# Comparisons to the Civil Rights movement are overused, incorrect, and insulting. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 11, 2013, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105 "2013-12-11T21:25:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/101 "2013-12-13T19:19:12Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > It does if the owners don’t want to serve Asians. > > I mean, if your idea is that a bigoted owner is going to go “Well, shit, I don’t like Group X, but if I refuse their service I lose money. I shall put my objections to one side, for the sake of the cash”, that’s probably true for some. But it’s demonstrably not true for all - for example, the baker in the OP of the original thread. > > People don’t always do what is rationally in their best interest. Racism/homophobia/whichever discriminatory beliefs are inherently irrational in the first place. Let me rephrase what I’m trying to say here. Businesses are profit-seeking enterprises. It will always be more profitable to serve to Asians rather than not to. Sometimes an individual businessman, if he’s an idiot, might choose to put bigotry above profit and refuse to serve Asians, in which case he hurts his own profits. But the entire nature of business pushes against such occurrences. By contrast, with government, there’s no profit motivation for not discriminating against Asians. Politicians seek votes, and in some cases that might lead them to pass discriminatory laws even if they are bigots. If 51% of the population wants a program that discriminates against Asians in college admissions, a politician has motivation to support it. Given how long affirmative action has persisted, it appears that’s happened in some cases. Right now many governments in the USA discriminate against Asians, while no private businesses that I’m aware of choose to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/102 "2013-12-13T19:22:03Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Let me rephrase what I’m trying to say here. Businesses are profit-seeking enterprises. It will always be more profitable to serve to Asians rather than not to. Sometimes an individual businessman, if he’s an idiot, might choose to put bigotry above profit and refuse to serve Asians, in which case he hurts his own profits. But the entire nature of business pushes against such occurrences. Well, maybe not always. If serving Asians offends non-Asian customers, then it might cost the business more in non-Asian dollars that it gains in Asian dollars. It’s certainly something that needs to be considered and addressed. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/103 "2013-12-13T19:23:54Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yawn. Did I ever say “civil rights are really just about those huge, violent oppressions”? In any case, I addressed a similar question about Rosa Parks in post #53. Yes–which was answered in a series of posts going from 54 to 63. It’s a very stupid point to suggest that it’s the violence against which civil rights struggle that define civil rights, not the injustice against which civil rights struggle. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/104 "2013-12-13T19:26:22Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Let me rephrase what I’m trying to say here. Businesses are profit-seeking enterprises. It will always be more profitable to serve to Asians rather than not to. This simply has not always been the case, historically, for Asians or for other racial and ethnic minorities in the United states. There have been many times and places, including in the South before and during the Civil Rights era, where a business owner who served black people faced the possibility of boycotts, and even violence, by whites. Anti-Chinese sentiment in California in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to anti-Chinese violence, boycotts of businesses that employed Chinese workers, and hostility to businesses that attempted to serve Chinese customers alongside white customers. These are just two examples off the top of my head; there have been plenty of others. There have been times and places where bigotry has meant that profit maximization has been well served by discrimination. If that is no longer the case, for Asians or for any other group, it is because of changing social and political values and changing legal constraints. ---
**Author:** ![Falchion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Falchion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Falchion)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/105 "2013-12-13T19:27:42Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > That stupid Dr. King, defining civil rights in such an overused, incorrect, and insulting way. You keep carrying on about this (apparently without any response), so now I’m getting confused. Where do you get this idea that he’s saying that the gay rights movement isn’t _a_ civil rights movement? When one talks about _the_ civil rights movement (with the definite article) I think it’s understood that they’re talking about a specific historical iteration of civil rights movements not that they’re denying that other civil rights movements are civil rights movements (this is not an uncommon convention: the Holocaust, the Crucifixtion, the Prophet, the sacred river Alph – these doesn’t deny that there are other holocausts, crucifixitions, prophets and rivers). The complaint here seems to be that he objects to the comparison between other civil rights movements and _the_ civil rights movement. I take no position on the merits of that complaint, I just don’t see how that the same thing as saying they’re not civil rights movements. