7 ms·

I mean this in the nicest possible way; have you ever faced discrimination based on the colour of your skin, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities or anythin

I mean this in the nicest possible way; have you ever faced discrimination based on the colour of your skin, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities or anything else which is protected by law in most civilised countries? If, like a significant portion of the HN audience, you are straight, white, middle class and male it's probably easier for you to dismiss the right to fair treatment than it might be for individuals in those categories.

kuzimoto 6y ago
I don't agree with discrimination, and would never seek to engage in that myself. With that being said, in the private sector, there really is no "right to fair treatment" with exceptions for anything required by law for affirmative action. By forcing fairness (where a business must provide service to someone it doesn't want to), you are simultaneously removing the freedom of association [0]. [0] While not explicitly stated in the US constitution is argued to be a fundamental human right.
dnautics 6y ago
I have. And you know what, civil rights laws did jack all to protect me. I'm much happier knowing that the people that operate that business were racist jerks (instead of, say, them being forced to serve me and spit in my food, which would be a health concern), and I have dissuaded probably on the order of a hundred people from going to that place, and that was in the era before social media.
- monocasa 6y ago
  Why didn't that strategy work for black people in the 1960s? Or LGBT more recently?
  - dnautics 6y ago
    My claim is it didn't. You don't think black people were discriminated against in private locations well past the 1960s? What absolutely worked in the 1960s, was the banning of government REQUIRING segregation in private entities by law (which by the way, many companies absolutely chafed at, because quite frankly segregating your business is a cost-sinking pain in the ass to arrange and enforce). Nobody is disputing that CRA I and CRA II were much needed reforms.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      If that were the case, then de facto segregation wouldn't be increasing even to this day. Without the government enforcing segregation, people started separating themselves physically. Schools for instance are more segregated than they were in 1975. Segregation wasn't a case of the government pushing these ideas on to unwilling populace.
      - _-david-_ 6y ago
        This could actually be because of forced busing of whites to black schools. Many parents want to send their kid to the best school and were willing to move to avoid their kids going to worse schools. White parents were more likely to be able to afford to move which resulted in them leaving. Minorities tended to be poorer and could not leave and stayed in the areas with the worse schools. Kids who go to worse schools are less likely to get out of poverty so they stayed in the same poor areas and had kids in the same area repeating the cycle. Since schools are typically given money based on property tax it meant that the schools in poor areas tended to receive less funding. There are also issues with teachers getting lower pay if they were in a poorer school. I think these issues are fixed in some states but there are still issues related to this in various states.
        monocasa 6y ago
        The trend has gotten worse even after forced busing wasn't a thing anymore.
- code_sloth 6y ago
  > I have. And you know what, civil rights laws did jack all to protect me. I'm not you, and I can't imagine what your situation is, but I'll bet whatever precious little civil rights laws that are enforced wherever you are has probably has helped you more than you know. Some people thought pandemic response teams are a waste of money, until a pandemic happened, then they realized perhaps there wasn't a pandemic previously because that team was doing their job.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    > I'm not you, and I can't imagine what your situation is That's right. You don't know. > I'll bet whatever precious little civil rights laws that are enforced wherever you are has probably has helped you more than you know. So how can you even make that statement?
    - monocasa 6y ago
      > That's right. You don't know. Why don't you enlighten us instead of playing coy?
      - dnautics 6y ago
