Hey Catherine! I think we've already hashed this out pretty well, so I'll just reply to a few of these points:
"Note that there may be a misunderstanding between us here: what I mean by "coercion" is for example forcing people to work with a certain race"
So here again, our disagreement is about which side to focus on.
If, for example, a white employee hears that a black employee has been hired and doesn't like it, *they are free to leave*. They are welcome to lose out on that employment because of their unwillingness to work with a black person. They are not forced to work with a black person. This is also true if the manager hires the man who slept with his wife or killed his dog or who he hates for *any other reason*. He has a choice between sucking it up or leaving. This is right.
What is *not* right, is that a black person should have to lose out on that employment because of another person's bigotry.
As I've said, I believe a person's right to be free from bigotry is greater than another persons' right to inflict it. This seems to be our fundamental disagreement, but I don't think there's any possibility you'll change my mind on this point.
Fundamentally, you're arguing against the civil rights act. It's astonishing to me that you can't see what an unjust argument this is. But if you can't, I don't think I'm going to convince you today.
I was only joking about California, no strawmanning intended😁. My point was simply that your argument made no sense. Businesses that continued to refuse to serve black people would have continued to see business and indeed would likely have seen increased business because all of the racists would have frequented their stores. And in 1960s America, pretty much all white people were racist!! You seem to have no understanding of people's attitudes back then.
The reason legislation was necessary was precisely because these changes weren't just magically going to happen by themselves. There was no other country with a similar racial profile with the exception of South Africa. And guess what; they had to outlaw Apartheid too!!
Racism existed all over the world in the 60s (well, obviously it still exists today, but it was much worse then). My parents and grandparents told me all kinds of stories about the things they experienced. Nobody forced white people to be nice to them. There were no hate speech laws back then. No reliable protection from the police. But at least there was the possibility of them getting an education and a job. The changes in attitude had to happen over time.
But the reason why racial tension in America today is higher than in Europe isn't because of anti-segregation laws, IT'S BECAUSE SEGREGATION AND SLAVERY HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! De-segregation only happened 60-odd years ago in America. Of course there's still tension. But again, the laws "forcing people together" weren't the problem, it was the laws that originally forced people *apart*. Especially as those laws were 100% to the detriment of black people.
If segregation really had offered equal opportunities to black people and white people, and if black people weren't punished for succeeding as they were in Tulsa for example, perhaps things would still be segregated now and everybody would be fine with it. We shall never know.
Lastly, no. I don't believe people are evil by nature. I believe people instinctively resist change. Especially if there's no clear benefit to them. I believe the status quo stays in place unless something is done to alter it. The status quo in 1960s America was that life was pretty good for white people and pretty terrible for black people. I think that situation needed to change as quickly as possible.
The civil rights act was the quickest possible way of making that change because it meant, even with the hatred and challenges they faced, black people gained a degree of protection under the law. They gained new opportunities that had previously been withheld from them. Just waiting until all the racist white people decided to hire black people and let them attend previously white-only schools is just such a ridiculous idea that I don't quite believe you're suggesting it. But I can't see how else to interpret your arguments.
I think you're just repeating the same argument using different words, so I'll put this as plainly as I can:
I am against any hiring practice where people are discriminated against for things that don't affect their practical ability to do the job. This is what equality of opportunity means. I am in support of any law that "forces" people not to be bigots. This was the aim of the civil rights act.
To make your example a little less cartoonish; if an I.T. manager refused to hire anybody but white men, yes, I think he should be forced to hire women and people of other races too, as long as they can do the job (or he should quit if he doesn't want to be "forced" to do his job properly).
There are enough white men in the world that he would never *need* to hire women or people of other races. His business would likely be fine if he was allowed to continue these discriminatory practices (especially back in the 60s). But I think denying people opportunities because of things they can do nothing about is wrong. It's fine if you don't (hopefully you're not in charge of hiring at a company). But I don't see any value in continuing to go in circles on this point.
"You didn't answer the most important question/argument: WHO decides whether that someone is racist/sexist, etc"
If somebody discriminates agains somebody else based on their sex or the colour of that person's skin then they are a sexist/racist. Nobody needs to "decide". That's literally what words mean. In the examples you gave, the manager would obviously be a racist.
Any "victims" who want to take action against an employer for discrimination *have to prove they've been discriminated against*!! The burden is on them, as it should be, to show there's a problem. If they can prove that there is racist or sexist discrimination in court (as has happened on numerous occasions), then what exactly is the problem?
If you think that anti-discrimination laws are equivalent to totalitarianism then I'm not going to waste any more time trying to convince you otherwise. There's obviously a reasonable middle ground that you're refusing to acknowledge, between "you must hire exactly 13% black people and 76% white people" and "it's completely fine if your company is 100% white males". And this was far more relevant during the racially segregated 60s than it is today.