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/106 "2013-12-13T19:36:10Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yawn. Did I ever say “civil rights are really just about those huge, violent oppressions”? In any case, I addressed a similar question about Rosa Parks in post #53. Ah, yes. Post 53. Let’s take a look at exactly what you said, in post 53: > [@](#): > > It may be true, as one person said, that the one act of protest by Parks did not get a violent response, but she was acting as part of a broad strategy to confront the violence against southern Blacks. Overall the struggle to desegregate busses in the deep South was spectacularly bloody. Anyone who got involved in the struggle against racial segregation knew that their risk of getting assaulted, imprisoned, or even murdered by government or the Klan was very high. The same is not true for those who are filing lawsuits about cakes today. The situations are not remotely comparable. You know, that sounds _exactly_ like **jsgoddess** ’s description of your position. Did you mean to refer to another post of yours? I know it can be hard to keep track, the way you keep moving the goalposts around. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/107 "2013-12-13T19:42:00Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yawn. Did I ever say “civil rights are really just about those huge, violent oppressions”? In any case, I addressed a similar question about Rosa Parks in post #53. No, you really didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/108 "2013-12-13T19:52:57Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Let me rephrase what I’m trying to say here. Businesses are profit-seeking enterprises. It will always be more profitable to serve to Asians rather than not to. Sometimes an individual businessman, if he’s an idiot, might choose to put bigotry above profit and refuse to serve Asians, in which case he hurts his own profits. But the entire nature of business pushes against such occurrences. Well, setting aside the fact that this argument is blatantly counter-factual, it also fails because it assumes that “profit” is solely defined by money. But money is not, as it happens, the only way humans define value. If I ran a restaurant, and someone offered me a million dollars if I’d start turning away blacks at the door, I would not take it. Why? Because a million dollars is nice, but my self-respect is worth even more. Similarly, I suspect there’s no amount of money I could offer you to, say, renounce Christ. Because you value your faith more than you value money. Racism is, itself, a kind of principle - albeit a pretty evil one. And if we look at the history of segregation, we can see that racists routinely placed their principles above their pocketbooks. Even, as **tom** noted, in places where they were not forced to by the law. And when racism against a minority population is systemic among the majority, such a stance is very unlikely to significantly hurt the business owner’s bottom line, because he’s only turning away a small portion of his potential customers. > [@](#): > > By contrast, with government, there’s no profit motivation for not discriminating against Asians. Politicians seek votes, and in some cases that might lead them to pass discriminatory laws even if they are bigots. If 51% of the population wants a program that discriminates against Asians in college admissions, a politician has motivation to support it. Given how long affirmative action has persisted, it appears that’s happened in some cases. Once again, you’re trying to analogize something that most of the people in this thread support, by comparing it to something else that most people in this thread support. If you want your AA analogy to get any traction, you’re going to first have to convince people that AA is a bad thing. But don’t do it in this thread, as it would be a pretty severe hijack. > [@](#): > > Right now many governments in the USA discriminate against Asians, while no private businesses that I’m aware of choose to do so. Jeez, you can’t think of any private businesses that discriminate against Asians? I wonder why that might be. Is it, perhaps, because _doing so is prohibited by law_? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/109 "2013-12-13T19:57:21Z")
> [@Falchion](#): > > You keep carrying on about this (apparently without any response), so now I’m getting confused. Let me help you out. **ITR** has claimed that comparing laws protecting gay from discrimination in the marketplace to the Civil Rights movement is “incorrect and insulting,” because the Civil Rights movement was about ending government discrimination, not private discrimination. **jsgoddess** has pointed out, repeatedly, that the Civil Rights movement was, in fact, about using the power of government to end private discrimination, and that Dr. King regularly spoke out in favor of precisely the kind of laws (for blacks) that _ITR_\* feels should not be applied to gays. So far, **ITR** has studiously ignored these arguments, as he has ignored any argument that he can’t rebut with a simple “Free markets! Rarr!” response. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/110 "2013-12-13T20:01:16Z")