        What, do you want specific details? In the mid 80s, My parents took me to a diner, specifically BOB AND EDITH's on columbia pike, in Arlington VA. During the 80s, Asian Americans were very rare in the Washington DC area, and moreover, there was a trade war going on between the US and Japan. It was fashionable at the time for short fiction to feature dystopian US futures where the active currency was the Yen. We arrived at the diner, and sat at the diner for three hours before leaving without having been served. I'm not sure that I would have preferred being served and had my food spat in, which I know happened, because friends in high school told me stories of that kind of stuff happening in the food services industry. What else do you want to know? Do you want to know that while working for the federal government, my Father was basically ignored and had zero work friends except for the only Jewish coworker, and so I grew up in the DC area observing Jewish holidays and attending Bar and Bat Mitvahs? Do you want to know that I was rejected for admission to MIT, despite having gotten AP CS and Calculus scores of 5 in the 9th grade, and placing at the International Science Fair, though someone else at my school (a friend, btw) got lower grades than I did and did get admission to MIT [0]? Do you want to know that my father pressured me to ask a family acquaintance (who happened to be the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, I carpooled with his kid to elementary school) but I told him not to (and thus don't owe anything to the author of the PATRIOT act?) Do you want to know that my father was passed over from promotion "no leadership potential" within that same government unit (the Veterans Administration) despite, in his part-time job with the US Navy, he rose to the rank of captain (O6) and in his last stint was in charge of a group of programmers (despite not being one himself) who implemented the US Navy's first fully-digitized inventory database, ahead of schedule and underbudget? Do you want to know that while working for the VA, he identified that asian american veterans in hawaii, some of whom were medal of honor recipients, disproportionately did not seek the benefits they were entitled to and initiated outreach to them (via his personal desk) make sure they got the care they were entitled to, then was slammed for being racist, despite the fact that his personal outreach also helped black, white, and latino veterans in Hawaii? Is it also ironic that this was brought down by Democrat appointees and he found redress and correction of the situation by a Republican appointee? Do you want to know that my father identified elder neglect and a dangerous health situation (black mold) at a veterans facility (long before the very public scandals at Walter Reed, btw), and instead of having the issue dealt with he was rubber-roomed into a windowless room in the same veteran's facility, exiled across the campus from the main office where decisions were being made? Honestly for all of the secondary effects that systemic racism had on my dad, and indirectly, on the stress it put on our relationship, I at least got some solace when a (white, not that it matters) marine corps colonel that I'd never met before got up at his funeral and gave a fire and brimstone speech about how my dad was a victim of low grade corruption and racism in the federal bureaucracy and in was ultimately a hero in the American spirit, in his military job and more importantly in his activism in his civilian job as a bureaucrat. Look, the primary issue of racism that Asian Americans have to deal with is not the same as the racism that African Americans have to deal with, which is that to get what we want we have to work twice as hard. That's not in the same league as worrying about not coming home because of an asshole cop. But we do face similar situations in the "not being served" at private establishments. And having to work twice as hard, or, for African Americans, "having to code switch", or for both our classes, being taken seriously in leadership roles, is not something any legislation is going to correct. And forgive me for having low trust that this is a problem that government can solve, since quite literally government can't get its own shit straight. [0] there's a good chance thinking "oh there weren't any extracurriculars, this guy just looked like every other Asian American candidate" but also I performed on stage with the Washington Shakespeare company and directed/produced a full-length play.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I have had the same experience (although it was not race-based discrimination). Theoretically there were laws to protect me, but, practically, asserting my rights under those laws would have been too costly and time consuming to be worth it.

