The phrase, “Hoist on your own petard” comes from Hamlet. The Southern Poverty Law Center comes from a direct mail scam run by a KKK lawyer.

What’s the relevance, you ask? 

When you spend all your time accusing others of racism, it’s bound to boomerang.

SPLC Union members protested outside of their employer’s office Monday in opposition to the legal advocacy group’s plan to require certain employees to return to in-person work. The union, in a statement, claimed the move targets black women because it primarily requires workers in low-level positions to return to the office.

“Staff in more highly regarded job classifications and who are higher-paid employees are being given the flexibility to work remotely, while women, Black, brown, and lower-paid employees are forced back into the office regardless of our work, our needs, and our advocacy for more inclusive treatment,” Lisa Wright, a union bargaining committee member, said. “Forcing employees back into the office isn’t about collaboration or cooperation—this is about policing and surveillance of SPLC’s lowest-paid employees.”

Much like the SPLC’s own accusations, this is nonsense and entirely deserved. 

The old SPLC has already been purged with founder Morris Dees getting shown the exit over accusations of racism.

Last week’s firing of Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, pushed the working environment of the civil rights organization into the national spotlight.

Recent reports in news organizations including the Los Angeles Times cite internal SPLC emails in which employees describe problems with alleged workplace sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism.

This goes back to the 90s.

The series also alleged discriminatory treatment of black employees within the advocacy group, despite its outward efforts to improve the treatment of minorities in the country. Staffers at the time “accused Morris Dees, the center’s driving force, of being a racist and black employees have ‘felt threatened and banded together.’” The organization denied the accusations raised in the series.

And now the SPLC continues to be haunted by the ghosts of its past.