Law Schools, Racism

Dog Whistling 'Bourgeois Values' Op-Ed Gets Thorough Takedown From Other Law Professors

Ripping racist op-ed isn't disrespectful, it's necessary.

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It seems like forever ago when we last checked in on Penn’s Amy Wax and USD’s Larry Alexander. They’d written a truly contemptible screed where they conjured something called “bourgeois values,” a bundle of assumptions that amounted to “being a white people from the 1950s” and blamed American decline on, well, “not being white people from the 1950s.”

It was a dog whistle for an audience of almost exclusively white (proper assimilationists accepted on a case-by-case basis!) dudes who idolize Pete Campbell from Mad Men and want to rage in front of their computers about how the dames and minorities are taking everything that they imagine as their birthright.

That editorial is less than two weeks old. It only seems so long ago because since then its audience grabbed their tiki torches and came out from behind their screens to murderous effect. Doubtless the authors — remember Professor Wax noted that she doesn’t shrink from using the word “superior” — wouldn’t condone such violence. Apparently taking responsibility for stoking a culture of resentment isn’t a bourgeois value. Still, it’s all too easy to push this essay out of the spotlight with all the much more overt acts terror out there.

Thankfully, a group of 18 law professors refused to let this foul work evade proper scorn:

It bears emphasizing that the professors’ opinions are offered without evidentiary support, which is – to say the least – a glaring omission from two trained lawyers and frankly shocking coming from two professors charged with educating students about law and logic.

This point cannot be underemphasized. It’s that shocking lack of basic evidentiary support that should get Wax and Alexander in trouble with their schools. As I wrote at the time:

An op-ed isn’t an academic journal, of course, but belching out so many lies and half-truths while draped in the imprimatur of the credibility that the law school’s name brings is an institutional embarrassment. It undermines that credibility with students and peers. Op-eds for local newspapers may not be held to the strict standards of a scholarly journal, but that doesn’t absolve professors of the need to conduct themselves as scholars for the good of the institution that employs them.

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These 18 professors pull no punches in explaining why there’s no defending the lack of basic factual support and the abundance of offensive leaps in logic to reach the racist, sexist, and classist conclusions Wax and Alexander sought to add to the growing body of Pepe approved literature.

Not all opinions are equally defensible. The co-signers of this letter have heard many ideas we disagree with, in classes we have taught as well as discussions with faculty colleagues, and respected the speakers’ positions without flinching. That is the nature of law school and of social inquiry. There are assertions, however, which are divorced from intellectual rigor and serve no purpose beyond coddling the existing prejudices of their speakers and listeners who wish to justify similar prejudices. The opinions expressed by Professors Wax and Alexander fall squarely within the latter category and do not deserve our respect. They are dehumanizing, inherently racist, and ultimately irrational.

I do object to this characterization.

Not that I disagree with the conclusion, but it’s high time people stop giving any credence to this idea that “argumentative respect” requires docile bodies sitting quietly while bulls**t gets dumped on them. The professors are right to recognize, later in their piece, that “silence is an especially pernicious response to overt expressions of racism,” but when they juxtapose calling out racism with “denying respect” it fuels the disempowering notion that pointed, even harsh, dissent is necessarily disrespectful. Respecting an argument only requires taking the argument on its face, evaluating its premises, and then not running from it or glibly dismissing it. Loudly and proudly calling out bad arguments is, in fact, respectful if it engages the substance of the argument. Ad hominem attacks and beating straw arguments to death are disrespectful.

Pointing out that an argument rests on really shoddy scholarship, is not.

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Law professors argue colleagues’ ‘bourgeois’ ideal is racist and classist [Philly Voice]

Earlier: Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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