Orwellian Labor Law Language

One of you readers saw Dreher bait in this story about Harvard law professor Nancy Gertner, who calls for more state involvement in the labor market to dictate sexist quotas gender equality in the workplace. Excerpt:

After all, there is a “business case” to be made for gender equality in law firms and workplaces, “beyond the obvious need to tap a rich vein of talent,” said Gertner. In a diverse world, workplace diversity adds to “the texture and the richness of the dialogue,” she said.

This is classic diversity-speak: defining “diversity” as having met a numerical quota for women and minorities in a particular workplace’s population, and then garbing racial and sexual discrimination in language that would embarrass a second-rate marketer to sell an unpopular, immoral policy. Discriminating in hiring against people based on their sex and/or ethnicity is evil when it is done in ways that Nancy Gertner and her allies dislike, but when it is used against people of whom Gertner et alia disapprove, it enhances “the texture and the richness of the dialogue.” Just like adding French vanilla-flavor Coffee Mate to your morning cup.

More Gertner:

In the end, feminism’s mission of workplace parity has been stalled by the three factors of the maternal wall, implicit bias, and the opacity of discrimination, Gertner said.

Ah. The reason we don’t have “workplace parity” is because too many women live in false consciousness, and would rather be home raising children than working in an office. Because if women knew what was best for them, they would choose to be like Nancy Gertner (women are allowed to be diverse, as long as they make choices approved by feminists). As for the other two factors, the lack of evidence that discrimination against women is the cause (“implicit”, “opacity”) is evidence that discrimination exists? Really, Nancy Gertner?

What to do now?

But all this is not enough. “The most important thing is: We have to be unsatisfied,” Gertner told her largely female, professional audience.

Stay perpetually aggrieved. That’s the advice Harvard Law professor Nancy Gertner has for women. What a fulfilling and attractive way to go through life.