kuzimoto 6y ago

I don't agree with discrimination, and would never seek to engage in that myself. With that being said, in the private sector, there really is no "right to fair treatment" with exceptions for anything required by law for affirmative action. By forcing fairness (where a business must provide service to someone it doesn't want to), you are simultaneously removing the freedom of association [0]. [0] While not explicitly stated in the US constitution is argued to be a fundamental human right.

dnautics 6y ago

I have. And you know what, civil rights laws did jack all to protect me. I'm much happier knowing that the people that operate that business were racist jerks (instead of, say, them being forced to serve me and spit in my food, which would be a health concern), and I have dissuaded probably on the order of a hundred people from going to that place, and that was in the era before social media.

monocasa 6y ago
Why didn't that strategy work for black people in the 1960s? Or LGBT more recently?
- dnautics 6y ago
  My claim is it didn't. You don't think black people were discriminated against in private locations well past the 1960s? What absolutely worked in the 1960s, was the banning of government REQUIRING segregation in private entities by law (which by the way, many companies absolutely chafed at, because quite frankly segregating your business is a cost-sinking pain in the ass to arrange and enforce). Nobody is disputing that CRA I and CRA II were much needed reforms.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    If that were the case, then de facto segregation wouldn't be increasing even to this day. Without the government enforcing segregation, people started separating themselves physically. Schools for instance are more segregated than they were in 1975. Segregation wasn't a case of the government pushing these ideas on to unwilling populace.
    - _-david-_ 6y ago
      This could actually be because of forced busing of whites to black schools. Many parents want to send their kid to the best school and were willing to move to avoid their kids going to worse schools. White parents were more likely to be able to afford to move which resulted in them leaving. Minorities tended to be poorer and could not leave and stayed in the areas with the worse schools. Kids who go to worse schools are less likely to get out of poverty so they stayed in the same poor areas and had kids in the same area repeating the cycle. Since schools are typically given money based on property tax it meant that the schools in poor areas tended to receive less funding. There are also issues with teachers getting lower pay if they were in a poorer school. I think these issues are fixed in some states but there are still issues related to this in various states.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        The trend has gotten worse even after forced busing wasn't a thing anymore.
code_sloth 6y ago
> I have. And you know what, civil rights laws did jack all to protect me. I'm not you, and I can't imagine what your situation is, but I'll bet whatever precious little civil rights laws that are enforced wherever you are has probably has helped you more than you know. Some people thought pandemic response teams are a waste of money, until a pandemic happened, then they realized perhaps there wasn't a pandemic previously because that team was doing their job.
- dnautics 6y ago
  > I'm not you, and I can't imagine what your situation is That's right. You don't know. > I'll bet whatever precious little civil rights laws that are enforced wherever you are has probably has helped you more than you know. So how can you even make that statement?
  - monocasa 6y ago
    > That's right. You don't know. Why don't you enlighten us instead of playing coy?
    - dnautics 6y ago
      What, do you want specific details? In the mid 80s, My parents took me to a diner, specifically BOB AND EDITH's on columbia pike, in Arlington VA. During the 80s, Asian Americans were very rare in the Washington DC area, and moreover, there was a trade war going on between the US and Japan. It was fashionable at the time for short fiction to feature dystopian US futures where the active currency was the Yen. We arrived at the diner, and sat at the diner for three hours before leaving without having been served. I'm not sure that I would have preferred being served and had my food spat in, which I know happened, because friends in high school told me stories of that kind of stuff happening in the food services industry. What else do you want to know? Do you want to know that while working for the federal government, my Father was basically ignored and had zero work friends except for the only Jewish coworker, and so I grew up in the DC area observing Jewish holidays and attending Bar and Bat Mitvahs? Do you want to know that I was rejected for admission to MIT, despite having gotten AP CS and Calculus scores of 5 in the 9th grade, and placing at the International Science Fair, though someone else at my school (a friend, btw) got lower grades than I did and did get admission to MIT [0]? Do you want to know that my father pressured me to ask a family acquaintance (who happened to be the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, I carpooled with his kid to elementary school) but I told him not to (and thus don't owe anything to the author of the PATRIOT act?) Do you want to know that my father was passed over from promotion "no leadership potential" within that same government unit (the Veterans Administration) despite, in his part-time job with the US Navy, he rose to the rank of captain (O6) and in his last stint was in charge of a group of programmers (despite not being one himself) who implemented the US Navy's first fully-digitized inventory database, ahead of schedule and underbudget? Do you want to know that while working for the VA, he identified that asian american veterans in hawaii, some of whom were medal of honor recipients, disproportionately did not seek the benefits they were entitled to and initiated outreach to them (via his personal desk) make sure they got the care they were entitled to, then was slammed for being racist, despite the fact that his personal outreach also helped black, white, and latino veterans in Hawaii? Is it also ironic that this was brought down by Democrat appointees and he found redress and correction of the situation by a Republican appointee? Do you want to know that my father identified elder neglect and a dangerous health situation (black mold) at a veterans facility (long before the very public scandals at Walter Reed, btw), and instead of having the issue dealt with he was rubber-roomed into a windowless room in the same veteran's facility, exiled across the campus from the main office where decisions were being made? Honestly for all of the secondary effects that systemic racism had on my dad, and indirectly, on the stress it put on our relationship, I at least got some solace when a (white, not that it matters) marine corps colonel that I'd never met before got up at his funeral and gave a fire and brimstone speech about how my dad was a victim of low grade corruption and racism in the federal bureaucracy and in was ultimately a hero in the American spirit, in his military job and more importantly in his activism in his civilian job as a bureaucrat. Look, the primary issue of racism that Asian Americans have to deal with is not the same as the racism that African Americans have to deal with, which is that to get what we want we have to work twice as hard. That's not in the same league as worrying about not coming home because of an asshole cop. But we do face similar situations in the "not being served" at private establishments. And having to work twice as hard, or, for African Americans, "having to code switch", or for both our classes, being taken seriously in leadership roles, is not something any legislation is going to correct. And forgive me for having low trust that this is a problem that government can solve, since quite literally government can't get its own shit straight. [0] there's a good chance thinking "oh there weren't any extracurriculars, this guy just looked like every other Asian American candidate" but also I performed on stage with the Washington Shakespeare company and directed/produced a full-length play.
pmiller2 6y ago
I have had the same experience (although it was not race-based discrimination). Theoretically there were laws to protect me, but, practically, asserting my rights under those laws would have been too costly and time consuming to be worth it.