An archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests

With her usual close attention to words, Ann Althouse has a revealing insight about the Oberlin College case. From On Friday, I complained that the NYT published only "thin, undigested AP material" on the Oberlin punitive damages verdict. by Ann Althouse.

But later that day, the Times published a full-scale article — "Oberlin Helped Students Defame a Bakery, a Jury Says. The Punishment: $33 Million" by Anemona Hartocollis — and it's a little obscure but, reading it carefully, I understood Oberlin's argument for the first time. I had thought that Oberlin just got the facts wrong when it accused the bakery of racism. I now see that the argument is that even if the bakery stopped blatant shoplifters, the accusation of racism stands.

Let me show you how this argument emerges from the text:

Gibson’s bakery, a local establishment known for its whole wheat doughnuts and chocolate-covered grapes, became the target of a boycott by students who accused it of racially profiling a black student.... Oberlin maintained that college officials had gotten involved only to keep the peace, and that it was supporting its students, not their claims that Gibson’s was racist. But the jury found that Oberlin had clearly chosen sides without first examining the facts....

Oberlin tried to distance itself from the protesters in court papers, saying it should not be held responsible for their actions. It blamed the store for bringing its problems on itself.

“Gibson bakery’s archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests,” the college said. “The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to both the root cause of the protests and this litigation.”

Got that? It's irrelevant that the suspected shoplifters were real shoplifters. What the students called racist was the "chase-and-detain policy."

The store clerk seems to have suspected shoplifting not because of the person's race but because he could see 2 wine bottles hidden under his coat, but he "chased the student out onto the street and tackled him," and that's what's racist (in this view). If the chase-and-detain approach is racist, even when the shopkeeper is right about the theft, then it's not false to accuse the shopkeeper of racism.

She appears to be right. That is the argument.

I would add one further elaboration. What Oberlin appears to be arguing is that a policy of protecting private policy is racist.

In the mind of the postmodernist critical theorist, that argument would make sense. The fact that it requires a mountain of assumptions for which there is no evidence is glossed over.

Most postmodernists are indeed anti-capitalists but it is rare for them to be quite so clear about their objection to private property. That is usually a bridge too far. But when being sued for tens of millions, somehow they seem to have thought that being more transparent about their objection to private property and rule of law would make their case more compelling.

As George Orwell observed in Notes on Nationalism,

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.