Here’s Internet personality Richard Hanania’s upcoming book, which hopefully won’t get canceled:
The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics
Richard Hanania has emerged as one of the most talked-about writers in the nation, and in this book, he puts forward a stunning new theory about the culture war that could turn our debates upside down.
Richard Hanania has come out of nowhere to become one of the best-known writers in the nation in the last few years. In this book, he directs his attention to the culture war that has driven society apart and presents a stunning new theory about what is going on.
In a nation nearly-evenly split between conservatives and liberals, the left dominates nearly all major institutions, including universities, the government, and corporate America. Hanania argues that this is as much a legal requirement as it is an issue of one side triumphing in the marketplace of ideas. Culture has its own independent force, but the state has, since the 1960s, been putting its thumb on the scale.
This book answers many of the puzzling questions about modern society, such as:
• Why does more and more of life seem like a competition to see who is the most oppressed?
• Who is really behind the sudden proliferation of woke ideas?
• How did ideas that seem so intellectually bankrupt achieve hegemony over elite culture?
• Which laws and regulations have helped the left rise to power everywhere?
• How did workplaces come to be the main enforcers of political ideology?
• When and how did Pakistanis, Samoans, and Koreans all become the same “race” (AAPI)?
• Why did America become so obsessed with inequalities based on race but not religion?
For those angry about wokeness and what it has done to American institutions, this book offers concrete suggestions regarding policies that can move us back to being a country that emphasizes merit, individual liberty, and color-blind governance.
Here’s law professor Gail Heriot’s article that helped inspire Richard’s book:
Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal
14 N.Y.U. J. L. & Liberty 1 (2020)
170 Pages Posted: 8 Nov 2019 Last revised: 7 Oct 2022
Gail L. Heriot
American Civil Rights Project; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Manhattan InstituteDate Written: 2019
Abstract
Title VII disparate impact liability makes almost everything presumptively illegal: It gives the federal bureaucracy extraordinary discretionary power. But what does it do to the rule of law? And who benefits?
* * * * *“
In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Supreme Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went far beyond prohibiting intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. According to the Court, it also presumptively outlawed job actions that have a “disparate impact,” regardless of whether the employer had an intent to discriminate.The evidence that this was a misinterpretation of both the text and Congressional intent is overwhelming. Up until 1991, Griggs would have been an excellent candidate for an outright and explicit overruling. But the Civil Rights Act of 1991’s backhanded recognition of the disparate impact cause of action makes that more difficult than it otherwise might be.
This article discusses various ways in which disparate impact liability has been bad policy and various arguments for its unconstitutionality.
I never dox anybody, but a few months ago for my own information I looked into the rumor that Richard Hanania used to be Richard Hoste, whom I vaguely recalled as an intelligent, strident, on-the-nose, and not hugely interesting minor far right Internet personality of a dozen years ago.
I didn’t find anything to disprove the rumor. Hanania and Hoste were both anti-Christians who had read The Bell Curve. On the other hand, Hanania, who is in his later 30s, is now so much better of a writer than Hoste was 12 years ago that I wasn’t sure I believed they were same guy.
How much do writers change? For example, I’ve always been who I am. Thus, in this October 11, 1979 issue of the Rice U. Thresher, you can read my review of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (p. 8) and my review of a Houston concert by The Clash (p. 7). My prose and perspective is recognizably similar over the last 44 years. As David Foster Wallace said, in the end you turn out to be who you are.
So I filed the Hanania-Hoste question away mentally as unanswered. If Hoste had improved enough to become Hanania, that would be unusual and impressive.
Now, the Huffington Post has doxed Hanania as Hoste. And Hanania has admitted it, but says he’s not an extremist anymore, he’s now a Bryan Caplan-style open borders libertarian. (After all, what could be less extremist than open borders?)
I went ahead and pre-ordered Richard’s book from Amazon to do my bit to persuade the publisher not to cancel it.
