Prejudices, Racism, etc.

Remove all ads!

It is perfectly legal to hate whomever it is you want to hate - no nation/state/law that I am aware of is saying otherwise. You cannot force anyone to be friends with or live with or like someone for any reason. About the only thing on the above list that IS against the law is the "work with" part. There are laws on the books that companies not discriminate based on things like gender and race. So if you have a problem with the races of the people you work with, it's up to you to find another job - not for the company to accomodate you.

As far as I know, you CAN do this. I also agree that I don't think they would stay in business very long, but you never know. It wasn't so long ago, that Augusta, the golf course that hosts the Masters every year had no black members. Also, to this day there are still no official female members. (There are women on the course every day, but they are all either the wives or daughters of men who have memberships. To this day, Augusta has never given a woman a membership, but allows immediate family members of members to play on the course.)

 

You are of course allowed to think as you like, thought police has no room in modern democracy however...

In my opinion no. It's all just fine if we believe it to be all about the restaurant, but we're all smart enough that it is not. That kind of things will be bound to be seen as provocative by some elements of the excluded ethnic groups who would probably move to counter this in some way, possibly in a violent manner. Causing ethnic disharmony is in my opinion not a right worth its trouble.

I wonder what you are trying to get at with this? The point is pretty much irrelevant since I doubt you'll be finding any ethnic groups that are all criminals or even mostly criminals. If you thought so you'd be ignorant and I'd call ignorance the main cause for racism and therefore yes it would racist. People allways have some sort of a justification for their racist feelings, many Germans for instance hated jews because they were thought to be conspiring against Germany.

 

You bring up a good point when you mention protected status. Why are we allowed to discriminate based on height, weight, hair color, etc.? Is it all about who has a better lobby?

 

Well, prejudice and racism go hand in hand. You can't have racism without prejudice. Discrimination often goes hand in hand with racism and prejudice as well, but it doesn't have to. Many - if not most - racists would not want to appear as such in public, so they would be inclined to avoid such obvious displays of racism as refusing to hire or serve someone based on the color of his skin.

Irrelevant. Aside from the fact that the vast majority of black men are not criminals, you can always tell a black man by, well, looking at him. Vegans, on the other hand, have no obvious physical characteristics, so we blend in with the rest of society. Anyone with even a modicum of intelligence should realize that he's probably met a lot more vegetarians and vegans than he thinks - and that it would be unfair to judge them all by just the few of them he's read about in the paper or seen at a protest.

By far the vast majority of high level corporate scandals involving embezzlement, fraud, insider trading, deceptive advertising, unpaid forced overtime, etc, ad nauseum were perpetrated by elderly white men who have an MBA. Since the only elderly white men that I know for sure have an MBA have all been indicted or convicted for one white collar crime or another, would it be reasonable for me to distrust all elderly white males with an MBA?

 

In a way, but I'd say it's about what makes the blood boil more. I would claim that a dresscode creates less anger in people than a racial limitation. So if angry mobs can be counted as lobbies then I suppose lobbying is the reason.

 

TGS:
I think you push some things too far. As a society, we are more than just a bunch of people living and working in close proximity. We are inherrantly linked in a cooperative effort for survival and prosperity. The laws which govern a society are intended to promote that survival and prosperity and dissuade things that would break down the society. To that effort, it is acceptable to pass laws that everyone get along. It isn't really enforcable, but it is rationally acceptable by the design of the society and the purpose of the laws. What we end up with is a balance between what we can enforce and what people will put up with, and what is in the 'best interests' of the society.

I think the issue here is the reality of it occuring. How often are people significantly discriminated against based on height or hair color. I can kind of see weight, but not nearly as much as things like race or religion have been used in the past, and even today.

Morgoroth:

Since we're looking at more than just race, let me turn that around on you. What about the KKK or the Aryan Brotherhood? Is it undue prejudice to assume those people are violent radicals not to be trusted? Should I be condemned if I refuse to hire an active member of the Aryan Brotherhood? He may not have mentioned lynching or murdering blacks as a hobby on his resume, and I may have never met him and thus may not know that he is personally involved in such activities, but given the Brotherhood's history and reputation, it wouldn't be too much of a reach.