Equality of opportunity means rule of law only when laws are fair to all people. That's what the civil rights act was for!!! To ensure that black people were equal under the law. But that meant that people who had refused to treat black people as equals were now "forced" to. I have no idea (and dwindling interest in) where your fear is coming from.
"How do you know that? How do you know he's not hiring based on merit (Spanish speaking, good looking)? You can't know that."
Okay Catherine, this is getting silly now. This conversation isn't worth taking up days more of either of our time. Yes, sure. The hypothetical man who "only hires hot Latina chicas" *for his IT company* might not actually be racist or sexist. Maybe he's hiring purely on merit. Jesus, what a stupid argument to try to defend.
You're not for not discriminating, you're for an imaginary world where people who discriminate will magically change their ways of their own accord just as quickly as if there was some external pressure to stop being bigots. Meanwhile, all the people who suffer because of their bigotry are supposed to wait patiently and hope it works out. Again, you're laser focused on the bigot's right to be a bigot and seemingly blind to the people who are being discriminated against. This is not being "all for not discriminating". It's being "all for bigotry".
And lastly, you example like most of your others, is badly thought out. First, slavic people are the best programmers in the world? You can't just assert things like this. In what programming language? By what criteria? Where is your evidence?
But let's assume that you're correct. If there are atomic bombs placed all over the earth, I want the best programmers, ***NOT BY RACE BUT BY ABILITY!!!!!!!*** to disarm them. I'm not going to shout, "Get me a Slav! Catherine says they're the best programmers!!!" I'm going to ask who the best person is for this job (or more sensibly who the best few peopler so they can confer) and I don't care, not even a little bit, what colour their skin is or what they have between their legs. This is not the same as working for a random IT company.
Again, you're throwing arguments in front of me that have nothing to do with me and it's infuriating. I've never once spoken about equality of outcome. I've never once argued in favour of it. But you've obviously argued with somebody else about it and so you're wasting my time asking me to defend something I'm against.
Anything I can say in response will just be retreating old ground so I'm signing off here. I think we've spent more than enough time presenting our points of view on this. If nothing I"ve said has convinced you, I don't think anything will.
Ugh. Okay, I'm only replying because I can't have you leaving this discussion thinking that this argument actually has any merit. I answered this point in my second reply to you. Again, the source of my frustration is...well, that your arguments are racist and poorly researched. But also that you keep making me repeat myself:
"I am against any hiring practice where people are discriminated against for things that don't affect their practical ability to do the job."
I guess you could make the case, in your gross and sexist carwash, that not being good-looking affected your ability to do the job. Though even there you'd be on shaky ground. Strip clubs hire fat women and women who aren't traditionally good looking and obviously there's a market for them. So it's still discrimination. But I don't see anybody going to court over it.
However, you can't argue that being white or being a "hot Latina" makes you better at IT (and please don't make some disingenuous argument about "WhAt If ThEy NeEd To Be SpAnIsH sPeAkInG?? if that had been your original point, you would have mentioned that in your original argument. Don't try moving the goalposts because you're wrong).
If an IT company, hiring on merit, legitimately finds that the top 100 applicants all happen to be white males, there's no problem with that. That would be equality of opportunity in action.
But as IT is a learned skill, you'd have to believe that there's something inherent to white people, that makes them so superior to all other people, that in a fair application process, not one person of any other colour made the grade.
And don't get me wrong, back in the sixties, that was the case. But it wasn't that black people and women were inferior or incapable. It was that black people and women weren't given the same access to education and training as white men were. So some kind of "action" was required, to "affirm" the abilities of these people who had been historically marginalised. In fact, if you actually learned about these things instead of being guided by your wild, unsupported fears, you'd know that white women have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action:
You know what? You're right. I don't know your motives. But you've spent (an extremely long) time telling me your views. And everything you've said so far suggests that a) you haven't thought about these issues very clearly at all. And b) to the extent you have thought about them, you side firmly with the bigots.
But I might be wrong. So let's find out.
You keep saying you're all for not discriminating, but as far as I can see, you haven't suggested anything that might prevent it other than what is effectively a "wait and see" approach. So let's figure out what you're *for* with regards to ending discrimination with the following question.
Black people were forced, by law, to live as second (or third) class citizens in America. After the end of slavery (where they essentially built the entire country and supported the economy for free), they had no access to resources, jobs or power.
White people, most of whom considered them worthless subhumans, had control of absolutely everything. If you were in charge at that time, what would you have done about that?
