medical blogger tries to parlay the Coulter-Edwards incident into a witty blogpost:

The second patient, a 30 something year old man, was brought in by his boyfriend.
...
He tolerated the procedure like, well, John Edwards.

Another medical blogger expresses his indignation:

I figured, there's no way in hell he's calling his patient a faggot, is he? Honestly? Maybe there's some new big campaign to label John Edwards as a coward, or weak, or a wimp or something?

To which the first blogger responds:

[B]logs are for ranting and stereotypes are for ridiculing. There is no hatred in my heart for anyone except politically-correct liberal douches[.] ... Every other pointed comment I make about any other demographic group is purely for amusement sake. If you don't like it, then don't read it.

Well yes, "don't read it" is pretty much a given at this point.

Still, it seems to me that someone smart enough to become a doctor is also smart enough to do better than the du jour equivalent of Polock jokes. Perhaps Poles are entitled to mock Polish stereotypes, or Italians to mock Italian stereotypes, or physicians, or lawyers -- or gays. But Poles shouldn't mock Italians and then say it is "purely for amusement sake." Neither should (straight) physicians, or anybody else, mock gays and then cower behind protestations, especially indignant protestations, of "Where's your sense of humor?" That's a cop-out as sophomoric as the joke itself.

Let Poles be the judge of the propriety of Polock jokes. Let doctors be the judge of the propriety of doctor jokes. And give gays the benefit of the doubt about whether a "humorous" anecdote involving a stereotype or epithet is indeed humorous or offensive.

(Via Kevin, M.D.)