If discrimination and segregation is hidden now, what was the point of having it publically outlawed?

The government only has the power to outlaw institutionalized racism. They cannot legislate morals or personal choices.

“They cannot legislate morals or personal choices.”
Try snorting coke in front of a cop.

ragingloli,

Your answer got me thinking that we should view laws not by their effectiveness, but by how well it transfers behaviors from public to private. The drug law does a good job at making people do drugs in private but does a really poor job at actually stopping it altogether.

Still, what is the point if its public or private if the end result is the same.

“Try snorting coke in front of a cop.”

That’s not about legislating morals or personal choices, @ragingloli; it’s about enforcing legislation.

What’s the point of having speed limit laws? People ignore them anyway and drive too fast.

elbanditoroso,

Right, similiar issue. Look at how many car deaths happen each year. Drunk driving, hit and run, speeding. Even when they get huge fines, they repeat the behavior. Though, the difference with this law is that it doesn’t transfer from public to private. All driving is public.

Check out german roads though. They let you pretty much fly on the road.

I’m confused. What’s your premise here? Are you asserting that discrimination laws have been so ineffective that they are essentially useless?

tom_g,

No assertion. I’m asking.

The truth is we’ve come a long way because of the legislation and we still have a long way to go because of persistent attitudes. Watch films like the documentary The Freedom Riders” to see how bad overt racism was in the South and covert racism in the North. (A Southern friend who is a liberal once asked me, “You mean you didn’t have separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks in the North when you were growing up?”) we certainly don’t live in a post-racial society yet but to paraphrase the song we are somewhat somewhat further along.

Now that I think about it, particularly for car laws, they would work much better because even though these laws don’t prevent problems, they at least punish the offender and because driving is extremely hard to cover-up since its all public activity, the laws effect is far greater than drug laws, or discrimination. Drugs and discrimination is easy to circumvent, hide, and very hard to prove.

janbb,

You think human behavior can be changed? Or should I say, do you think legislation can change human behavior?

I think this idealistic, not practical. Also, from what I understand, our behavior is affected by our genes. That makes it innate. We can’t ignore the past since we’re the product of it, i.e, evolution.

Yes, I actually do because I’ve seen it. Look at the acceptance of gay marriage in much of the population. The idea wouldn’t have been contemplated 40 years ago. And as I said above, discrimination has lessened.

I don’t think you’re measuring it correctly. You don’t need a majority of the population to accept gay marriage for a law to pass that allows gay marriage. The public can still hate gays and there can still be laws passed to allow marriage. Ah, now I remember: correlation is not causation.

I would argue on the opposite end. There are more laws passed to allow gay marriage but the population most likely hates them even more.

Many more places are desegregated. Also, the laws protect institutions. Before the laws you also would have gone to white-only restaurants and shopping malls and been on buses where only whites sat down or separate restrooms and water fountains. It was appalling.

You can vote with your choices. I live in a very diverse neighborhood with blacks, whites and hispanics all living on the same street. I would choose to send my children to public school. You could elect to go to public school. You makie your own choices. Separate from your parents.

Laws won’t make for a perfect society. They never have, and they never will. In fact, I think it was Robert A. Heinlein who said that you can judge a society’s decline by how many laws they have on the books: the more laws, the more decline. I think that’s pretty accurate.

The first laws against segregation were – and needed to be – to force the government itself, whether federal, state or local, to abide by some kind of limits on what kinds of discrimination and segregation are “right” and legal. After all, we do still practice discrimination – legally and openly – in many ways. We’re not all the President, and we’re not all the mayors of our own towns. We don’t all use the same locker rooms and bathrooms. Those are legal and “proper” modes of discrimination and segregation in our societies, at least as we see things today.

So the government had to be constrained from the kinds of segregation and discrimination that we militated against: we decided that people who were not white should have the same rights as white people; later we decided that women should have the same rights as men. Currently we are still involved in a struggle to grant the same rights to homosexuals as those enjoyed by heterosexuals.

And so it goes. It’s a struggle that will never be “won” and will never be “over”, but we hope that it continues to go in the right direction.

