You are welcome to interpret the information however you choose. But this defense is like saying "But I have a gay friend."

I have lots of thoughts on the matter.

I think that Christian businesses *ought* to serve clientele without discrimination as a matter of belief of certain principles (that I hold, but principles not shared by those who would choose not to serve them). I don't think that *force of law* ought to compel them to do so. I think that accessibility of comparable services should matter when making a determination. So... I think it's complicated.

One issue is the difference in word meaning here. "Racist" and "homophobic" are different types of descriptions. "Homophobic" makes things sound more fear-based (-phobic) and doesn't encapsulate the same idea as "racist." I would agree with something like "Christian business X is homosexual-ist" or something like that as a word that conveys meaning similar to racist. The decision to serve or not serve a customer *is* tied to the sexuality of the person.

And in the particular case, the business was up front about it. They very explicitly said that this is why they didn't want to serve the person. This is a very different type of conversation than trying to hide the facts of the matter by lying outright to people about it (at least according to the reports about Trump's organization).

Not necessarily. But I agree thats its somewhat of a mark against him.

This is so common, and I find it so astounding. Maybe you can be the first to say exactly what would be conclusive. Are you using such an amazingly narrow definition of "racist" that if someone isn't covered in skinhead tattoos and burns crosses on the lawn of every black family they can find, then it's inconclusive that they're a racist?

Was donald trump "the boss" referenced here? Was donald trump responsible for this policy ( if it was a policy)? Was it a company wide policy? Or did it apply to this apartment only?etc etc

I dont see how you can extrapolate from the above, that donald trump is definititively racist. Like I said, it doesnt look that great, for sure.

It might be interesting to look at the definition of racist, and what people mean by it, for sure.

Did you look at the link Aaron provided? It looks like "the boss" was Fred and Donald Trump.

Would the answer determine whether he's a racist? Like, if his father first came up with the policy and he enforced it, would that mean he's not a racist?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you questioning whether it was an official, written-down policy, and if not--if it was merely informal and oral--it wouldn't be racism? Or do you think the building superintendent was lying?

Same question: Would the answer determine whether he's a racist? What if it applied only to this building, or only to buildings in predominantly white areas? Would that make it not racist?

What would it take for you personally to extrapolate? They were sued by the Justice Department and were given (I think) the largest fine ever handed out for discriminatory housing practices up to that time. What would the owner of a bunch of housing units have to do for you to say, "yup, that guy's a racist"?

Well, that was one of my questions. What do you mean by it?

I'm also curious what you would say if the super said, "I am not allowed to rent to Jewish tenants..." or "atheist tenants..." or "Christian tenants..." or "gay tenants..." Would it be justifiable to say, "Yeah, that owner is bigoted against Jews/atheists/Christians/gays," or would it be inconclusive?

According to the article," it was a federal lawsuit. We settled the suit with zero, with no admission of guilt.""

I dont know what that means, does that mean they paid a large fine?


I assume people mean hatred of someone purely based on their skin colour. Or possibly discrimination against someone based purely on their skin colour.



It would be inconclusive enough to not be able to label donald trump as a bigot against whatever it was.

They didn't have to formally admit guilt, but they wrote a big check and had to agree to some other stuff. I guess it was a typical no lo contendere, but IANAL.

OK, I'm not going to try to get into anyone's head, so let's go with your second option, "discrimination." Do you think it's not discrimination if they don't have this rule across all of their properties?

OK, again, what would be enough? I thought your position was one of hyper-narrowness of definition, such that anything short of public cross-burnings wouldn't count, but if your definition includes "discrimination," how can you then point to discrimination and say it's still not enough for you?

Jeff ****ing Sessions...

This is where it gets tricky, and is why I said possibly discrimination.

I dont think discrimination ( in general) is a bad thing
Everyone discriminates, all the time.
I think people are free to associate with whomever they want, for any or no reason, including not associating with people they think are racist. I have no right to force anyone
Is in group preference the same as racism?Is in group preference a bad thing? If positive discrimination is bad, then affirmative action is racist/sexist.
I discriminate against half the population when choosing a sexual partner. Does that mean I am sexist?
I discriminate against half the population, and based on race ( i find some races more attractive than others), when choosing a sexual partner, does that make me racist and sexist?

If you have reasons to discriminate against a group, are you bigoted against that group? If your reasons are correct, are you bigoted? If your reasons are incorrect, are you bigoted?

