Scott Boehmer

Tag: Bigotry

  • The Bathroom Bill is Back

    House Bill 2 is unquestionably one of the most infamous pieces of legislation in North Carolina state history. Passed by a Republican supermajority in less than 12 hours, HB 2 mandated that transgender individuals use the bathroom that matches the biological sex listed on their birth certificate, regardless of their gender identity.

    The law was widely criticized as discriminatory, unnecessary and cruel; its passage cost North Carolina billions of dollars and thousands of lost jobs; led to travel bans against North Carolina and an NCAA boycott; and made the state into a laughingstock of the nation. The fallout from the bill led to a partial (and for some, begrudging) repeal by moderate Republican lawmakers working with Democrats.

    It’s easy to forget, but even then-candidate Donald Trump criticized the bill: “You leave it the way it is… There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble.”

    Yet as the MAGA movement has embraced more and more extremely conservative politics, many Republican politicians today feel none of the regret their predecessors did nine years ago. Enter SB 516, a bathroom bill even more aggressive, cruel, and poorly planned than HB 2.

    Miles Kirkpatrick

    The Bathroom Bill is Back (Carolina Forward)

  • Trans Under Trump

    This is a good video to watch. In it Adam Conover hosts three of his friends who are transgender for a discussion about what it is like to have the government targeting them.

    The Trump administration is actively working to erase the existence of trans people through policy and legislation. But no law can erase the 1.6 million trans people living in America, nor the reality of their lives and experiences. These are real people facing real consequences—impacting their rights, safety, and livelihoods. This week, Adam sits down with his friends and fellow comedians Dylan McKeever, River Butcher, and Sammy Mowrey, who all happen to be trans, to talk about what it’s like to navigate this moment in America as a trans person.

    Adam Conover

    Trans Comedians Take On Trump’s America with Dylan McKeever, River Butcher, and Sammy Mowrey (Adam Conover – YouTube)

  • DEI: Imperfect but Meaningful

    Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb, wrote a good piece on how corporate DEI programs are imperfect, but that the core ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion are nevertheless important.

    An inclusive culture is one that sets as many people as possible up to soar and succeed, not just the narrow subset of folks who come pre-baked with all of life’s opportunities and advantages. When you get better at supporting folks and building a culture that foregrounds growth and learning, this both raises the bar for outcomes for everyone, and broadens the talent base you can draw from.

    …

    That’s inclusion. That’s how you build a real fucking meritocracy. You start with “do not tolerate the things that kneecap your employees in their pursuit of excellence”, and ESPECIALLY not the things that subject them to the compounding tax of being targeted for who they are. In life as in finance, it’s the compound interest that kills you, more than the occasional expensive purchase.

    …

    Anyone who talks a big game about merit, but doesn’t grapple with how to identify or counteract the effects of bias in the system, doesn’t really care about merit at all. What they actually want is what Ijeoma Oluo calls “entitlement masquerading as meritocracy” (“Mediocre”).

    Charity Majors

    Corporate “DEI” is an imperfect vehicle for deeply meaningful ideals (charity.wtf)

  • Deleting ‘Justice’, ‘Dignity’, and ‘Respect’

    “Justice.” “Dignity.” “Respect.”

    Those words are now considered red flags by the Army as it does a wide-ranging scrub of the massive amount of digital content the service has created online over the years — a purge that is leading to the removal of images and videos featuring women and minority soldiers from official platforms.

    The deletion of photos, video and other content is part of an order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that all the military services eliminate online material not allowed by the Trump administration. Hegseth has pushed to eliminate any trace of diversity efforts, which has included policies and programs — and now media — that recognizes women and troops with minority backgrounds.

    Steve Beynon

    Army Deleting Online Content Related to Women, Minorities Using Key Words Like ‘Respect’ and ‘Dignity’ (Military.com)

  • Let’s Play Fair?

    This is a good metaphor for why programs and policies to support groups that have long suffered under bigotry are important. The bigots have been cheating the system for years, so just putting an end to the cheating doesn’t suddenly make the whole game fair. And of course, many people making anti-woke and anti-DEI arguments aren’t actually interested in playing fair at all.

