5 ms·

Answers like this seem bizarrely naive of US history. Before racial discrimination was banned by law, there were entire thousand mile swaths of the country wher

Answers like this seem bizarrely naive of US history. Before racial discrimination was banned by law, there were entire thousand mile swaths of the country where black people couldn't get any level of basic service, couldn't buy a house. Saying it's within the rights of any individual service provider to do this ignores situations where they all think in exactly the same way. Individuals are subject to systematic problems introducing bias into their own thinking. It's not like 1950s southerners all just happened to be racist because, free of any cultural influence, they all individually rationally decided that was the best way to be.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
If there are true public goods that people need to be able transverse their country, then the state should directly provide them, or subsidize private parties to provide them in exchange for the private party entering into a covenant binding them to provide some level of public service. Using the monopoly excuse to categorize broad swathes of private interactions as being within the domain of public institutions (so-called 'public accommodations') is disingenuous, and just a way to get the imposition of a particular set of ideological values on people, by force, through the backdoor. >>couldn't buy a house If people don't want to sell their house to black people, they shouldn't be forced to. Our subjective belief in our moral superiority over someone doesn't grant us a right to use force against them. >>It's not like 1950s southerners all just happened to be racist because, free of any cultural influence, they all individually rationally decided that was the best way to be. When the pro-segregationist ideocracy was repealed in Northern States, and the prohibition on mixed establishments was repealed, it gradually led to private establishments de-segregating, to increase business. Many southern politicians were afraid of the abolition of legally mandated segregation for exactly the same reason. In any case, force is not a justifiable method to change people's attitudes on who they privately associate with.
- mrcrumb1 5y ago
  Am I misreading this or are you implying that if people had absolute rights to discriminate in their private interactions that racism would have disappeared on its own?
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    He's making two claims. First, that use of force is not justifiable in the case of an attempt to rid of racial discrimination (it not being the job of the state/fed). And second, that private, corporate segregation would have eventually gone away do to market demand.
    - otterley 5y ago
      As for the latter claim, that is wrong: if it were true, it would have happened before the Civil Rights Act made segregation illegal -- especially in states where there were no Jim Crow laws after emancipation.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        You're mistaken. The South was rapidly desegregating after the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow laws (e.g. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954). Atlanta's business and cultural elite famously bowed to pressure from Coca Cola in 1964 to honor MLK in a mixed race commemoration, after the latter warned the city's mayor that they would relocate their headquarters if they did not, and all without any legal mandates backed by the state's apparatus of violence. The momentum of desegregation was massive.
        mrcrumb1 5y ago
        Except that Atlanta still has problems with segregation today
        otterley 5y ago
        One example does not a trend make. And there was continuing de facto and de jure segregation both in the South and in non-Southern states until the Civil Rights Act - in restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. And take, for example, exclusionary racial housing covenants, which continued to be written and were enforceable until then—even in California, where slavery was never legal. These covenants (like all covenants that run with the land) bound even non-signers to them; they were intended to be in place forever. Claiming that if things were just left to their own devices, racial harmony and desegregation would eventually result is wishful thinking, and is supported neither by history nor the countless examples of ongoing racism throughout the world where relatively free markets exist and anti-segregation laws do not. Hatred and the ability to subjugate others is often a bigger motivating factor to people than money.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

If there are true public goods that people need to be able transverse their country, then the state should directly provide them, or subsidize private parties to provide them in exchange for the private party entering into a covenant binding them to provide some level of public service. Using the monopoly excuse to categorize broad swathes of private interactions as being within the domain of public institutions (so-called 'public accommodations') is disingenuous, and just a way to get the imposition of a particular set of ideological values on people, by force, through the backdoor. >>couldn't buy a house If people don't want to sell their house to black people, they shouldn't be forced to. Our subjective belief in our moral superiority over someone doesn't grant us a right to use force against them. >>It's not like 1950s southerners all just happened to be racist because, free of any cultural influence, they all individually rationally decided that was the best way to be. When the pro-segregationist ideocracy was repealed in Northern States, and the prohibition on mixed establishments was repealed, it gradually led to private establishments de-segregating, to increase business. Many southern politicians were afraid of the abolition of legally mandated segregation for exactly the same reason. In any case, force is not a justifiable method to change people's attitudes on who they privately associate with.

mrcrumb1 5y ago
Am I misreading this or are you implying that if people had absolute rights to discriminate in their private interactions that racism would have disappeared on its own?
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  He's making two claims. First, that use of force is not justifiable in the case of an attempt to rid of racial discrimination (it not being the job of the state/fed). And second, that private, corporate segregation would have eventually gone away do to market demand.
  - otterley 5y ago
    As for the latter claim, that is wrong: if it were true, it would have happened before the Civil Rights Act made segregation illegal -- especially in states where there were no Jim Crow laws after emancipation.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      You're mistaken. The South was rapidly desegregating after the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow laws (e.g. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954). Atlanta's business and cultural elite famously bowed to pressure from Coca Cola in 1964 to honor MLK in a mixed race commemoration, after the latter warned the city's mayor that they would relocate their headquarters if they did not, and all without any legal mandates backed by the state's apparatus of violence. The momentum of desegregation was massive.
      - mrcrumb1 5y ago
        Except that Atlanta still has problems with segregation today
      - otterley 5y ago
        One example does not a trend make. And there was continuing de facto and de jure segregation both in the South and in non-Southern states until the Civil Rights Act - in restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. And take, for example, exclusionary racial housing covenants, which continued to be written and were enforceable until then—even in California, where slavery was never legal. These covenants (like all covenants that run with the land) bound even non-signers to them; they were intended to be in place forever. Claiming that if things were just left to their own devices, racial harmony and desegregation would eventually result is wishful thinking, and is supported neither by history nor the countless examples of ongoing racism throughout the world where relatively free markets exist and anti-segregation laws do not. Hatred and the ability to subjugate others is often a bigger motivating factor to people than money.