> [@Falchion](#): > > You keep carrying on about this (apparently without any response), so now I’m getting confused. Where do you get this idea that he’s saying that the gay rights movement isn’t _a_ civil rights movement? He’s saying that a business having to serve you is a “supposed” civil right that he doesn’t agree with. Here was my question: > [@](#): > > So, do you have problems with the law falling on the same baker for a refusal to bake a cake for the same black man? Here are his words again: > [@](#): > > Well I think it might as well be; what I’m against is anyone who objects to a supposed “civil right” to force a baker to bake a cake being compared, directly or indirectly, to politicians and white supremacists from the segregated South. I think that if the government wanted to make life better for Blacks or anyone else, its resources would be better spent fighting violent crime, improving education, and building infrastructure, rather than managing the schedule of bakers for any reason (except food safety). So in response to the question jsgoddess asked: yes. Though I’m sure some people will try to misrepresent what I’m saying, I’ve already made clear that I’m opposed to any use of violence to remove blacks or any other group from any public place, as happened 60 years ago. But that’s a different question from whether a black or any other group should be able to legally force a baker to make a cake. Regarding that, “The merchants will manage commerce the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves.” The market would react swiftly to a baker who refused to serve Blacks without any need for the law to be involved. I just showed that MLK, the person he name checked, disagrees with him, and we have a long history of the word being used to cover things like businesses. It isn’t a “supposed civil right.” It’s a civil right. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/111 "2013-12-13T20:08:03Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Let me help you out. > > **ITR** has claimed that comparing laws protecting gay from discrimination in the marketplace to the Civil Rights movement is “incorrect and insulting,” because the Civil Rights movement was about ending government discrimination, not private discrimination. **jsgoddess** has pointed out, repeatedly, that the Civil Rights movement was, in fact, about using the power of government to end private discrimination, and that Dr. King regularly spoke out in favor of precisely the kind of laws (for blacks) that _ITR_\* feels should not be applied to gays. To be fair, it was _also_ about using the power of government to end government discrimination. He’s not wrong about that. It’s already been pointed out that it was state law, not a racist owner, that segregated Montgomery’s buses, and a city ordinance, not racist proprietors, that segregated the businesses of Albany, Georgia. A strong case can be made that such mandatory discrimination is worse than private discrimination, because as **ITR** argues, it can’t be escaped by shopping around. This same uniformity, however, means that once the law _is_ changed, the public discrimination is ended in one fell swoop. By their nature, private entites are more numerous and varied and resistant to uniformity. ---
**Author:** ![Falchion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Falchion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Falchion)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/112 "2013-12-13T20:20:33Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > He’s saying that a business having to serve you is a “supposed” civil right that he doesn’t agree with. > > I just showed that MLK, the person he name checked, disagrees with him, and we have a long history of the word being used to cover things like businesses. It isn’t a “supposed civil right.” It’s a civil right. Perhaps I take too stingy a view of “civil rights.” To me, they’re merely enforceable legal rights. Advocating to expand them (or to enforce them) makes a civil rights movement. Likely becuase of “the” civil rights movement, the term has become imbuded with a sense of moral righteousness, that just confuses things. In that sense, I suppose, an unrealized civil right is a “supposed” civil right (contrast that with seeking enforcement of existing civil rights). But anyway, I understood the argument that “the” civil rights movement is somehow sui generis among civil rights movements (and that comparisons thereto were unhelpful or insulting to the people who participated in it). I’m not taking a position on that claim, I just comprehend it. What I was unclear on is how that position meant that other civil rights movments weren’t civil right movements. