You now have a woke mind virus
has infected all these other
institutions.
I mean, just look at corporate
America.
Most corporations, some of these big
corporations are now exercising
quasi public power.
Is it time to fight fire with fire,
to wield government power, to stop a
dangerous ideology from destroying
America's vital institutions?
Florida's governor and maybe
2024 presidential candidate Ron
DeSantis thinks so.
We're not just going to sit idly by
if you're trying to circumscribe
people's freedoms and that's true
if it's government, it's also true
of it's big business.
He's quickly becoming a favorite of
a conservative movement, seeking to
jettison the libertarian idea that
government shouldn't meddle in the
affairs of private business.
But I think the lesson for people on
the right is I think there was a
generation of people that
kind of the muscle memory
was just if it's private, just defer
to it.
Earlier this year, DeSantis and
Republicans in the state legislature
retaliated against Disney for
opposing a Florida law prohibiting
the discussion of sexuality and
gender identity in K through
third grade classrooms.
Disney should not run its own
government.
Now, DeSantis, who declined
our interview request, has signed
the Individual Rights Act,
formerly known as the Stop
Work Act.
I think what you see now with the
rise of this woke ideology
is an attempt to really delegitimize
our history.
A U.S. district court judge struck
down the first part of the law on
First Amendment grounds.
It prohibited private companies from
holding any mandatory training that
espouses, promotes advances
inculcates or compels employees
to believe eight concepts.
Those are that members of one race,
color, sex or national origin
are morally superior to members of
another race, color or sex.
That your inherent characteristics
make you inherently racist, sexist
or oppressive.
That these characteristics determine
one's moral status as privileged
or oppressed, or mean that
you bear personal responsibility
for past injustices.
The concepts like merit, excellence,
hard work, fairness, neutrality,
objectivity and racial
colorblindness are racists.
Or that trying to be colorblind and
treat people without regard to race
is wrong.
Here's one example of a diversity,
equity and inclusion presentation
from one of the plaintiffs in the
lawsuit.
Oftentimes, it's very
hard for us to distinguish
white supremacy from things like
these are just U.S.
cultural norms, you know, a focus
on individualism over groups
or emphasizing written
word as a form of professional
communication.
White supremacy culture is
why the posture of
white humility, from my perspective,
is so difficult for white
people to embody.
Banning workplace trainings that
tell people that their race or sex
makes them morally culpable might
sound pretty reasonable,
but opponents say such laws
set a dangerous precedent.
As you go through the concepts
the state worded in a way
that makes it seem terrible.
Jerry Edwards is a staff attorney
with the American Civil Liberties
Union of Florida, who is challenging
a separate part of the law that
applies to universities.
He calls the bill a wolf
in sheep's clothing.
Because anytime a government bans
broad categories of speech,
it gives politicians the ability
to define terms of acceptable
discourse.
It's problematic.
And we can't allow the state can't
give the state this power to
regulate speech in a sort of way.
The left also craves state
power to impose its cultural
preferences.
Nation writer Jeet Heer tweeted
recently that we should use
state power for good,
like civil rights and defending
the LGBTQ community.
The only objection to DeSantis
is that he wants to use state power
to push big business to do bad
things.
Of course, from the perspective of
DeSantis and his allies,
the Individual Rights Act is
a civil rights law to force
businesses to do what they think
is good for Americans.
By taking identity politics out
of the workplace.
The more power politicians have
to determine which type of speech
is good and therefore legal
and which is bad and therefore
illegal, the more the sphere
of acceptable discourse is likely
to shrink as both sides
of the political spectrum hem
in those boundaries to promote
their subjective notions
of the common good.
The state should not be
banning ideas, particularly on
college campuses.
When you have such a blatant attempt
to control thought
and not only control thought, but
have the state control thought,
that's reminiscent of societies
and governments that we supposedly
fought wars against.
The part of DeSantis's law that
hasn't been struck down pertains to
universities that receive state
funding.
It bans college professors from
promoting any of the eight forbidden
concepts.
LeRoy Pernell, a law professor
at Florida A&M University,
or FAMU an historically Black
College, is a plaintiff in the
ACLU's case challenging that
part of the law.
He's afraid that the law will outlaw
discussions of systemic racism,
which he says is part of FAMU's
institutional history.