So for example, trump kicking out illegal mexican immigrants. Its possible, but not necessarily true, that that was racist. IF he believes that illegal mexican immigrants, as a whole, are a net negative, and he believes that his country has a right to decide who comes in and out, is he racist? We can argue over whether his beliefs are correct or not, I have seen arguments for both sides, but discriminating against a group does not automatically make you racist.

I think you've changed the definition again. When you say things like "I discriminate against half the population when choosing a sexual partner," you've disengaged from the discussion. That has nothing to do with how "discrimination" is used in the context of discussing racism, and I'm confident you know it.

How have I changed the definition?

There's a different definition of discrimination when discussing racism? How is it different? Perhaps you can help me understand?

There's a particular legal usage for "discrimination" that's different from how you're using the term. Legal uses of "discrimination" are based on specific protected classes/categories that cannot be used in the determination of worthiness for things such as employment or housing. So when people talk about "discrimination" it's not just "deciding between A or B" but "deciding between A or B in ways that run contrary to laws that indicate how decisions should be made."

For example:

https://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/h...rimination.htm

https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD...discrimination

Whether you agree or disagree, these behaviors are not legal. The reasons these laws exist is because there were actions being taken by people to disenfranchise people based on these characteristics. That would be an example of "systemic racism." (Edit: More precisely, it would be saying that this is the *origin* of one type of systemic racism. There are other ways that it can manifest.)

Because actions such as denying housing based on race is understood historically as being a pattern of race-based discrimination, it is viewed to be a racist behavior. It is even more so because it is known that such behaviors are illegal, and yet people engage in them anyway. Clearly, there are race-based reasons for this illegal form of discrimination.

If you choose not to label that as "racist" I'm not going to be able to convince you otherwise. But I'll simply point to the action as being willfully illegal discrimination based on race.

Edit: And it doesn't matter whether it only happens sometimes and not all the time. Once you've chosen to apply a race-based policy, it becomes meaningful to label the policy as being racist (as per my description).

This doesnt really answer any of the questions in my previous post though.

In a sense, it does.

You seem to want to use "discrimination" in a neutral manner, but for the way that it is used in a legal context discrimination isn't used neutrally. And that legal usage spills over into general usage when talking about things that pertain to the various protected classes, which includes race.

This stands in direct contrast to:

So when you ask:

I'm explaining how you're using it differently than how others are using it. If you want to insist on maintaining a neutral definition of discrimination, then I'd suggest that you're still playing a definition game and that you haven't yet engaged the discussion.

Im not sure what you mean? I havent engaged in the discussion because Im not using the legal sense? Why do I have to use the legal sense in order to engage in the discussion?

The legal sense automatically assumes racism based on actions. That is, if you refuse housing to someone who is black, then you are a racist.

What I am asking is, is that actually the case? How can we know? Is there any other explanation? Is discrimination always bad? Or are only certain types of discrimination bad? How can we tell which types, and why are we choosing those types?

If you want everyone to use the legal definition, then there is no discussion to be had.

Perhaps you are right and I am trying to take the discussion in another direction and not taking part in the current discussion. What would you say the current discussion is , and what discussion does it seem to you that I am wanting?

I'm not saying you have to use it in the legal sense. But in order to engage in this conversation, the legal sense forms a pretty broad foundation of the understanding.

Part of why this matters is because it's possible to declare that you can never know one's intentions, and that would render the whole conversation moot. So rather than engaging in mind-reading, we will instead use the data of behaviors to characterize the behaviors.

Again, this is where legals standards are meaningful. Insofar as there exist certain classes of people for which discrimination is not legal, we can use those classes and those behaviors for a way to objectively apply definitions.

If you want to insist that we can't read minds, we would agree with you. But that would also avoid the entire conversation because we could have said that both before and after the evidence of behaviors was brought to the table.

It's not on me to decide for you. But if you want to have a conversation but don't want to use rely on the foundation that others are using, then it's your responsibility to define the term as you want to use it. And as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened yet.

It seems like you want to assert that "racist" is a particularly narrow term because it makes you uncomfortable when others assert that someone is racist. But you have not offered up a definition of racist that you would like to use, and instead are reiterating that others aren't using it in a way that you like.

I have no idea what you actually want to talk about. I started to intellectually disengage when you said

Since it seems that there probably isn't anything you would find conclusive, I have treated this as equivalent to just turning a blind eye to the data.

Your first post asserting trump is not a racist claims knowledge you can't know.


You can infer it but based on your posts your lack of knowlage on trump makes even that dubious.

Batair asserted that trump was automatically racist because he wants to remove illegal immigrants, and ban ( all?) muslims.

