Thats making the argument that because it hasnt been entirely eliminated, the legislation has had no effect at all.
Bit of a reach in my view.
Otara
Then likewise, you can use that same reasoning to legislate affirmative-action & anti-discrimination dating even though it will not entirely eliminate our preference for certain races.
Well only if you ignore the potential ‘ends justifies the means’ issues or the possibility of other unanticipateds or anticipated consequences occurring outside of the issue you’re trying to adress.
Otara
Read my second post in this thread. There are relatively unobtrusive ways to partly counteract mate racism, both through government action and social pressure. Yet there’s no move to promote these policies.
Dating-marriage and employment are very different spheres of human behavior. This is a widely recognized principle in US law and the common law tradition. That’s why we have separate family courts to deal with some of these issues.
Now if you are proposing the application of employment law to dating and marriage across the board - 8 hour shifts, lunch breaks, the right to unionize, sexual harassment, personnel files, then you might have the basis for bringing EEO law into the dating market as well.
That would be batshit fucking insane, but hey, make your proposals.
To the extent that it’s socially undesirable to be racist in general, I disagree that there isn’t at least some social pressure to counteract “mate racism”. It’s less socially acceptable to be against interracial dating, for one thing. The number of people being killed, jailed, disowned, or distanced for being with some of another race has declined over the decades. People still have their negative opinions about the attractiveness of other peoples, but they are probably less vocal about it.
The problem with drawing comparisons to the anti-discrimination labor policies is there is no way to enforce “equal opportunity dating”. If someone was fired at work and they suspected racial discrimination was involved, they can make a case to the Department of Labor and compel that business to keep them employed. But if someone is rejected by a prospective dating partner, by what means can you force someone to be with someone that they don’t want to be with? An employer doesn’t have to actually like to their employees in order to employ them, but a romantic relationship means nothing if that emotional and physical connection isn’t there.
Eliminating racial preference filtering in dating sites doesn’t prevent people from using race as a dating criteria. It doesn’t encourage it either. It just gives people a choice. And as I said earlier, that choice can swing in both directions.
Is that people have to choose their own mates, for whatever reasons seem good to them. That is all, there is no need for further discussion.
From the thread over here: Mac computers - is it mostly just image and status?
Sounds like babies, to say nothing of Mac owners, could be born racists.
We have a situation. Why should I defend it when no one has presented a reason to challenge it?
Discrimination in housing and employment and retail impedes a person’s ability to survive by impinging on whether they can earn a living or find shelter or puchase goods. Discrimination in dating only limits (to a narrow extent) one’s own choice of life partners and it is a self-imposed limitation.
No one but me is harmed by my refusal to date Lower Slobovians. If you refuse to hire me because I am not a Lower Slobovian, you are limiting my opportunity for income. If you do not want to work with Lower Slobovians, then go live in a place where there are few of them or become self-employed.
You also have to remember racism shouldn’t be confused with ethnic or national traditons.
For instance, I’ve worked with several Korean (having lived in the US for awhile) ladies who have told me they can’t stand Korean (as in women from Korea). Why? Not because of race obviously but because they say, the Korean women from Korea think they are too Americanized and on the flip side, the Americanized Koreans don’t like the way the traditions of the old country rule over the Korean women recently from Korea.
I’ve heard the same thing with Latinos and Filipinos as well
You also have to realize, racism isn’t an all or nothing thing. Despite claims in the 70s as “there’s no such thing as a little racist,” that’s just wrong. There are degrees of racism.
I am a gay white male and I can say “I’m not attracted to Asians.” OK that’s racist, but I am not. In fact I’m sure that given enough Asians I’d find some I do find attractive. Then again, I like black men, which can also be said as I’m racist. But then again, there are lots of black men I don’t find attractive.
I grew up around blacks so that probably is the reason for the attraction, but racism isn’t just about how you feel, it’s about what you do.
As a gay male or any minority you learn to understand people’s fears of you or hatred of you. You don’t have to like me, you can even dislike me because I’m gay. I don’t care. As long as you treat me with the same politeness that you’d treat anyone else, that’s good enough. You don’t have to be my friend, or pal or even respect me as long as you do me no harm, I don’t care.
This is still arbitrary and inconsistent.