Hey Catherine! I think we've already hashed this out pretty well, so I'll just reply to a few of these points:
"Note that there may be a misunderstanding between us here: what I mean by "coercion" is for example forcing people to work with a certain race"
So here again, our disagreement is about which side to focus on.
If, for example, a white employee hears that a black employee has been hired and doesn't like it, *they are free to leave*. They are welcome to lose out on that employment because of their unwillingness to work with a black person. They are not forced to work with a black person. This is also true if the manager hires the man who slept with his wife or killed his dog or who he hates for *any other reason*. He has a choice between sucking it up or leaving. This is right.
What is *not* right, is that a black person should have to lose out on that employment because of another person's bigotry.
As I've said, I believe a person's right to be free from bigotry is greater than another persons' right to inflict it. This seems to be our fundamental disagreement, but I don't think there's any possibility you'll change my mind on this point.
Fundamentally, you're arguing against the civil rights act. It's astonishing to me that you can't see what an unjust argument this is. But if you can't, I don't think I'm going to convince you today.
I was only joking about California, no strawmanning intended😁. My point was simply that your argument made no sense. Businesses that continued to refuse to serve black people would have continued to see business and indeed would likely have seen increased business because all of the racists would have frequented their stores. And in 1960s America, pretty much all white people were racist!! You seem to have no understanding of people's attitudes back then.
The reason legislation was necessary was precisely because these changes weren't just magically going to happen by themselves. There was no other country with a similar racial profile with the exception of South Africa. And guess what; they had to outlaw Apartheid too!!
Racism existed all over the world in the 60s (well, obviously it still exists today, but it was much worse then). My parents and grandparents told me all kinds of stories about the things they experienced. Nobody forced white people to be nice to them. There were no hate speech laws back then. No reliable protection from the police. But at least there was the possibility of them getting an education and a job. The changes in attitude had to happen over time.
But the reason why racial tension in America today is higher than in Europe isn't because of anti-segregation laws, IT'S BECAUSE SEGREGATION AND SLAVERY HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! De-segregation only happened 60-odd years ago in America. Of course there's still tension. But again, the laws "forcing people together" weren't the problem, it was the laws that originally forced people *apart*. Especially as those laws were 100% to the detriment of black people.
If segregation really had offered equal opportunities to black people and white people, and if black people weren't punished for succeeding as they were in Tulsa for example, perhaps things would still be segregated now and everybody would be fine with it. We shall never know.
Lastly, no. I don't believe people are evil by nature. I believe people instinctively resist change. Especially if there's no clear benefit to them. I believe the status quo stays in place unless something is done to alter it. The status quo in 1960s America was that life was pretty good for white people and pretty terrible for black people. I think that situation needed to change as quickly as possible.
The civil rights act was the quickest possible way of making that change because it meant, even with the hatred and challenges they faced, black people gained a degree of protection under the law. They gained new opportunities that had previously been withheld from them. Just waiting until all the racist white people decided to hire black people and let them attend previously white-only schools is just such a ridiculous idea that I don't quite believe you're suggesting it. But I can't see how else to interpret your arguments.
I think you're just repeating the same argument using different words, so I'll put this as plainly as I can:
I am against any hiring practice where people are discriminated against for things that don't affect their practical ability to do the job. This is what equality of opportunity means. I am in support of any law that "forces" people not to be bigots. This was the aim of the civil rights act.
To make your example a little less cartoonish; if an I.T. manager refused to hire anybody but white men, yes, I think he should be forced to hire women and people of other races too, as long as they can do the job (or he should quit if he doesn't want to be "forced" to do his job properly).
There are enough white men in the world that he would never *need* to hire women or people of other races. His business would likely be fine if he was allowed to continue these discriminatory practices (especially back in the 60s). But I think denying people opportunities because of things they can do nothing about is wrong. It's fine if you don't (hopefully you're not in charge of hiring at a company). But I don't see any value in continuing to go in circles on this point.
"You didn't answer the most important question/argument: WHO decides whether that someone is racist/sexist, etc"
If somebody discriminates agains somebody else based on their sex or the colour of that person's skin then they are a sexist/racist. Nobody needs to "decide". That's literally what words mean. In the examples you gave, the manager would obviously be a racist.
Any "victims" who want to take action against an employer for discrimination *have to prove they've been discriminated against*!! The burden is on them, as it should be, to show there's a problem. If they can prove that there is racist or sexist discrimination in court (as has happened on numerous occasions), then what exactly is the problem?
If you think that anti-discrimination laws are equivalent to totalitarianism then I'm not going to waste any more time trying to convince you otherwise. There's obviously a reasonable middle ground that you're refusing to acknowledge, between "you must hire exactly 13% black people and 76% white people" and "it's completely fine if your company is 100% white males". And this was far more relevant during the racially segregated 60s than it is today.