I am not sure thats the case. Yes, I probably dont have a useable definition of racism, which is why I am asking the questions, to try and understand.

I dont think you can use the legal definition here, since its legal for the president to remove illegal immigrants, and also to place travel bans.

People are saying that certain types of discrimination are bad. I am asking which ones, and why.

Why is me refusing to rent my house to someone racist, but refusing to share my bed with someone isnt? Or are they both racist, but society only decides to punish one of them? ( in which case, fine)

As I stated before, I dont believe in forced association of any kind. So I am trying to understand the reasoning behind support for forced association in situation A, but not in situation B.

Perhaps a good distinction to have in mind is that a policy can be de facto racist without having racist intentions.

This isn't exactly true. The travel bans are currently blocked as it works its way through the system to determine legality. Most legal minds think that the executive order was probably not legal, though it will have to wait for a judicial decision for clarity.

People of various racial backgrounds in multicultural settings often have to consider this question. Am I racist if I decide that I only want to marry someone of the same (or similar) race? There's a lot associated with that question.

But on the societal level, inaccessibility of certain types of things based on race appears to be unfair at a certain level. For example, if all the stores in an area refuse to serve black patrons, they can effectively deny membership into the community at large by making it extremely difficult to function as a member of society. People view this as a fundamentally unfair way to treat people.

So certain types of situations are governed by laws in order to prevent unwanted behaviors.

If a black family moves in next door to you, do you have the right to force them out of your community? Are you being "forced" into association by their presence in your neighborhood?

Depends what you mean by "force them out of my community". I dont have the right to initiate force on them. But I can not associate ie, interact with them, in any way. Or I can move.

( just to be clear, I am not saying I would actually do this)

Never mentioned illegal immigrants. And never said banning all muslims would be racist. That is more religious bigotry though they intermix.

My first response also mentioned trump said he sexually assaults women which is not racism.

Or my post was not just about racism. Trump is dispicabul in many ways.

There are a number of possibilities.

1) We'll just put a noose on their car to let them know that they're not wanted. There's no force applied to them.

2) We'll get the local resources, such as the grocery store and pharmacy to agree not to interact with them and not to serve them.

3) We will cut off their incoming water supply. No force here, either.

Etc.

I would agree that you are taking this as a theoretical. However, with regards to American history, it isn't theoretical.

This is a credible threat, and can be treated as such

I dont have the power to do either. I can try and persuade the grocery store, I guess. Perhaps they will decide not to serve me for being so racist.

You are talking about "we" , imagining, I suppose, the whole neighbourhood being pretty much opposed. If that was the case, why would one ( black or white) want to live in that neighbourhood?

A credible threat of what? Do you think that there's a credible threat that someone will be lynched?

Do you think that a noose out in some public space is also a credible threat? A credible threat of what?

You as an individual may not, but that's really not the question...

You're getting closer to the idea of systemic racism. What happens if we all agree to behave in these ways? Have we not just forcibly pushed the person out of the community?

To speed up the conversation a bit, what things are moving towards is the idea that "force" isn't just a physical force. There are other ways to apply force to people. One of the ways is to use economic power to force people into or out of various types of situations. I think people have a hard time grasping systemic racism as a concept because it's often not something that attributable to any specific person or any specific decision, but is instead an accumulation of lots and lots of little decisions.

Specific to housing, refusing to rent to someone for racial reasons is a way of exerting economic force on others. If everyone collectively decides not to rent to black people, you've now made black-ness an economic detriment. You now can't rent housing in places (for example) that are close to your job, or close to other types of resources. So instead you have to live on the outskirts of town, which increases your commute time. That commute time then translates into increased gas consumption for your commute, which adds another economic burden. It also means that you have less family time. And so forth.**

But what's hard for people to visualize is the claim that black-ness has led to less family time. "These are all decisions you made. You chose job X and you chose to live in place Y. That's your fault." Except that it's rarely so clean. Some of those decisions were made because people in power forced those decisions.

I'm not saying that this is true for every individual. And that's another thing about the concept of systemic racism that trips people up. It's not about what happens to any particular individual, but about the pattern that is expressed over many individuals. But we only ever see individuals and it's not as easy to get access to aggregate data. And when we have aggregate data, it's easy to shrug it off as missing certain pieces of information that should inform the data. So it's just hard to make clean/clear arguments, and that can be used to ignore what's actually happening.

** Edit: Another example is school zoning. If someone in that neighborhood refuses to rent to you because you're black, your kids lose access to a resource that is *extremely difficult* to make up for later in life. But it's hard to look backwards and say that this one person's choice caused these long term consequences.