    Whites: 140
    Blacks: 3
    10 Seconds to Go

    A lot of people, most of them white, call affirmative action ”reverse discrimination” and wonder why black people shouldn’t be satisfied with a simple repudiation of discrimination of any kind. With its ruling striking down minority set-asides in city construction contracts, the Supreme Court seems to have decided that affirmative action programs in general violate white people’s right to equal protection.

    But in case a majority of their honors might still have an open mind on the subject, I offer a little metaphor in affirmative action’s defense. It comes in the form of a football metaphor because I have a feeling that the conservative majority on the Rehnquist Court might appreciate a football metaphor. So here goes:

    The White Team and the Black Team are playing the last football game of the season. The White Team owns the stadium, owns the referees and has been allowed to field nine times as many players. For almost four quarters, the White Team has cheated on every play and, as a consequence, the score is White Team 140, Black Team 3. Only 10 seconds remain in the game, but as the White quarterback huddles with his team before the final play, a light suddenly shines from his eyes.

    ”So how about it, boys?” he asks his men. ”What do you say from here on we play fair?”

    Andrew Ward

    The DEI Argument is Stupid. But Here’s How to Win It. (The Rip Current)

  • The South Bank of the Rubicon

    The thing about points of no return, the reason we worry over them so much, is it’s rare to know where they are until they are some ways behind you.

    Ian Danskin

    The Alt-Right Playbook: The South Bank of the Rubicon (Innuendo Studios)

  • Meta’s Policy Changes Pave the Way for Mass Deportations

    Multiple speech and content moderation experts 404 Media spoke to drew some parallels between these recent changes and when Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar in 2017, in which Facebook was used to spread anti-Rohingya hate and the country’s military ultimately led a campaign of murder, torture, and rape against the Muslim minority population. Although there are some key differences, Meta’s changes in the U.S. will also likely lead to the spread of more hate speech across Meta’s sites, with the real world consequences that can bring.

    Joseph Cox

    Meta Is Laying the Narrative Groundwork for Trump’s Mass Deportations (404 Media)

  • Emulating Trump’s Lack of Decency

    Even the way people on Wall Street talk and interact is changing. Bankers and financiers say Trump’s victory has emboldened those who chafed at “woke doctrine” and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or disabled people.

    “I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘r****d’ and ‘p***y’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.”

    Some Wall Streeters also feel able to embrace making money openly, without nodding to any broader social goals. “Most of us don’t have to kiss ass because, like Trump, we love America and capitalism,” one said.

    FT Reporters

    Is corporate America going Maga? (Financial Times)

  • The Three Evils of Society

    And so the collision course is set. The people cry for freedom and the congress attempts to legislate repression. Millions, yes billions, are appropriated for mass murder; but the most meager pittance for foreign aid for international development is crushed in the surge of reaction. Unemployment rages at a major depression level in the black ghettos, but the bi-partisan response is an anti-riot bill rather than a serious poverty program. The modest proposals for model cities, rent supplement and rat control, pitiful as they were to began with, get caught in the maze of congressional inaction. And I submit to you tonight, that a congress that proves to be more anti-negro than anti-rat needs to be dismissed.

    It seems that our legislative assemblies have adopted Nero as their patron saint and are bent on fiddling while our cities burn.

    …

    Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world, declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Three Evils of Society” 1967

    MLK: The Three Evils of Society (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change)

  • A Second Gilded Age

    Now, more than a century later, America has entered a second Gilded Age.

    Monopolies are once again taking over vast swaths of the economy. So we must strengthen antitrust enforcement to bust up powerful companies.

    Now another generation of robber barons, exemplified by Elon Musk, is accumulating unprecedented money and power. So, once again, we must tax these exorbitant fortunes.

    Wealthy individuals and big corporations are once again paying off lawmakers, sending them billions to conduct their political campaigns, even giving luxurious gifts to Supreme Court justices. So we must protect our democracy from Big Money, just as we did before.

    As it was during the first Gilded Age, voter suppression is too often making it harder for people of color to participate in our democracy. So it’s once again critical to defend and expand voting rights.

    Working people are once again being exploited and abused, child labor is returning, unions are being busted, the poor are again living in unhealthy conditions, homelessness is on the rise, and the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else is nearly as large as in the first Gilded Age.

    So once again we need to protect the rights of workers to organize, invest in social safety nets, and revive guardrails to protect against the abuses of great wealth and power.

    Robert Reich

    From the Robber Barons to Elon Musk: Will History Repeat Itself? (Robert Reich)