The state created the law school in
1949 to accommodate
two black law students who applied
to the racially segregated
University of Florida.
In 1966 the state
forced it to cease admitting new
students. Until then Florida
Governor Jeb Bush signed a law
to reopen it in 2000.
Purnell worries that if instructors
were to characterize that history
as systemically racist,
they'd run afoul of the law's
restrictions around teaching the
concept.
I have no way of
knowing that my passion
for teaching students about
history, about change,
about their ability to bring about
change I have no way of knowing
that that isn't offensive
to these subjective
judgers of what is endorsing what is
not endorsing, what is promoting
what is not in, not promoting.
So I do now live with
the idea that at any moment
the state can come and take negative
action against me
because of my thought.
Pernell also worries that the law
would prohibit him from teaching
material from his own book
about the racist roots of the
concept of colorblindness.
It is impossible to
understand
the criminal procedure
and understand the issues
that arise in criminal procedure
without understanding that that
that the history has not been
colorblind.
But the state has argued that it
does have a say over what's taught
at taxpayer subsidized schools.
Teaching kids to hate
their country and to hate each
other is not worth one
red cent of taxpayer
money.
What do you think about that,
specifically the fact that
the state has a say in this because
it involves public money and they
deem the teaching of this to be
harmful to the state's interest.
The state's done this before.
I mean, this is not something new
back in the Red Scare era.
They tried to crack down on
professors who they thought were
communists or communists
adjacent. And the state has
no business doing that of regulating
the marketplace of ideas.
In that way, there isn't a
compelling interest in the state
saying which ideas are acceptable
and which ideas aren't.
That is viewpoint discrimination.
Diversity is good for business in
many ways.
Companies with diverse leaders are
shown to be more profitable.
Sara Margulis and her husband
co-founded Honeyfund, a Clearwater,
Florida, based company that
administers online cash wedding
registries.
They're plaintiffs in the case
against Florida, arguing that the
law restricts their freedom to
provide diversity training seminars
to their employees.
What was in the trainings that
you believe might have run afoul
of those kinds of restrictions?
So one thing
that comes to mind is the idea
of privilege that white people
or males have privilege that
nonwhite people or females don't
enjoy.
And I think that
the the concept
of that, the idea of that is not
something for us to shy away from
understanding and actively
trying to mitigate
in our business.
DeSantis office declined our
interview requests, but his press
reps responded by email that
because the concepts are forced on
employees as a condition of
employment, that they are designed
to force individuals to believe
something and adopt a certain
prescribed ideology, and
therefore that the law is designed
to prohibit forced indoctrination
in these concepts because doing
so is discriminatory
under Florida civil rights law.
But Honeyfund's attorney Shalini
Agarwal of the nonprofit Protect
Democracy says the existence
of civil rights law implies
the opposite, that anyone
who feels targeted by a diversity
training workshop is already
protected.
Our current employment discrimination
law that preceded the Stop
Work Act already covers
hostile work environments, and
that's basically when
in the workplace, an employee
faces a objectively
offensive, and it can
be just largely speech,
not even, you know, other things.
But it has to be so severe and
pervasive that it creates a
situation where the employment,
like them continuing that employment
is intolerable, in effect, a term or
a condition of their employment.
So that is out there.
If anyone is engaging
in diversity,
equity and inclusion trainings that
actually create a hostile work
environment, you know, employees
pre-exisiting this law, were free
to bring claims.
The Stop Work Act creates
a whole set of pretty flimsy and
vague standards that make it
kind of impossible for an employer
to figure out how to proceed.
How much concern do you have about
retaliation for putting yourself
out there and being part of a
lawsuit like this?
As a as a business leader, I
strive to
do what's right for my business.
I strive to take good care of my
customers and my employees.
And so for me,
you know, standing up as
a plaintiff in this case was an easy
decision.
It's one that my team was behind.
And,
you know, I moved my business to
Florida in 2017 from
California because Florida
was known to be a business friendly
state, because it was a place
where a lot of investment dollars
were coming in and people were
moving, going to colleges,
getting tech degrees and
big names, people like Bill Gates
and Jeff Vinik have invested
billions of dollars in the Tampa Bay
area specifically to make it
a tech friendly place for innovative
businesses.