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/113 "2013-12-13T20:21:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Let me rephrase what I’m trying to say here. Businesses are profit-seeking enterprises. It will always be more profitable to serve to Asians rather than not to. Sometimes an individual businessman, if he’s an idiot, might choose to put bigotry above profit and refuse to serve Asians, in which case he hurts his own profits. But the entire nature of business pushes against such occurrences. As already pointed out, you’re incorrect to simply state that it will “always” be more profitable to serve all customers rather than some; if your other clients also don’t approve of serving Group X people, then they might not come to your store if you do serve them. There’s also the matter of businesses wherein you have a limited amount of service that you can actually provide. If my bakery is so successful that the limit at which i’m able to service doesn’t hit demand, I could choose to not service certain people and yet not lose money, since there’s demand elsewhere. The “entire nature of business” doesn’t demand “highest possible profits, all the time”. Businesses can survive without serving all people; again, as example, look at the baker in the other thread. It’s not necessarily even a matter of picking racism over profit, but even if it was, _businesses can still do that and yet not go out of business_. Businesses can still do that and yet make a profit, even! More to the point of the argument you’re trying to make, businesses can do that and yet not be forced by the market to cater to all customers. > [@](#): > > By contrast, with government, there’s no profit motivation for not discriminating against Asians. Politicians seek votes, and in some cases that might lead them to pass discriminatory laws even if they are bigots. If 51% of the population wants a program that discriminates against Asians in college admissions, a politician has motivation to support it. Given how long affirmative action has persisted, it appears that’s happened in some cases. If 51% of the population wants a local business to discriminate against Asians, then it’s more profitable for a business to seek\* that \*custom. The profit motivation doesn’t just go one way. > [@](#): > > Right now many governments in the USA discriminate against Asians, while no private businesses that I’m aware of choose to do so. But you have an example of a business discriminating against gay people. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/114 "2013-12-13T20:22:49Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > A strong case can be made that such mandatory discrimination is worse than private discrimination, because as **ITR** argues, it can’t be escaped by shopping around. This same uniformity, however, means that once the law _is_ changed, the public discrimination is ended in one fell swoop. By their nature, private entites are more numerous and varied and resistant to uniformity. I’m not sure that case can be made, in situations where voting is allowed, since everyone’s equal at the ballotbox, whereas not everyone’s equal in the bankbook. The “shopping around” threat is a lot more meaningful if you’re not living in a ghettoized community. In any case, it’s not a contest as to which is worse, since both are pretty bad, and it’s possible to use the power of the law to stop both, and the Civil Rights (capital letters) movement worked to protect civil rights (lowercase letters) from infringement from government and commercial interests alike. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/115 "2013-12-13T20:27:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Right now many governments in the USA discriminate against Asians, while no private businesses that I’m aware of choose to do so. Really? What are they doing? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/116 "2013-12-13T20:31:01Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > To be fair, it was _also_ about using the power of government to end government discrimination. He’s not wrong about that. It’s already been pointed out that it was state law, not a racist owner, that segregated Montgomery’s buses, and a city ordinance, not racist proprietors, that segregated the businesses of Albany, Georgia. Sure, but the point is, King opposed both kinds of discrimination, and favored using the government to address private discrimination. A law protecting black customers from discrimination by shopkeepers is precisely the sort of legislation he championed. So the comparison is not incorrect - it’s directly on point, with the sole difference being one is about race, and the other is about sexual orientation. And, therefore, it’s only insulting if you think that being compared to homosexuals is insulting - which is, itself, a bigoted argument. Not that I’m saying **ITR** is a bigot - his position in this thread appears to not be overtly homophobic, but rather based on a fundamental ignorance of the history of both the Civil Rights movement and the Gay Rights movement, the realities of segregation in both the Jim Crow south and the “enlightened” north, and the basic economic realities of market that’s made up by human beings, and not Vulcans. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/117 "2013-12-13T20:33:31Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m not sure that case can be made, in situations where voting is allowed, since everyone’s equal at the ballotbox, whereas not everyone’s equal in the bankbook. The “shopping around” threat is a lot more meaningful if you’re not living in a ghettoized community. Shopping around is at least _possible_. In the absence of laws forbidding it, members of the discriminated-against community can even [open shops of their own](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1188/how-can-korean-americans-afford-to-start-so-many-grocery-stores) to cater to their community if no one else will. Conversely, at the ballot box, if the minority is sufficiently outnumbered by those that desire segregation, there’s _no_ chance of avoiding the legal discrimination, even if there’s equality in voting. > [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > In any case, it’s not a contest as to which is worse, since both are pretty bad, and it’s possible to use the power of the law to stop both, and the Civil Rights (capital letters) movement worked to protect civil rights (lowercase letters) from infringement from government and commercial interests alike. Agreed on all counts. