Woke

The idea of Woke centers around the concept of disparate impact which is an unintentional yet adverse effect upon members of a protected class resulting from policies and procedures that appear neutral but are not equally applied to all groups. It generally involves Black vs White or women vs men. Examples are hiring more men than women as construction workers as a result of physical strength. Testing all applicants and using results from test that will unintentionally eliminate certain minority applicants disproportionately. Requiring apartment resident applicants to have full-time employment which discriminates against people with disabilities and veterans. Within anti discrimination law, no theory has attracted more attention or controversy than the disparate impact theory, which allows proof of discrimination without the need to prove an intent to discriminate. There are now proposals to extend disparate impact to cure all manner of social ills. A recent example of how this system works was the use of written test scores as a part of the requirements for a job. The fact that so many Black applicants were denied jobs because of low test scores was considered discrimination and the company was required to hire Blacks who had scored lower than some White applicants. The fact that the company did not intend to discriminate did not matter because the result was discrimination. This is contrary to many laws where intent is important. A prosecutor has to prove both the action and the intent part of any criminal statute if they want to convict you for breaking the law. If they fail to prove intent you must be found not guilty even if they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you committed the act.