And so I don't imagine that the
state of Florida is wanting to,
you know, do anything to undermine
the the billions of dollars that
have flown into the state to promote
business.
We believe in education,
not indoctrination.
If people are
thinking of themselves in terms
of their racial identity, that
didn't begin with critical race
theory.
All right.
That began in
the womb and that began and with
their families. And it began in
society.
So this is nothing that's that
you know, this is not indoctrination
of ideas that that
that have roots and things that
didn't exist before.
So that's that's just that's just
silly.
But the idea that that
somehow it is a negative
to understand that there are
racial differences,
that as a society,
different races, different
communities bring different things
to the table.
You might disagree with Pernell.
I'm also not convinced that teaching
law students to celebrate racial
identity and differences is the best
use of classroom time.
But it doesn't really matter what I
think. A lot professor should teach,
and it shouldn't much matter what a
governor thinks about that either.
The relevant question really is not
what goes on in the classroom, the
boardroom or the break room,
but who gets to decide?
Let's say that there was a blue
state that did kind of the opposite
of this, and they said, we're going
to ban a professor who
has a different viewpoint and
thinks critical race theory is wrong
and that we should be
talking about colorblindness
as a legitimate concept and things
like this.
Any time you put state and band
together. Danger.
All right.
Why does the state ban
any thought?
If we are in a free society
that exists
and develops based on
free exchange of ideas?
The state can't really banish
ideas.
It can make people more hesitant
to speak openly and honestly through
punishment.
Hampering real communication that
way and makes solving hard problems
even harder.
And there are a lot of hard problems
left to solve.
Some so-called woke ideas
are pernicious because reducing
every injustice to an identity
based formula flattens nuance,
cultivates grievances, and can
create tension where none existed
before.
As borne out by studies that find
diversity, training quite often
makes people more prejudice.
The simplistic and counterproductive
approach only further clouds our
view of real solutions and
real progress.
But is the situation really so dire
as portrayed by political operatives
like Chris Rufo, who stood beside
DeSantis as he introduced the law
and who calls critical race theory
and similar teachings?
Neo Marxism.
It's not a benign philosophy about
teaching racism.
It's a radical philosophy that's
rooted in Marxism.
Even some libertarians have come
to look at the issue as a fight
against communism.
The Libertarian Party's official
account tweeted that soon
parents will be required to help
enforce the state's Marxist queer
theorist critical race agenda at
home.
Parents who fail to adequately
indoctrinate their kids will have
them taken away.
And when you believe you're fighting
an existential domestic threat,
it can justify all sorts of very un
libertarian, authoritarian
behavior.
The party account defended Joseph
McCarthy while approvingly
quoting an anti-woke academic,
saying It's time to deal
with American communists for
real.
Joseph McCarthy in the Senate and
the Committee for Un-American
Activities in the House went
way overboard in their hunt for
communist infiltrators in the
government, eventually targeting
actors, writers, poets, musicians,
teachers.
And we're not even talking about
Soviet spies within the government
here, which is what kicked off
McCarthy's crusade.
We're talking about professors
teaching what they believe college
students need to hear and employers
training their workers in ways they
think will help create a more
harmonious workplace and virtue
signal to their customers and
ultimately help their bottom line.
We're talking about a state
government regulating the free
exchange of ideas.
That's a bigger threat to our
liberty and to American values
than so-called wokeness ever will
be.
But this isn't the way to
stop woke.
Does that mean you just have to roll
over and take it?
After all, as conservatives will
point out, the Progressive Left has
no problem using civil rights law to
push its ideas into the workplace
and onto the college campus.
Why shouldn't the right pick up that
tool and use it for its own ends?
Well, because you're sharpening a
tool for your opponents to
eventually turn against you.
Instead, you could be blunting or
even dismantling it if existing
laws are part of the problem.
Limit or repeal the laws
also build, improve and support
alternative institutions.
Ones that reflect your values.
Don't work for buy from companies
that you think disrespect you or
attend colleges that spend a lot of
time on little of value.
They'll get the message some already
have.
If you really think woke ideas
should be stopped.
Fine. But be wary of shortcuts.
That's often how you miss important
details and badly hurt
yourself.
The long, hard path is
the one more likely to bring
enduring change.
Criticize, resist,
and when need be, opt-out.