I attended a wedding this weekend in Massachusetts (a healthy percentage of the upper-income attendees had been defendants in custody, child support, and alimony lawsuits so people were a little less sentimental than in other states (Best Man: “[the groom] said that if I did a good job today that I could be best man at the next one.”)). As it happened I was seated next to a retired U.S. military officer who had been “inspector general” for eight years on a base with about 1200 members of the military.
What were his office’s responsibilities? “The majority of the work was handling complaints about discrimination or harassment,” he responded. “Mostly women complaining about sex discrimination but also some race discrimination complaints.” What percentage had merit? “About one percent,” he said. “If these people had put half of the effort that they put into pursuing complaints into working the base would have been about twice as productive.”
I thought of that conversation today while watching television in our local airport lounge. The man who murdered Alison Parker and Adam Ward in Roanoke, Virginia (Wikipedia) was a frequent flyer in the American grievance system, having sued one employer for race discrimination and threatened a second employer with an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint.
Related:
- March 2015 posting trying to calculate the total legal fees run up by Ellen Pao and Buddy Fletcher (the Roanoke murderer, like Buddy Fletcher at the time of his profitable discrimination lawsuit, identified as “a homosexual black man” (Wikipedia))
- The lion-killing dentist and his receptionist
People respond to incentives and disincentives. If you incentivize filing EEOC complaints (by awarding “back pay”, etc.) while minimizing disincentives (not making the loser pay the other side’s legal fees) then you will get more complaints filed. If you are the EEOC, this is a good thing because this justifies hiring more case officers, a bigger budget, etc.
The downside is that people will be very eager to take offense, so if your co-workers say “let’s call a spade a spade” or “quit monkeying around” then it will be perceived as racist. The even bigger downside is that when these non-offensive remarks don’t lead to the big payday that you hoped for (apparently Flanagan did get a settlement from a prior employer in 2000 but not this time) you will feel as if the legal system has betrayed you and that you have to restore your honor in an extra-legal manner.
The attention lavished on the Charleston killer seems to have
succeeded in producing a copycat – but, oops, in the wrong direction.
It still has to be Whitey’s fault of course, so this time we’re
supposed to ignore the hate-filled killer and blame… let’s see… of
course, insufficient gun control!
Izzie L. is correct///
I work for the DOD, I was a supervisor (first, second and third level) for about 15 years. At one point I had as many as 190 white collar employees in my department.
Did I ever see any discrimination? No, but there were plenty of complaints and threats of complaints. It’s all about attempting to use your “prima facie” status (minority, gender, age, etc.) to get undeserved special treatment. There’s EVERY incentive to do so and no disincentive whatsoever.