Posted on 07/06/2005 2:34:54 PM PDT by tdewey10
You can count on Vernon Jordan being behind this story. I am familiar with his tactics with retail companies, and he considers WMT the elephant.
Just wait until Mr. or Ms. Diversity Hire at the top bollixes up a big multi-million dollar deal or case for Wal-Mart. I guess then it will be the law firm's fault for not making the correct diversity hire or promotion. You are probably correct though; a big law firm would have the real talent in the background doing the work while the window dressing kept the PC crowd happy.
What female or minority lawyer with any self-respect would want to be viewed as a token promoted to appease the PC mongers? I would want to know I earned my place at the top and deserved all due respect.
Walmart is trying to clean up its image. I'm pretty sure they got in big trouble for hiding stuff in discovery in lots of cases. basically, they hired extra sleazy lawyers and paid them by the case. So the lawyers would put the case in a drawer and ignore court orders, etc. They got hit with mucho sanctions. So now they are going the big firm big publicity route.
About fifteen years ago, just about the time that the PC sh#t was starting to hit the fan, I began doing some part-time work as an arbitrator for the NY Stock Exchange. In addition to mediating disputes between brokers and their clients, arbitrators also are called upon to settle cases between member firms and their employees.
New arbitrators had to take a few seminars to further our understanding of these employment cases. One hot topic involved discrimination. There were two ways to "prove" it--direct and indirect. I had no problem with the former. It manifests itself when a minority person (i.e., a Black, Hispanic, or a woman) with a clearly superior record of accomplishment is overlooked for a promotion which is then given to a less deserving White Male. Although often difficult to prove, the concept is understandable.
The indirect method of "proving" prejudice is by throwing statistics at you. That is, if Blacks make up 12% of the general population and only 2% of the law partners, bias is assumed. I had a great deal of difficulty with that concept. I argued with the "instructor" vehemently that aptitude and interest might discourage Blacks from being concert violinists and Whites from being NBA point guards, and absent the overt type of biased behavior previously mentioned, one could not assume that just because the numbers worked out in a particular manner, that improper discrimination was the reason.
I kept my mouth shut long enough to get my little diploma and I did work as an arbitrator for several years. Luckily (for the plaintiff), I never was involved in a statistics-based discrimination suit.
Exactly; PC and diversity run amok will ruin us!
"Oh, and what is Wal-Mart going to do to law firms that don't comply with their DEMANDS?"
They won't give said firms millions of dollars worth of legal business. This PC fad really is a big deal for law firms. I wonder if the same crowd will be going after big banks, brokerage, and accountancy firms, but maybe that's what Je$$e Jack$on's Wall Street Project was all about.
I shop at Walmart and there's lots of women and minorities shopping beside me. This isn't a government action, it's a company that wants their lawyers to reflect their customers. It's a good idea. Hats off to Walmart.
So WalMart is basically saying, give me 3 white guys, a woman and a black guy, and continue to bill me as before.
Di-verse it gets.
Quotas on attorneys? What's next? Quotas on the number of children and military in China manufacturing their goods?
Interesting that you should mention that it all started about 15 years ago. That is exactly correct. During the 1980s, SCOTUS had actually managed to strike down some - not all - of the racial preferences that were initiated by the government via an administrative ruling by a bureaucratic parasite named Alfred Blumrosen in the Nixon regime under the Orwellian term "affirmative action", chiefly in the private sector. In order to bring a civil rights suit, the plaintiff actually had to prove they were discriminated against. What a concept!
This was turned on its head by the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Passed by by a Rat-controlled congress with the help of plenty of the plaid-pants platoon (RINOs), and signed into law (in violation of a campaign promise) by the ultimate empty suit, George Herbert Walker Bush. Since then, all the plaintiffs have to do is prove that there are fewer minorities proportionally in any given position than there are in the general population. This now constitutes proof of institutional discrimination. Basically, there is no defense against such a charge as it basically requires defendants to prove their innocence. (Minority-owned firms are exempt, naturally.)
The 1991 law was backed by several large corporate interests at the time, which was seemingly illogical. It's not illogical when you think about a large corporation's greatest fear - some small startup that can run rings around their bloated bureaucracies and seriously eat into their market share. The big players can afford all of the racial/gender preference employee deadwood and hire folks in Bangalore to do the real work. The small startups can't afford the "diversity" quotas-that-are-never-called-quotas, and medium-sized firms must get with the program or face Jesse and the ambulance-chasers, a losing proposition. With it's long record of profiting form slave and sweatshop labor in totalitarian China, I'm surpised it took Wal-Mart this long to get in on the "diversity" racket.
Frankly, any American official has a lot of gall criticizing other countries for their lack of free markets. We're well on our way to becoming a totalitarian oligarchy like China.
I wonder if this is for real or not.
What happened to: I want the 5 best attorneys you've got?
"What female or minority lawyer with any self-respect would want to be viewed as a token promoted to appease the PC mongers? I would want to know I earned my place at the top and deserved all due respect."
Well said! I came up against that every once in a while during my military career; especially when I was promoted above other men. Do the time, keep your nose clean, keep your education up to snuff; ANYONE can go ANYWHERE without favoritism, if you've got the right stuff!
I know some here just HATE women and minorities in the military, but you should have a mix of the citizenry that makes up our nation protecting our nation, no?
I, too, hate to see Wal-Mart get sucked into this. It's destroyed lesser companies than Wal-Mart along the way. I'd hate to see this be the beginning of the end for them.
They're free to set up artificial quotas if they like. I just hope they don't bitch when they get substandard representation because they were only looking at skin color and reproductive organs instead of SKILL.
No big law firm with millions in fees and its reputation on the line would let it happen. As another poster wrote, the window dressing, if mediocre or worse in legal skills, will only be there for show.
Isn't it funny how nobody ever worries about diversity when it comes to picking a surgeon? People want the best one period, end of discussion.
This goes on at the large consulting firm my sister works for. Clients show up specifically requesting a certain percentage of minorities be part of the team assigned them. It's crazy.
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