Drew:
I don't know if you missed my point or avoided it, but let me be more clear. What is the border of saying, perfectly rationally, that anyone coming into my store after hours with a weapon drawn in a ski mask is a violent criminal intent on robbing me and the totally mindless hate of saying everyone who isn't blue-eyed, blonde-haired, and at least 5'7" is an inferior specimen of the human race and must be exterminated? One is obviously based on rational realities of life and, even if it is discriminating, it is doing so off of legitimate data. The other is, shall we say, not.

Ok, I'm beginning to think we're talking about two totally different things. My question was 'does my example count as bad racism or a rational bias', asking gerenally about the terms being applied. Your response seems to have been very particular to the example of vegans.

 

Verifiability of the data. The prejudices of a Jew that survived Auschwitz, while understandable, would hardly constitute a reason to distrust Germans as they are now.

The racist Louisianan I worked for for about a year grew up during the civil rights era attending a school where whites were actually in the minority. A great deal of violence was detected at him because of the color of his skin* (he was even stabbed once), which is how he formed his opinions of black people. He would have been well within reason to restrict his distrust to African Americans attending his high school, in his backwater hometown, during the civil rights era, but he doesn't do that. The man is convinced instead that all black Americans still act and behave in exactly the manner of the students of the students of his high school when he was growing up.

* Or so he says. Given his propensity to exaggerate wrongs done to him, always cast himself as the victim (none of his 4 divorces were his fault), and the fact that he is one of the most belligerent and verbally abusive men I have ever met, I'm inclined to take his recountings with a grain of salt.

 

So are you expecting people to base their opinions on information they don't have access to, or are you going to restrict the verifiability of data to that which they have reasonable access to?

Also, I would like to point out the inherrant pattern-seeking nature of the human mind. We look for patterns everywhere, and base our actions on those percieved patterns, so generalizing from a particular experience set to a larger group is perfectly acceptable.

In that light, how would you feel about your Louisianan racist if he restricted his opinion to when he was in highschool (and may be some time after if he still worked/lived in the same region), but kept it generalized to all blacks? Remember, there's no internet and while MLK may have been in the news, he's the 'exception that proves the rule'.

 

It would still be racist, offensive, and downright stupid. This guy insists that a black man will never fight a white man one on one because they conspire to get you alone, where they will beat you up as a group, take all of your stuff, and leave you for dead; that blacks and Mexicans don't take care of their kids, that 90% of blacks are violent criminals, that there is a black conspiracy to control the government in order to racially slant the welfare system towards blacks (despite the fact that the system is keyed to income rather than race, he still believes this), 95% of whom are on welfare (actually, it's around 2% in Louisiana, which is already higher than the national average - and only if you count the kids), while kicking white people who fall on hard times off the rolls. It was just as racist, bigoted, and demonstrably untrue in the '60's as it is today.

If he were to say that the black students at his high school reacted violently to white students in its halls when he went there, that would be one thing, but he says quite a bit more about blacks. Like many racists, he somehow lacks the ability to separate feeling from fact. He expects to see one thing and then he sees it, regardless of whether or not it's actually there.

 

Ok Drew, but what if, just while he was in high school, he expected all black men to be violent, regardless of whether they were in his school or not?

What I'm trying to get is whether you expect people to assume the best of everyone they have not personally met, regardless of past experiences with similar people, or whether you think some limited generalizations are acceptable, if not necessarily 100% accurate.

 

NOG, that's a huge if. In practical terms, it simply will not happen. If he had legitimate reason to believe that all black men are violent, that would mean that there weren't any non-violent black men at his school...which strains credulity well past its breaking point. For the sake of argument, though, I will accept this ridiculous hyperbole.

Racism borne of ignorance is still racism. If he assumed that all black men in the country were violent because the only black men he had ever met in his backwater home-town were violent (an if that, frankly, will never come to pass), he would still be racist for believing it. In such a case, his racism might be understandable (just as the prejudice of a Jew who survived Auschwitz is understandable) since we know the reason for it, but it is still racism. In the end he would still be assuming that the entire country is just like his podunk little hometown in Southern Louisiana, and he would be basing this belief on, well, nothing. He would still be judging an entire group of people by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character. The fact that the life experience of this hypothetical person (given all the hypotheticals you've asked me to swallow, this person no longer resembles my old boss) led him to that conclusion constitutes an explanation, not an excuse or justification.

