Media conglomerate sued for blatant discrimination against whites
George Floyd hysteria will be no defense
Five former employees of Gannett, the newspaper publishing giant, have filed a class action suit alleging that the company has systematically discriminated against white employees. The discrimination consists of firing white employees and denying them opportunities for advancement in order to favor less-qualified minority candidates. That’s against the law.
According to the complaint, in 2020 Gannett established a company-wide policy of quota hiring and promotion. By 2025, Gannett intended that employment at all of its publications would reflect the racial and ethnic demographics in the community the newspapers cover — not the demographics of the job applicant pool.
Even quotas based on group representation in the applicant pool are unlawful if meeting them entails favoring less-qualified applicants over more-qualified ones. But, as noted, Gannett allegedly went one step further by pegging its quotas to the demographics of the local community.
The problem, of course, is that minority representation in the pool of qualified newspaper reporters in a locality may be much lower than minority representation in the population. If so, then the quota will almost certainly result in preferring less qualified minority group members for these jobs.
The complaint alleges that to carry out its unlawful plan, Gannett committed to publishing detailed statistics about the racial composition of its newspapers’ workforces on an annual basis and to holding its leaders accountable for meeting (or failing to meet) the company’s quotas. Thus, bonuses, promotions, awards, and other incentives were doled out (or denied) based on whether managers staffed their newsrooms to achieve parity with racial demographics.
Gannett’s policy cost white employees their jobs. For example, at the Savannah Morning News in Georgia, where one of the named plaintiffs worked as a reporter until being fired, the number of white workers decreased by 27.4% while the number of Black workers increased 18.2% in less than three years.
One named plaintiff in the class action suit was told he would be let go instead of another newsroom worker because he is white and the co-worker is Asian. The same plaintiff alleges he was passed over for a newsroom management job in favor of a black female who initially expressed no interest in the job and who, unlike the plaintiff, had no prior newsroom management experience.
If true, the complaint’s allegations make out an open and shut case of illegal discrimination. In this regard, it’s worth noting that the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs says that in three decades of practice, he has never represented a white complaining of discrimination. But the facts of this case are so stark that the lawyer is representing these white plaintiffs. He says: “This country needs racial diversity, but if companies go about doing it this way, it’s going to kill it.”
The lawyer’s comment highlights the problems with the title of the Washington Post’s article about the case: “A newspaper giant tried to diversify its staff. White workers sued.” How churlish of white workers not to accept being fired when their employer was only trying to “diversify its staff.”
But here’s the thing: there are ways to try to “diversify” without firing white workers or denying them promotions for which they are the best qualified applicant. For example, an employer can expand its sources of recruitment to include ones where most of the potential applicants are black.
In any event, a diverse workforce isn’t the same thing as a workforce that adheres to race-based quotas. A newsroom in which blacks hold 3 of 20 positions is racially “diverse” under any reasonable account of that word, even if blacks make up 40 percent of the local population and 25 percent of the job applicants.
The “underrepresentation” of blacks in that newsroom is problematic only if blacks have been denied jobs they were the best qualified to fill.
The Post ties the Gannett suit to what it says (and I believe) is a “wave” of discrimination suits by white employees. According to the Post, this wave is a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Harvard case.
But the practices alleged in the suit against Gannett were known to be illegal long before the Harvard decision. Even the Post acknowledges that “private employers have been barred for decades from making employment decisions based on race.”
In my view, the key to understanding the wave of discrimination suits by whites isn’t the Supreme Court’s Harvard decision. The key is what I call George Floyd hysteria.
The gross misconduct of a police officer in Minneapolis led to all sorts of crazy consequences. The call to “defund the police” is perhaps the most prominent example.
But at least that call — as destructive as it would be if followed — had a connection with the Floyd affair. He died at the hands of the police, or so a jury found.
Why Floyd’s death should have prompted employment discrimination against whites is more difficult to understand (though less difficult than understanding why it caused the Washington Redskins to change the team name).
Understandable or not, Gannett’s imposition of quotas was that company’s response to Floyd’s death. Nor was Gannett the only firm that responded by implementing or expanding racial preferences. As the Post says:
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020, Gannett was among scores of corporate giants that made sweeping commitments to increase workforce diversity.
Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. Scores of corporate giants will have to defend policies that, under the law, are plainly indefensible. And they will have to do so in a landscape where George Floyd hysteria has receded significantly, albeit not entirely.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.thefallofminneapolis.com/&sa=U&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiRj5qG8M6CAxXEI0QIHUPICU8QFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw24BE9ii7V4RQ6aSkSEjnSB