Great. Racism is bad and we should stamp it out wherever we find it. I find the punditry around this one troubling. As though white people can't experience racism.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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As though white people can’t experience racism.
Plenty of progressives believe precisely that, sadly.
White people can't experience systemic racism in the US. A whole load of people can't articulate the difference between systemic racism and plain ol race based bigotry racism.
Absolutely anyone can experience systemic racism in the US or anywhere else, white people are just less likely to than others.
Here are some examples of systemic racism against white people.
I try to make sure to verbalize the difference in these conversations and label them separately as systemic, such as government and other systems dictated by the majority race. White people can't experience that kind of racism most of the time, because they are usually the majority party in those systems.
And then interpersonal racism. The racism anyone of any race, creed, or color can experience and put out on others. You could be the last of your kind and still be a horribly racist motherfucker when it came to your interpersonal relationships. And you could hate and be racist against any race whether they are the majority or not.
I think the problem stems from there being two beliefs (that I know of so far) where people believe in systemic racism and some believe in social racism. My fiance believes in systemic racism where you can't be racist to someone who is white because their race is in power of the government, we bud heads all the time because that doesn't make any sense to me
Those concepts are not mutually exclusive jesus fucking christ. Both can exist.
That's because it's literally true.
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(5 replies)
Phillips, 52, claimed in her lawsuit that "her race was a determinative factor" in Starbucks' decision to fire her in the wake of a 2018 racial firestorm.
In April 2018, two Black men -- Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson -- were arrested while waiting for a business meeting after an employee called 911 and accused the men of trespassing after they refused to make a purchase or leave the store. The arrests sparked nationwide protests and prompted Starbucks to close some of its stores for a day for racial bias training.
Less than a month after the arrests, Phillips was notified of her termination, despite claiming that she wasn't at the store that day and was not involved in the arrests in any way.
I don't know if it was because of her race, but if she really wasn't at the store that way, it does sound like retaliation.
It pretty obviously was, which is why the case was so obviously a slam dunk. Basically, she stood up for the employee who called the police (essentially Starbucks' policy at the time when people wouldn't leave the establishment after being asked first), and got fired in turn as Starbucks was trying to clean house on the whole thing and not get called racist. She definitely had a case.
Retaliation for what?
Retaliation by Starbucks for the bad PR.
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(3 replies)
Race or not, how does a wrongful termination cause $28.3mio in damages?
I very much doubt that this employee ever would have earned that money at Starbucks, had she not been wrongfully terminated.
At the same time, the two men who were arrested for existing and for being black received a whopping $1 each.
A lot of the time these things include fines to teach them a lesson. Otherwise corporations would do this way more.
Ok, but why does the person who got fired get the difference?
At least over here, if you have something like this, the person who got fired would get adequate damages rewarded (roughly the amount of money they lost due to being fired wrongfully) while the state would sue the company for a punitory fine.
Good question! I'm not sure. Maybe we are worried that punitive damage fines would incentivize the government to start suing businesses. Just a guess though.
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(15 replies)
Disclaimer that I have not followed this case and I'm not a lawyer.
In the US civil cases can have both compensatory and punitive damages. Compensatory is meant to "right the wrong" where you get reimbursed for financial losses, lost time, things you had to pay for as a result of the incident, etc. Punitive is meant to punish the offender if the case finds they acted with some negligence, and ultimately get them and others to change their behavior.
Take the infamous McDonald's coffee case. The woman who was injured originally only asked for McDonald's to pay for her medical treatment. She required skin grafts. The jury found that McDonald's knowing let this circumstance exist where someone was going to get a serious injury and added on punitive damages. Which the judge cut back.
An important caveat is that she was not the first person seriously injured by the temperatures they were keeping the coffee at.
McD decided the money they were saving on free coffee refills was more important than injuring their customers, which is why the punitive damages were awarded.
The lady who got the money was just the one a judge actually paid attention to.
Somewhat paid attention. The jury awarded two days of coffee revenue. The judge cut it to 3x the compensatory damages, about a half day of coffee revenue. I don't recall if there was a law on the books about that. Some states have "tort reform" laws that limit punitive damages.
As an European, it's kinda strange to me that the punitory damages are awarded to the person in question, for two reasons.