In your example of dating, the Lower Slobovian is also harmed because of the loss of companionship and/or financial security of a lifelong partner. By refusing to to date the Slobovian, you limit his/her opportunity for the intimacy provided by the support of another human being. The Lower Slobovian doesn’t want to be lonely and yet s/he’s being penalized by his ethnicity which s/he can’t control.
This was actually touched on in the Supreme Court’s decison in “Loving vs. Virginia”, the case where bans on interracial marriage was overturned by unanimous decison. Here is part of that decision:
“Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”
Note the part I put in bold.
I don’t think the interpretation of today’s laws is in dispute.
I believe the spirit of the thread is to examine the moral framework we’ve applied to dating vs employment (regardless of what the law currently says.)
Either we’ve put an artificial constraint on businesses hiring, or we conveniently let discrimination take place for dating because it happens to suit us. Either way, discrimination is discrimination and it looks inconsistent.
That “artificial constraint on businesses hiring” is called “the law,” it is applied to **public **(large/medium) businesses; we don’t/can’t apply it to people’s **private **interactions.
That’s why we have time magazine, and private discourse to parse out these important issues. The inconsistency does not exist for those who can identify/separate **public **and **private **issues.
This. I would never have dated a black girl… until I did. Just as I would never have dated a girl who was taller than me, until I did.
In any case, the government has no business legislating sexual preference. Tbhis is in no way analogous to legislating equal employment or educational opprtunity.
I am about to be half of an interracial marriage. Several potential officiants and venue reps were uncomfortable with it, and even my partner (who never sees racism) was aware of it.
The public vs private is just another smokescreen that can be applied inconsistently through the clever use of language.
Is the parents’ decision about the subject matter being fed into their child’s brain a public or private decision? It can be interpreted either way. However, compulsory public schooling has made it the public’s business. There are all sorts of rationale for this, “an educated populace is better for the country blah blah blah.”
Yes, that is fine but the same type of language and connect-the-dots rationale can be used for dating: A reduction in lonely people will increase the productivity of the workforce leading to higher GDP – therefore, dating discrimination must be curtailed by the state. It must become the concern of the public.
We can make anything that is “private” a “public” concern if we wanted to. It is not objectively possible to put an activity in one category vs the other. Look at all the debates about abortion. Is it a public or private decision?
It’s not through language, people have a concrete concept of private matters and public matters. Public matters can be legislated; and will be, if there is a need for it.
What is taught in school, is a public matter; what school to go to, is a private one (you’re even free to home-school). Everyone seems agree with this interpretation.
That is not a reasonable, accurate, nor logically straightforward public concern.
We **can **make anything into public matters. In fact, many authoritarian countries (like Saudi Arabia) tend to put a lot of issues in the public sphere since it effects the “umma.”
That’s why we have time magazine, and private discourse to parse out these important issues like abortion (or as a historic example: slavery). The inconsistency does not exist for those who can identify/separate public and private issues.
You’re using the same rhetorical technique as tomndebb: you’re simply restating the status quo. I’m not disputing what the status quo is. Having everyone nod in agreement what that laws currently say doesn’t help dissect what moral framework (if any) we are using.
Many folks don’t agree with this interpretation. I won’t sidetrack this thread about education so I’ll just leave it at that. The relevant point is that there is disagreement about what is private vs public. Private vs Public is not objective.
Don’t take my shitty example literally. The ingenuity of society to invent a connect-the-dots rationale for political purposes will exceed my wordsmithing skills. You have to use some imagination here.
Isn’t that what we’re trying to discuss in this thread?
There was the same type of “racist” behavior going on before the internet. Just because it is easier to quantify doesn’t mean it should be regulated. Besides, unless you address the actual issue, you are not going to get people to enter into interracial relationships…they will just meet people off-line instead of on-line.
I’m highlighting a clean distinction between how we legislate **public **and **private **matters.
Education is a public sphere (but you are free to make it private) I haven’t heard of major disagreements with this interpretation (minus nutjob libertarians)
I can’t stretch my imagination enough to make the point that private relations can/should be legislated. You are gonna have to get a clear, straight-forward and logical example to convince me that i should consider this a rational issue.
Yes, but you have not given a good example of a situation that would give the government powers to legislate romances.