As for laws that mandate what people do privately, I still think those are wrong. More wrong, that is, than those people who choose to discriminate on non-merit-based and non-criminal bases, and for superficial reasons.

marinelife,

You got me curious now. Do any research centers conduct research on segregation? You have any statistics or are you just guessing that more are desegregated?

Here is the thing, since I live in an area that’s all white, the owners of the restaurants and customers are white. That makes this law useless for segregated areas like mine. Likewise, for buses, shopping malls, restrooms, water fountains. This law works better in a mixed neighborhood, but first there needs to be that mixed neighborhood.

@annabee I also grew up in a lily-white town, but just because non-white people don’t move there doesn’t make it “segregated”.

You’re too young, I imagine, to have seen “real” segregation, when the law said “No Colored Allowed” in various places; when your ancestry had to be proven back several generations in case you had any “colored blood” in your family tree and could be prohibited – by law – from restaurants, swimming pools, certain rest rooms and water fountains, and you’d be arrested and treated very harshly for trying to disobey.

The fact that non-white people “do not” live and work in your area doesn’t mean that they “can not”. There’s a lot of difference there. If a non-white person were to walk into your local bus, shopping mall, restaurant or swimming pool, there might be “some talk” – just because a non-white person would be somewhat “exotic” there – but they would not be refused entry.

@annabee You really should do some research and look at history before making pronouncements. You might want to get away from your neighborhood and into a library or city.

CWOTUS,

Ah, that is a fair point but you see how well it was organized to avoid having “exotic” people around. Technically, they do actively refuse. If let say a non-white person wants to buy an apartment, the owner will screen for it. The owner won’t tell a non-white person that he or she cannot live here because of his or her skin, but the owner will make an effort to have a white person buy the apartment. Same thing when an employer is looking to hire. Like I said before, its very easy to circumvent and hide these things and it’s difficult for the victim of racism to prove his or her case.

That is a pretty vague answer, janbb, I’m not sure I follow. History of what and what pronouncements have I made? That the population can still hate gays even though a law was passed that allows it?

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room
Taking drugs is a personal choice and is generally seen as a moral issue as well. By making the consumption of certain drugs illegal, the government has indeed legislated morality and personal choice.
And that is not the only example.
Others include:
– Age of consent laws
– Outlawing abortion
– Outlawing gay marriage
– Outlawing “sodomy”
– Outlawing interracial marriage
– Censorship of “obscene” literature and media

@ragingloli well those are all great examples of the government trying to legislate morality, and they are all laws that are next to impossible to enforce effectively, thus proving my point.

@SuperMouse
Legislating something and the success of enforcing the legislation are two separate issues.

@ragingloli um ok. When government tries to legislate morality they fail miserably. One need look no further then the war on drugs. All this does is prove my point that government cannot legislate morality – even if they want to try.

Wait a minute. Institutional racism was mentioned by quite a few of you. Aren’t industries institutions? But industries are private which would mean that the government is dictating morals and personal choices to people i.e, business owners, corporations, financial institution.

@SuperMouse
If you define “can” that way, then the government can not legislate anything, not even things that pertain to itself, because there is no 100% control over the individual humans that comprise the government.
Might as well do away with it altogether and embrace anarchy.

@ragingloli well that is a ridiculous conclusion to jump to. Kind of the sign of an argument that has run its course.

@annabee when people discuss institutionalized racism they are talking about patterns of denying equal access to things like employment, education, and housing, The government can enforce laws prohibiting these things for one because they can see patterns that prove a systemic biases. They can’t do it on a personal level because they really can’t hunt down every person who doesn’t buy a house because a person of color lives next door and prosecute them, much less prove that is the reason they didn’t buy the house.

@SuperMouse
Not at all.
Your definition of “being able to legislate something” seems to require a 100% success rate in enforcement.
100% successful enforcement is impossible, no matter the area, ergo there is nothing that “can be legislated”, according to your definition.

@ragingloli yep, the argument has run its course. The conclusion you have come to about my argument in order to assert your ridiculous hypothetical is that enforcement requires 100% success. Your conclusion is as ludicrous as your hypothetical. Neither by the way have anything to do with the discussion at hand so seemingly you are just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.

@annabee: “I would argue on the opposite end. There are more laws passed to allow gay marriage but the population most likely hates them even more.”

