SDMB doesn’t allow embedded images. Posting a link just doesn’t have the same effect.
If I might interject a personal example, after seeing the movie Knocked Up, I related to a colleague, who worked at a a Providence night club called Level 2, a scene in which a bouncer tells one of the characters that his club has an unofficial quota on how many blacks were allowed in the club. I was shocked when Anthony said, “that’s how lots of clubs are. If they let too many in they scare off the white folks and they’re the ones who always start trouble.”
So, at least the scenario you’re positing happens in some cases to this day.
I was once stranded in Vidor after sundown. This was about 10 years ago and we took a wrong turn on a rafting trip on the Neches river. After disembarking, we could not find the place we had parked our car. I am Mexican American, and was with one other friend who is white. We were helped by a local we met at the first place we found (a restaurant), and I did not get any racist vibe from the town. We found our car with his help, and went on our way with no trouble.
I must have missed the news articles where Chik-Fil-A and Duck Dynasty refused to let a minority group eat their food or watch their television show respectively. Because that was the protection the OP was talking about: the prevention from using something the general public is allowed to use.
What you are talking about is the free market policing the thoughts of the public face of the corporation for views that are wholly unrelated to the service it provides. The free market doesn’t nor should it affect those views unless they are outrageously extreme.
Which do you think is more extreme: “These people should be put to death” or “I do not wish to serve food to these people” ?
To me, the first is more extreme, and people who are unwilling to stand up against that seem unlikely to stand up against the second. Is there any reason to believe otherwise?
As Tom Lehrer might sing
Discriminate!
Never seat the ones you hate
Don’t let a black hand touch a plate
So discriminate, discriminate, discriminate
But always call it please, property rights.
And you don’t consider the ideas they espoused to “extreme”?:dubious:
Ok, serious question then.
What would you consider to be extreme statements to make about blacks or gays?
Very nice.
I was just thinking that there are some people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings and I hate people like that. 
Your examples are somewhat different from what Title II covers, and from what the OP was about.
The idea is that businessmen want to make money, and they don’t particularly care what color the guy who gives them money is. Thus, if you’re selling food at a restaurant, it’s in your best interest to welcome anyone who can pay.
Chik-fil-a doesn’t turn away gay customers, they’ll sell anyone a chicken sandwich who can pay for it.
Duck Dynasty is a TV show, with a different business model. They don’t get money from customers directly, they get it from advertisers. They can’t refuse service to anyone with a TV set and a cable box.
Alienating potential viewers will piss off advertisers (as it creates a negative association with their brand), and lower ratings mean less money from those advertisers. As it happens, Duck Dynasty ratings are currently dropping sharply, just the sort of market consequence for irrational discrimination you’re saying doesn’t happen. That doesn’t mean the show will go off the air, necessarily, but it’s making less money for A&E, and I’ll bet network execs will now make it a priority to have their on-air talent refrain from anti-gay remarks.
The business of renting property is also a different business model. Rather than a single transaction, it’s an ongoing relationship. The landlord’s goal is a reliable series of rent payments, with a minimum of costs or damage to the property. The tighter the rental market (that is, the fewer units available), the more picky the landlord can be. According to the report, the Denver market is very tight:
This is totally unlike the restaurant / gas station / movie theater industries, and other public accomodations covered under Title II, because refusing to rent to a black person, Hispanic person, or family with children needn’t cost the landlord a penny. The market is tight, so another renter is easily had, and it’s not like he can rent the unit twice the way a restaurant can sell two hamburgers. If he believes that a white, single person is more likely to be able to pay the rent every month, not bother him about repairs, and leave the unit undamaged, he’s actually trying to maximize his income by discriminating, as opposed to sacrificing income for the sake of discriminating.
By the way, per that report, 91% was the chance of a Hispanic buyer facing at least one of the various possible types of housing discrimination, not the total figure for everyone. For African Americans, it was 67%, for families with children, it was 73%.
Anyone who ever said that, due to market pressure, no merchant anywhere would refuse to service to anyone, is wrong. Some people might put their bigotry above their profit margin. Some might lose more business from the locals by welcoming some maligned group than what they’d gain from the extra customers. But, for the most part, businessmen are indeed out to make money, and will take it from anyone.
Nowadays, most business owners are probably like this. But, as shown in our history, many business owners put their biases and bigotries as a higher priority than profit. Without the protections of the CRA, like-minded bigoted business owners can band together with like-minded customers, and essentially create minority-free zones of business, if they so wish.
You might not believe that there remain enough racists to do such a thing, but I’m not nearly so confident. I think we’ve come a long way, but not nearly far enough. That thriving restaurant in Enid is just an example, and I think it’s likely that there are many, many more such restaurants that have not received such attention.
The question, though, is one of scope. What made the CRA necessary (and the reason I support it despite my general views on property and individual rights) was both the government role in creating the problem and the fact that the number of discriminatory businesses froze out entire populations from large areas. I have trouble believing (but, of course, cannot prove either way) that a repeal of the CRA would create that degree of problem.
