hsrob said:
I understanding what you are saying and agree, you can't legislate for people to be courteous and nice to those that they don't, for whatever reason, want to interact with.
I think the problem with this is assuming that those on the receiving end will always have a choice in this matter. This may be manageable to an extent in our social lives but we have much less control of this both in the workplace and in places of commerce. This is particularly true of people living in small towns, where for example, there might only be one bakery.
Simply speaking I think there is always risk in providing legislative support for predjudice. Even though I believe we should stop short of forcing commerce, I think there has to be some protection for minorities in these instances. One would hope that in most situations common sense and market forces would prevail, with people avoiding service in establishments where they are likely to be unwelcome, and subsequent adverse commercial/financial impact for those businesses that openly support bigotry.
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Yes I understand there are instances when a company would have a monopoly, but in today's world that is much less an issue (we can buy from further away with better shipping services and online shopping.) If I were to buy a wedding cake, even in a small town, I have a plethora of options. If I were to be married (which I don't plan to ever be) I'd like to be on very good terms with the people making the food at said wedding as well as the person creating the cake. It is something very personal, and I want everybody who is invested in it to do their best job.
I can think of very few scenarios in today's world where somebody can get away with discriminating (if it were legal), prevent another person from receiving a good, and also not induce a huge cost themselves. For example, let's say a grocery store is the only grocery store in an urban black neighborhood (for example an urban neighborhood in the large city near me only has one grocery store, and it just recently opened.) Now let's say that grocery store decided to discriminate against black people. The consequence is that they'll go out of business, because an overwhelming number of their consumers can't do business with them (90% of people who live in this neighborhood are black.) To prevent said consequence the owner will either sell said grocery store to somebody open to doing business with black people, or he/she will start selling to black people. Now let's say black people were a 20% of the population. If they restricted the sale of their goods to said people, then they'll be losing out on a lot of revenue, and that leaves the market open for some other group to come in and take over. You'll find that large companies won't discriminate because they wish to expand into very diverse areas, and they'll be limiting options. They benefit from an economies of scale and will gain more power if they support minority groups. Small companies in turn won't discriminate because they are afraid large companies will gain market power in their area and put them out of business not only because they get the minority support, but also because they can have cheaper prices which will entice the majority, due to higher revenue. So even in the monopoly outright discrimination is not desirable. Now we can get into the details of charging different prices to different groups of people, and that makes things a bit more fuzzy, but overall we are talking about a very small number of markets affecting a very small number of a minority population, when all these circumstances are accounted for.
Now there is an instance in which the market likely won't work at all. This is when a government gets involved and gives special market priveleges to the racist/homophobic organization. Say, for example, the local zoning board prevents a non-discriminatory store from entering their local market because they agree with the policies of the racist/homophobic store and want its monopoly status to push minorities/non-heterosexuals out. This is a big no-no and I support any effort to prevent this, just like I support the civil rights act preventing state government from mandating discrimination.
It says a lot that the southern states needed to mandate discrimination, to be honest. If the most racist areas in the U.S needed their racists to be subsidized by the state by mandating everybody to discriminate, then it says a lot about how much it costs, even in that context, to exclude certain groups of people from purchasing your goods or charging different prices/providing different services to said people. To discriminate and to run a successful business are usually competing goals.
