SCOTUS under Trump

The problem is that by placing that power into the hands of the government, you allow people like Donald Trump and Mike Pence to take the role of “your betters”, and use the force of the entire government on enact their will.

As someone pretty unfamiliar with US history - how much of things like separate buses for black people was stopped by laws preventing individuals discriminating in this fashion?

Because it seems to me all well and good to say ‘that’ll never happen’ and that it’s only the state that is required to treat people equally, but the the majority in a society decide to create a de facto apartheid by themselves… is it really okay for the state to sit back and shrug?

So how do you feel about the state of Missouri working on a law to allow employees to disclose if they are using birth control? To allow them to make hiring and firing decisions based on such information? That they are allowed to for you to give genetic information, and do the same?

It’s all one and the same. Just different degrees and different reasons, but ultimately it is allowing certain subsets of society, namely the owners of businesses, to dictate and control their employees lives.

Because this is binary really. Either you allow companies to dictate private beliefs to others around them, or you don’t and impose on those companies to prevent them from discriminating.

The problem I, and others have, is we have seen what your approach renders. Jim Crow was not brought down by changing from within, it was brought down by sending in the National guard to ensure school integration. It was brought by the rest of the country forcibly saying ‘this is not ok’ and removing the option from those businesses and cities.

All of them. Without civil rights laws, that’d still be the norm in many places in the south.

Yea I think this reveals a misunderstanding of the Civil Rights era - the South wasn’t converted to civil rights by advocates and then revoke segregation, accepting the equality of African-Americans came after desegregation was a fait accompli both politically and culturally.

Exactly. It wasn’t some bottom up societal change, it was top down.

Now there are arguments that bottom up leads to smoother, more positively received, change. And perhaps the undercurrent of racism would be lessened in such a way, but how long and how many millions of injustices do you allow to achieve such an end? It’s not like we can sit back and say ‘another 10 years and it would have ended on its own’.

You are suggesting that this has actually happened.

Haha well true enough. It’s certainly way better than it was. Generally speaking though outright racism is seen as verboten except in certain “everyone is a white guy around the fishing hole” situations. Certainly deliberate and unapologetic racism has been mostly quashed (aside from police departments) and young people even in the South reject racism on the whole when looked at as an overall group. However there are still lots of rural refuse out there.

Well, there goes any hope I had for a peaceful transition to social democracy in the US in my lifetime. Civil War II and firing squads is seeming more likely by the week.

Add me to every woman and minority would still be screwed today if the government didn’t step in. I do not believe the majority of people would do the right thing. History tells me that’s not the case.

For what it’s worth, I hugely sympathise with @Timex’ position here. He is absolutely correct that empowering the state in such a fashion enables folk like Pence and Trump to impose their own deeply held values on the country. (Well, maybe not Trump, since I don’t think he has any values beyond himself.)

Maybe you can make a strong case that because you have a written constitution, discrimination is different. Then again, I’m not sure - constitutions can always be amended (and many places don’t have the luxury/curse of a written constitution…)

It’s a pretty difficult problem - I don’t know how you give government the power to defend the liberties of minorities from the discrimination of the majority, without also handing government the power to crush those same liberties.

Unfortunately, ours is unlikely to be amended again in the foreseeable future, as it requires such a high bar to pass a new amendment.

Yes, I think that if a country club hangs a sign that says “No Blacks allowed” then things will get get better after the sheriff tells them to take the sign down.

Not because it really matters who that particular establishment serves. But because a blatant policy of discrimination helps to normalize racist attitudes. Who is going to start your hypothetical boycott, when every place in town has the same sign? If you lived in that town, why would you boycott a place for something that seems only natural? That’s how things have always been done, after all, so how can it be so wrong?

In the real world, integration began from the top down, not bottom up. In Colorado, the law that bans discrimination by orientation is the same as the one that bans discrimination by race. “Religious liberty” is no excuse for racism, and it shouldn’t fly in this case either.

I also sympathize with Timex, but I agree this is a case where the market won’t be able to adequately address shortcomings, either short or long term. For boycotts to work, there has to be a huge groundswell of support and media coverage in addition ongoing engagement from those who want the change. The danger of being outed as a bigoted business has to be severe. Yet we live in a society where it’s a big lift to even get half the eligible voters to the polls once every 4 years (let alone during midterms or local elections). I just don’t see how boycotts can be depended on to get anything done re: civil rights in this climate.

B b b but he’s a moderate scholarly gentleman! Psh

Just more of the same hate fueled discrimination out of Gorsuch. Luckily, he was overruled by better people.

There were a number of court rulings that prevented bus segregation, but I believe they actually only applied to buses that traveled over state lines, because they then fell under the commerce clause of our constitution.

For buses within a particular area, what actually forced them to abandon segregation was… wait for it… boycotts. In some of these places, black passengers made up 75%+ of the pasengers. Their refusal to ride the buses hit the carriers where it mattered, which was their bank account. It wasn’t easy on the passengers… and the change was not instantaneous. But the boycotts absolutely contributed to the eventual outcome.

I think the fact that such a thing requires specific legislation means that it’s almost certainly bad. I’m generally not in favor of extra stupid laws.

But if such things are done by a corporation? Then don’t buy their stuff.

Except that they don’t hold all the power.
Their employees, and their customers, hold some large amount of power. But they have to have the will to exercise it.

I would choose neither of those paths, and instead would force those companies to respect the beliefs of others around them, through use of economic force against them. If they are shitty people, then they lose customers and go out of business.

Jim Crow was a set of laws, made by the government, which were racially based. Those laws should not be allowed. They are unconstitutional. But I generally regard the constitution more as a limit on the government’s power, than on a limit on individuals in society.

We’re talking federal government here. Jim Crow and segregation would still exist if the, primarily, southern states had say about it.

Okay, so we’ve got two fairly seriously competing versions of history and facts here.

Well, I’m talking about those governments as well. The constitution limits them.

But the constitution really shouldn’t be limiting YOUR rights to choose who you do business with, at least in my opinion.

No, not really… Civil rights laws absolutely had an impact, but you can see in numerous cases where boycotts resulted directly in either eliminating or reducing bus segregation in a number of places in the south, totally separate from any laws or court decisions.

Here’s an example, the Baton Rouge boycott, which achieved some gains (SOME, nowhere near complete victory) in 6 days.