 

I don't know these organsations that well since neither of them are overly active in this country but I'll assume that their rethoric is violent and hateful and have a history of organizing violence, which would quite simply make membership in them illegal (a bit like being a member of a terrorist organisation). That making the member a criminal and refusing to hire a criminal is just plain common sense.

 

I thought of a better one then height and hair. How about "Looks". Is it not a true statement that "beautiful people" are far more employable and have an easier time getting what they want then "ugly people"? Yet, that is perfectly OK.

 

Drew, ok, that answered my question pretty well. I don't agree with the answer, though. I would say that, to call it an irrational bias (which I'm pretty sure is the point here) there would have to have been presented evidence to the contrary which the person then ignores. Your boss sounds like this happened, but many other people with biasses (especially the origination of this topic, vegan biasses) have actually been there. The fact that logic cannot confirm that all people of characteristic X also have characteristic Y is unimportant, because it can never confirm that, regardless of how true it is. We live our lives by more than just logic and, while logic is an important tool and should not be cast aside, to cling to logic as your only tool is ridiculous.

Morgoroth, I think at this point both the KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood officially promote non-violent racism, but both have a history of violence that has stretched into the present. They are not officially criminal organizations, but they are heavily watched.

TGS, in my experience, 'looks' discrimination is really a minor thing. It is very rare that someone doesn't get hired for a position based on their looks unless the position somehow relies on their looks. Mind you, I'm kind of a middle ground guy on the looks issue, so that may be the reason.

 

NOG, take it from an ugly person, looks discrimination exists.

That said, I believe that government can and should legislate appropriate behaviour when it comes to issues such as this. Regardless of my feelings toward a person having Trait X, I cannot be allowed to assault him, deny him employment in my publicly funded company, deny him tenancy in a builiding I rent out, or incite other people to commit criminal acts against that person.

What the government cannot do and should not even try is to legislate my opinions.

Also, there should be consistency. Example:

People with Trait X can say "People with Trait Y are evil people and we hate them and believe that God should wipe them off the planet" and then when called into court they claim freedom of speech. Fair enough. They can believe what they want about people with Trait Y and they have the right to express that opinion. They also, from the quote I just typed, did not say that THEY were going to wipe of all the "Y" people. They merely expressed a wish that GOD would do it. With me so far?

Then a group with neither trait says "People with Trait X are evil people and we hate them and believe that God should wipe them off the planet" and all the Trait X people start screaming "Oppression! Oppression! Our rights have been violated! We need massive amounts of government money to compensate us for our pain and suffering! Those people are inciting hate against us and they should have NO RIGHT to say things like that about us!"

Sadly, the Canadian government does just this in many cases, holding a double standard depending on what trait you may have. It's wrong no matter how that's done. If an opinion is legally expressible by one it should be legally expressible by all. If it is illegal for one to so speak, then it should be illegal for all to so speak.

 

LKD, the issue is less if it exists and more how prevalent it is. That being said, being of the 'middle ground' group myself, I don't claim any knowledge as to how prevalent it is. Have you ever been denied a job that was then given to a less qualified, less connected, but better looking person?

Aside from that, I completely agree with your post.

 

I'm kind of with NOG here. I think how good looking a person is would play a very small role in terms of descrimination. In fact, I can only think of a couple of scenarios where it would play a significant factor:

1. The job you were applying for relies, at least in part, on looks. (Like being a model.)
2. If you are at one of the two extremes in terms of how you look. It may have some effect if you are Brad Pitt or the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but for most people in the middle, it shouldn't matter.

My general feeling is that you'd have a much better off landing a job if you were highly charismatic as opposed to good looking. Good looking would only particularly help you if the person who decides whether or not you get the job is of the opposite gender (again except if we're talking extremes). I think I'm like most men in that I have a difficult time judging how attractive another man is unless he is extremely good or bad looking. However, if you have a great personality, that will be of huge benefit to you during an interview regardless of your gender or the gender of the interviewer.