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/118 "2013-12-13T20:55:19Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Really? What are they doing? Implementing affirmative action, [which hurts Asian American students](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/03/elite). ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/119 "2013-12-13T21:00:15Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Sure, but the point is, King opposed both kinds of discrimination, and favored using the government to address private discrimination. A law protecting black customers from discrimination by shopkeepers is precisely the sort of legislation he championed. So the comparison is not incorrect - it’s directly on point, with the sole difference being one is about race, and the other is about sexual orientation. And, therefore, it’s only insulting if you think that being compared to homosexuals is insulting - which is, itself, a bigoted argument. Ok, understood, and thanks for clarifying. I took you to mean that the movement was only, or predominantly, about ending voluntary private discrimination, when it fact it wasn’t. I agree that the comparison is on point. > [@Miller](#): > > Not that I’m saying **ITR** is a bigot - his position in this thread appears to not be overtly homophobic, but rather based on a fundamental ignorance of the history of both the Civil Rights movement and the Gay Rights movement, the realities of segregation in both the Jim Crow south and the “enlightened” north, and the basic economic realities of market that’s made up by human beings, and not Vulcans. I think he’d be on firmer ground if he’d avoided the gay-rights comparison altogether, the OP included some other issues (“everything from voter ID laws to Food Stamps”…), but the discussion has centered exclusively on gay rights, precisely because it is such an apt comparison. There’s probably some tipping point, some combination of a minimum percentage of population that sincerely promotes segregation/discrimination, how many of them are in positions to enforce it as a cultural norm, how centralized the enforcement is, and how open the society is to the flow of information and outside influences. Michael Macy, Damon Centola, and Robb Willer have studied “unpopular norms” - positions that few people in a group actually believe in, but almost all are willing to participate in - and modeled how they might come about in a computer simulation, as well as [some live-person experiments](http://dtserv2.compsy.uni-jena.de/__C12579DF0051D127.nsf/0/A5B82660113E76FBC12579E40057A216/$FILE/Willer_2009_FalseEforcementOfUnpopularNorms.pdf). What they found was that the density of true believes was key, if they were spread out rather than concentrated, the idea wouldn’t take hold. Also, the more long-distance connections between different neighborhoods there were, the less likely the false-consensus effect that everyone else believed the idea was to take root. Thus, there are some cases where market forces will fail in the face of irrational unpopular norms of discrimination, and other cases where shame and stigma - and a loss of business - will prevent any sort of large-scale private discrimination. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105/120 "2013-12-13T21:03:33Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Implementing affirmative action, [which hurts Asian American students](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/03/elite). > [@](#): > > Much of the debate about affirmative action historically has focused on the advantages given to those from some minority groups. But the research in No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal may also be of particular interest to advocates for Asian students. Many such advocates and guidance counselors who serve those students have charged in recent years that elite colleges have de facto higher standards for Asian applicants. Is the Asian disadvantage of 3.4 points on the ACT and 140 points on the SAT evidence to bolster that claim? > > Espenshade said in an interview that he does not think his data establish this bias. He noted that while his formulas are notably more complete than typical test score comparisons by race and ethnicity, he doesn’t have the “softer variables,” such as teacher and high school counselor recommendations, essays and lists of extracurricular activities. It is possible, he said, that such factors explain some of the apparent SAT and ACT disadvantage facing Asian applicants. > > At the same time, he said he understood that these numbers would certainly not reassure Asian applicants or those who believe they are suffering discrimination. > > “I understand the worry of Asian students, but do I have a smoking gun? No,” he said. I can see why you elected to just link a cite and not quote the section you were referring to. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comparisons-to-the-civil-rights-movement-are-overused-incorrect-and-insulting/676105.md?page=7)