From time to time in discussions pertaining to employment, discrimination, race, dating/relationships, or elsewhere, there is a comment that will often arise: *“If they don’t want to (hire, date, associate with) you, then why would you want to (be hired by, date, spend time with) them?”
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While this statement is probably well-intended, and also has a point - after all, if an employer refuses to hire you because of your race, then he or she would be a pretty miserable boss to work for anyway - I think it is flawed because it gives a free pass to the discriminator(s) and essentially excuses their behavior without holding them to account.
By this logic, one could have said to MLK and the black people staging the sit-ins at White-Only restaurants: “If they don’t want to serve you, why would you want to eat at such a restaurant?” It is promoting the idea that the discrimination is OK and that it is the discriminated, not the discriminator, that needs to alter their behavior.
I agree with this advice as it pertains to social groups. If you are black, hanging out with the KKK probably isn’t going to be much fun, even if they had to let you. If you are Gay, chilling out with the Fred Phelps clan may be uncomfortable. In private, you may be as discriminating as you like, I don’t think that it makes you a good person, but it is within your rights.
Where it pertains to being employed by or receiving services from a business that is open for public accommodation the situation is very different. You may want to work for that racist, because he is the only employer in the line of work you wish to be in without having to relocate. You may want to use that homophobe’s services, because they are the only ones within reasonable travel range that can perform the service you desire.
This may not sound like much, but once you allow one business to discriminate, others may follow suit, decreasing the availability of employment or services to unprotected minorities. Business owners can be pressured to refuse minorities, even if they themselves are not bigoted. Anti-discrimination laws protect the non-bigoted business owner in a bigoted environment. “Why’d you let that black guy in?” “The law said I have to.”
So yeah, two completely different situations, that arise for different reasons, have completely different impacts on both minority groups and the majority demographic, and have completely different solutions.
“If they don’t want to serve you at that restaurant, why would you want to eat there?”
“Because I’m hungry.”
“If they don’t want to let you have at that hotel, why would you want to stay there?”
“Because I’ve been driving all day and I want a place to sleep for the night.”
“If they don’t want to hire you, why would you want to work there?”
“Because it’s a good paying job that I’m qualified to do.”
These are simple commercial transactions. Black people want to do them for the same reasons anyone else wants to do them.
We don’t want to legitimize bigotry. If you let one guy refuse to serve blacks at his restaurant, you run the risk of having entire states where blacks can’t dine out. This may be a slippery slope argument…but those are not always invalid.
I don’t mean this thread to be a legal discussion, though - clearly, businesses should not be allowed to legally discriminate and people should be legally clear to discriminate in their social circles. I mean it as a discussion of the attitude itself - that saying, “If they don’t want you, why would you want them?” is not only dismissive of the victim, but also gives a free pass for the discriminator’s behavior.
Suppose a Hispanic child wants to play with a group of white children, but the white children refuse to play with someone of a different skin color - and then when the Hispanic child complains to a parent or teacher, the response is: *“If they don’t want to play with you, why would you want to play with them?” *Among other things, this sort of response or attitude actually encourages division and segregation.
I guess it depends on the exact context of the message. I agree with you that it does, overall, take a permissive attitude toward discrimination.
However… let’s take your example of the children. What’s the kid gonna do, realistically? If the teacher comes over and says “You bad, racist children. You’ll play with Jose or I’m giving you all detention!” then what happens? It isn’t likely that this will be an afternoon of fun and joy for all. You could be forcing the kids to spend an afternoon at Disneyland and they’d still resent it because someone made them.
Within the school environment, that’s exactly what must happen. The teacher must enforce civil behavior.
Out in the wild world, no, that isn’t possible. Jack can have an all-white birthday party for his kid.
But out in the regulated, governed, and civilized world, no, you can’t discriminate. And if that engenders resentment, too bad, boo-hoo. Ammon Bundy resents being arrested, too. There are some things you don’t get to do in this world, even in the land of the free.
It’s not a slippery slope argument when that’s pretty much how things used to actually work. Entire cities and regions used to essentially be “no go” zones for blacks; special books used to be published for black people so they’d know where they could travel safely.
Used to, and recently at that. Hell, I live within an easy drive of several communities that were “sundown towns” within my parents’ lifetimes, maybe even my own.
It is a slippery slope, it’s just that equality is at the top of that slope, and we not only need to strive to continue our way up, we also have to take care not to slip back down.
The OP is talking about a really, really broad collection of circumstances. I agree that the question ‘if they don’t like your race, why do you want to work for them?’ is dumb and has the blatantly obvious answer of ‘because I want a paycheck’. It’s similar for going to a restaurant or other service establishment, ‘because I want to eat’ or ‘because I need to get my car fixed’. Talking about dating or friendship is really different though, and I’m not really sure why it’s being lumped in with the other part.