Imagine a group of state university faculty sitting around a table discussing their upcoming five-year plan. They decide that one of their priorities will be to promote some or all of the following eight concepts in their classes (the hypo also works if you imagine a board of directors contemplating priorities for mandatory employee training):
- Black people are morally superior to White people.
- White people are inherently racist.
- All White people are privileged, and all Black people are oppressed.
- Assertions of color-blindness are racist.
- White people should be discriminated against because of actions committed in the past by other White people.
- White people should be discriminated against to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- All White people bear personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions committed in the past by other White people.
- Such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, and objectivity are racist and were created by White people to oppress Black people.
If you think that should be illegal (or if you think that would be the best of all possible worlds), then you might be interested in a recent Federalist Society litigation update on the Stop WOKE Act cases (available here) in which Ryan Newman, General Counsel to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, discusses recent cases such as Pernell v. Florida Board of Governors, Novoa v. Diaz, and Honeyfund.com Inc. v. DeSantis. The following remarks from Newman provide some background on the legislation.
In our view, woke ideology poses a direct and irreconcilable challenge to a fundamental principle of the American political community — not always faithfully observed of course, but nevertheless stretching back to the Declaration of Independence – and that is the equality of all persons, that we are all created equal. The question raised by these cases is whether the people, acting through their elected representatives, have the authority to take limited measures to prevent the forced indoctrination of people in the workplace and in our public educational institutions in concepts that amount to rank discrimination on the basis of race and sex and that if accepted by most Americans would effectively destroy our country as we know it. The Stop WOKE Act does not ban the eight concepts that it identifies. These ideas, as pernicious and repugnant as they are, will continue to exist in the marketplace of ideas but they cannot be foisted upon employees in the workplace or imposed on impressionable students in public schools. We don’t believe that the Constitution requires the people to surrender this small degree of self-protection from an ideology that would itself destroy our political community. The Constitution is not, after all, a suicide pact.