So the issue is: how do we deal with a couple of racist restaurants in a town? There are obviously some people on this board who think that the government should not only shut down any business that discriminates, but that the government should shut down any business owned by people with “dangerous” thoughts. That’s one approach. But our default is to permit people to serve (or not serve) whomever they wish, then it seems to me like you need a stronger public danger.
That is, it would be obviously foolish to claim that the “market” is going to force every restaurant to serve everybody. The market-theory is that everyone will be served somewhere. The CRA was justified becuase there was ample evidence to suggest that that would not be the case.
As I posted above in the thread, CRA today is like using a bunker-buster to drive in a nail.
You and Terr have both said this. Please post at least two (as you used the word “people”) people on this board who have claimed that the government should shut down businesses owned by people with “dangerous” thoughts, but don’t take any bad actions. You wouldn’t be strawmanning - I’m sure you’re a much more upstanding, honest person than that - so I know you can produce this cite no problem.
I don’t think it would be to that degree either. But it would still be significant, I believe.
I’ll go on record saying I oppose the government take any action whatsoever based one someone’s thoughts alone. In fact, I don’t know any liberals who think we should shut down businesses because of opinions held by the business owners, no matter what the opinions are. I really couldn’t care less what anyone thinks – I only care about what people do. So I oppose that approach, and I don’t think too many people support it.
This is not an apt analogy. A bunker buster bomb has only one level of effect, and as you suggest, in the case of a single nail that level of effect is excessive. But the CRA isn’t restricted to a single level of effect. It can bring an action targeted against a small violation, or ramp up the level if the problem is more heinous or widespread. Having the CRA remain available doesn’t mean it is being used constantly, or against inappropriate targets. It just means it remains available should need arise. Why then remove this less-often used but still potentially useful tool from our toolbox? It isn’t causing any problem by virtue of being infrequently employed.
Many more were forced to do so by law, bear in mind.
[QUOTE=iiandyiiii]
Without the protections of the CRA, like-minded bigoted business owners can band together with like-minded customers, and essentially create minority-free zones of business, if they so wish.
You might not believe that there remain enough racists to do such a thing, but I’m not nearly so confident. I think we’ve come a long way, but not nearly far enough. That thriving restaurant in Enid is just an example, and I think it’s likely that there are many, many more such restaurants that have not received such attention.
[/QUOTE]
My heart doesn’t bleed for the guy who dreams of a whites-only movie theater and can’t have one, but I do like my government intervention to be as minimal as possible to achieve the desired result. We tolerate racial and religious discrimination in friendships, private clubs, things like that. A few business scattered here and there practicing discrimination won’t bring the republic to its knees, but then again I am completely unmotivated to urge my Senators and Representative to change the law (One of my Senators is Rand Paul, who’s intellectually opposed to Title II already, as it happens, but says he has no interest in revisiting the law).
It’s difficult to predicate. One reason to keep the CRA, I suppose, is that if you’re right the consequences are much greater.
I don’t intend to impute that position to you. And I don’t think it’s a “liberal” or “conservative” issue. “Thoughts” may be an exageration, but it strikes me as a fairly common occurance for people to demand government action against a business or organization based on the opinions of the business owner. Some of the time, it’s a fair issue (for example, it’s not clear to me that the fellow in Enid actually refuses to serve “freaks,” but the question becomes does the fact that he publicly doesn’t want their patronage create a sufficent problem). But I do not think it is uncommon for people to demand government action to punish businesses based on the views (unrelated to the operation of the business) of people involved. (Some of the problem, of course, is the assumption by a bizarre number of people that the government is supposed to control everything from what’s on TV to what people care about).
That doesn’t strike me as common at all.
It seems clear, at the very least, that he turns away people because they’re disabled, which I believe violates the law.
It is worse than that. When a very high proportion of your potential customers are bigots, not being a bigot might hurt your profits. Your customers will start leaving when one of “those” people come in and get seated.
Anti-discrimination laws not only keep bigoted owners from acting bigoted, they give non-bigoted owners cover to act on their ethical principles without the free market punishing them.
In fact, if you believe free markets work when there are rational economic actors, bigots are not rational by definition, and so strike at the very basic principles of the free market.
Perhaps it’s my natural skepticism, but the article suggests that there is a dispute between the owner and the complainant over whether or not the fellow was barred becuase of some legitimate reason or becuase he used a wheelchair. I tend to take a fairly skeptical eye to claims that look like they’re potentially related to a lawsuit (from both sides). So I don’t know that it’s clear. What is clear is that he dislikes homosexuals and people on welfare and that he is quite outspoken about it.
Of course, we’re more likely to believe that someone who doesn’t want certain people in his establishment is going to turn them away and it’s certainly likely that public pronouncements would have the effect of discouraging certain customers. It may well be that we want the CRA to prevent him from declaring that he doesn’t want blacks in his restaurant (even if he says he would serve them if they came in).