- Punitory damages aren't meant to protect that one person (it's highly unlikely that Starbucks is going to wrongfully fire the same woman a second time) but instead they are meant to protect society
- Punitory lawsuits should not depend on the legal budget of one individual
The way it works over here is like this:
There would be two lawsuits:
- The regular civil lawsuit between the wronged person and the company. The result will be compensatory measures awarded to the wronged person.
- The chamber of labour will run a separate lawsuit regarding law violations/structural issues of the company. The result will be a change in the company and punitory measures. If these include fees, they are awarded to the government.
Well that sounds like socialism! /s
I happen to be one of those Americans that think despite their many flaws, the authors of the Constitution had some fundamentally good ideas. And we used the Constitution as intended to expand individual rights after the Civil War with the 14th Amendment. Shamefully we never got around to the Equal Rights Amendment to include women.
What most Americans don't realize is that the vast majority of what we consider foundational principles are not actually in the Constitution but are instead case law, and how recent much of that is. It wasn't until 15 years after the Civil War that there was a Supreme Court case which established the idea that corporations are persons under the law and deserving of many of the rights granted under the Constitution using (or mis-using in my opinion) that same 14th Amendment.
Why does that matter? Because it gave corporations an "equal" seat at the table when it comes to disputes. The problem, as you point out, is that our civil dispute resolution system DOES depend on the resources of the "person" and corporations will ALWAYS have more resources. Lots and lots of cases have given corporations more rights and the result is the corportacracy we have now. In other words we went fundamentally the wrong direction diluting the power of the individual. And because corporations have such disproportionate influence on the laws and administrative procedures, we diluted the power of government to represent the people. This has been going on for ~120 years but it kicked into high gear in the 80s (Reagan era).
I'm glad that you guys are still somewhat rational about this, but unfortunately the anti-democratic trend in the US is replicating in the rest of the world. I worry that future histories will compare the rise of this garbage in the US to the start of fascism in Italy in the 1930s.
Sorry, went off on a tangent deep in the comments, but I spend too much time thinking and worrying.
From the patterns I see in the world, social structures (governments, organisations, ...) are mostly on a downward trend. People in power are mostly concerned with keeping and extending their power, to the detriment of the people they are ruling.
Until it goes to far and there is a crisis so massive, that the people who are in power get swapped out and replaced by a completely different set of people. Then they spend a few years improving the situation until business as usual sets in and the downward trend sets in again.
You can see that e.g. in the founding of America, the time after the US civil war, the time after WW2 in most of Europe and in many other instances. Newly formed countries often take that chance to improve their constitution and government principles.
The thing is, contrary to e.g. Europe, the USA hasn't had a reset like this in a very long time. Hence, corruption is handled almost as if the constitution prescribed it. Compare e.g. how funding for the election campaign of presidential candidates is handled.
In my country, candidates are severely limited in how much they can totally spend on the campaign. The current limit is at €7mio. They have to declare all donations to parties, which are also limited.
In the USA, on the other hand, there is hardly a point trying to become a candidate if you don't have a few billionaires backing you.
I can think of one difference...
"Damages" is more than lost wages. Not sure how that relates to arrests
Getting arrested, even wrongfully, is going to fuck a lot of peoples' lives up as much or more than getting fired. I have a special needs child, and although I'm not a single parent, cops pick me up and put me in jail wrongfully for a day or two, the details of my circumstances are such that's going to cause substantial trauma for both my child and my wife. In my case my job would be safe, but for a great many people it would not.
I'd take being fired over being arrested all day every day and twice on Sunday.
I don't mean to suggest she didn't have a case, only to suggest that payouts for wrongful police action need to be much higher. Aside from the arrest itself, wrongful arrests often include damages to the victim's body or property, possibly their dog getting shot, etc etc.
I don’t mean to suggest she didn’t have a case, only to suggest that payouts for wrongful police action need to be much higher. Aside from the arrest itself, wrongful arrests often include damages to the victim’s body or property, possibly their dog getting shot, etc etc.
Not even talking about the fact, that these guys now have newspaper articles with both of them in handcuffs, clearly showing their face and names that will come up every time a potential new employer googles their names.
Totally agree with you, wrongful arrest is much more problematic than being wrongfully fired.
Sure, but how do they arrive at $28.3 mio damages? You usually don't get that much in damages if the person in question has been killed. I'm pretty sure, being wrongfully fired doesn't cause as much damage as >16x of the average lifetime earnings of a person.
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