Equality of opportunity means rule of law only when laws are fair to all people. That's what the civil rights act was for!!! To ensure that black people were equal under the law. But that meant that people who had refused to treat black people as equals were now "forced" to. I have no idea (and dwindling interest in) where your fear is coming from.
"How do you know that? How do you know he's not hiring based on merit (Spanish speaking, good looking)? You can't know that."
Okay Catherine, this is getting silly now. This conversation isn't worth taking up days more of either of our time. Yes, sure. The hypothetical man who "only hires hot Latina chicas" *for his IT company* might not actually be racist or sexist. Maybe he's hiring purely on merit. Jesus, what a stupid argument to try to defend.
You're not for not discriminating, you're for an imaginary world where people who discriminate will magically change their ways of their own accord just as quickly as if there was some external pressure to stop being bigots. Meanwhile, all the people who suffer because of their bigotry are supposed to wait patiently and hope it works out. Again, you're laser focused on the bigot's right to be a bigot and seemingly blind to the people who are being discriminated against. This is not being "all for not discriminating". It's being "all for bigotry".
And lastly, you example like most of your others, is badly thought out. First, slavic people are the best programmers in the world? You can't just assert things like this. In what programming language? By what criteria? Where is your evidence?
But let's assume that you're correct. If there are atomic bombs placed all over the earth, I want the best programmers, ***NOT BY RACE BUT BY ABILITY!!!!!!!*** to disarm them. I'm not going to shout, "Get me a Slav! Catherine says they're the best programmers!!!" I'm going to ask who the best person is for this job (or more sensibly who the best few peopler so they can confer) and I don't care, not even a little bit, what colour their skin is or what they have between their legs. This is not the same as working for a random IT company.
Again, you're throwing arguments in front of me that have nothing to do with me and it's infuriating. I've never once spoken about equality of outcome. I've never once argued in favour of it. But you've obviously argued with somebody else about it and so you're wasting my time asking me to defend something I'm against.
Anything I can say in response will just be retreating old ground so I'm signing off here. I think we've spent more than enough time presenting our points of view on this. If nothing I"ve said has convinced you, I don't think anything will.
Ugh. Okay, I'm only replying because I can't have you leaving this discussion thinking that this argument actually has any merit. I answered this point in my second reply to you. Again, the source of my frustration is...well, that your arguments are racist and poorly researched. But also that you keep making me repeat myself:
"I am against any hiring practice where people are discriminated against for things that don't affect their practical ability to do the job."
I guess you could make the case, in your gross and sexist carwash, that not being good-looking affected your ability to do the job. Though even there you'd be on shaky ground. Strip clubs hire fat women and women who aren't traditionally good looking and obviously there's a market for them. So it's still discrimination. But I don't see anybody going to court over it.
However, you can't argue that being white or being a "hot Latina" makes you better at IT (and please don't make some disingenuous argument about "WhAt If ThEy NeEd To Be SpAnIsH sPeAkInG?? if that had been your original point, you would have mentioned that in your original argument. Don't try moving the goalposts because you're wrong).
If an IT company, hiring on merit, legitimately finds that the top 100 applicants all happen to be white males, there's no problem with that. That would be equality of opportunity in action.
But as IT is a learned skill, you'd have to believe that there's something inherent to white people, that makes them so superior to all other people, that in a fair application process, not one person of any other colour made the grade.
And don't get me wrong, back in the sixties, that was the case. But it wasn't that black people and women were inferior or incapable. It was that black people and women weren't given the same access to education and training as white men were. So some kind of "action" was required, to "affirm" the abilities of these people who had been historically marginalised. In fact, if you actually learned about these things instead of being guided by your wild, unsupported fears, you'd know that white women have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action:
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11682950/fisher-supreme-court-white-women-affirmative-action
You know what? You're right. I don't know your motives. But you've spent (an extremely long) time telling me your views. And everything you've said so far suggests that a) you haven't thought about these issues very clearly at all. And b) to the extent you have thought about them, you side firmly with the bigots.
But I might be wrong. So let's find out.
You keep saying you're all for not discriminating, but as far as I can see, you haven't suggested anything that might prevent it other than what is effectively a "wait and see" approach. So let's figure out what you're *for* with regards to ending discrimination with the following question.
Black people were forced, by law, to live as second (or third) class citizens in America. After the end of slavery (where they essentially built the entire country and supported the economy for free), they had no access to resources, jobs or power.
White people, most of whom considered them worthless subhumans, had control of absolutely everything. If you were in charge at that time, what would you have done about that?