You could argue that. But the data wouldn’t support it. Public opinion on homosexuality and gay marriage is changing fairly rapidly. Not quickly enough, but the polls consistently show more acceptance.

tom_g

Don’t get me started on polls. I don’t believe them at all. Biases, inaccuracies. failures. It holds as much weight as my speculation.

But this wasn’t my main point. My main point is that law and public opinion are two separate things.

@annabee: “Don’t get me started on polls. I don’t believe them at all. Biases, inaccuracies. failures.”

Great. Let’s just go with what your gut tells you then.

@SuperMouse
Everything you have posted in this thread implies that enforcement success is the criteria by which you decide whether something “can be legislated”. Every example you have given or replied to, you declared ‘not legislatable’, because enforcement fails.
You can either clarify by what criteria, other than enforcement success, you make such judgements, or you tell us how well something has to be enforced for you to judge it legislatable.

@annabee you are starting to sound like “I have my opinions, don’t confuse me with the facts.” I suspect you are quite young and not interested in considering history at all either, so I am out of this discussion.

tom_g,

Well considering the biases, inaccuracies and failures of polls, a gut feeling holds as much weight as a poll.

Sorry janbb, but polls are not facts, so my opinion hold as much relevance as the poll. I do enjoy facts though, accurately measured ones. I’m not sure what my age has to do with anything and I asked you to tell me what history I should be reading? Are you arguing that laws and population sentiment correlate? I hope not.

@annabee: “Well considering the biases, inaccuracies and failures of polls, a gut feeling holds as much weight as a poll.”

So, when CNN, Pew, Gallup, NBC, CBS, Quinnipiac, AP, and Fox News all independently show the same trend in public opinion, you reject it and turn to your gut to do your research? Do you feel that way about other pesky, non-gut ways of determining reality, such as the scientific method?

Are you trying to flame-bait or what?

You equating polls to the scientific method? Please tell me you’re joking.

I think you need to educate yourself on the methods of opinion polls. Here is a nice wiki explanation opinion polls criticism

You could answer my question. If the scientific method question is unfair, and it’s something that trumps the gut, then good.

I still don’t think you’re following – or even looking at the numbers. The inherent problems with polling methodologies doesn’t explain the clear and consistent change in the numbers concerning same-sex marriage over the past few years. You can use other techniques to claim a particular number is too high or low, or address the particulars of one specific poll. But to look at this whole collection and refuse to admit that there is something there is quite confusing.

And wait a minute – I am attempting to defend the relative utility of large amounts of independent polling data over time vs. your gut?

No, I don’t think you’re following. The inherent problems with polling is what makes the numbers inaccurate. Also, you’re confusing statistical significance with practical importance. Statistically significant but practically unimportant results are common with large samples.False positive conclusions, often result from confirmation bias and or various types of pressure.

If every poll use the same inherit failure method, the numbers are nonsense.

I’m not even sure why are you arguing about polls when the main point was that polls don’t dictate laws. For argument sake, let say polls are accurate, which they’re not, but let say they’re. Are you telling me that polls dictate policy? Lawyers, politicians are all in sync with the sentiment of the polls? Seriously?

@annabee: “I’m not even sure why are you arguing about polls when the main point was that polls don’t dictate laws.”

I only argued for polls over gut because the statement seemed to fly in the face of my anecdotal experience here in Massachusetts following the legalization of same-sex marriage, as well as what has consistently been shown in polls.

@annabee: “Are you telling me that polls dictate policy?”

They certainly influence it. Why all of this flip-flopping and sudden change regarding same-sex marriage. As soon as being anti-gay marriage is seen as costing votes, it becomes a liability. How do they determine that it might cost them votes? Polling.

Then prove the correlation. Prove the connection between population sentiment and laws.

Under the law, Corporation are people. Are you telling me the politicians, lawyers listened to the public sentiment to have Corporations to be labeled as people?

I would also like to add that I think you’re confusing subjectivity with objectivity by equating polls with the scientific method.

The scientific method is objective: existing independent of mind; belonging to the sensible world and being observable or verifiable, expressing or involving the use of facts; derived from sense perception.

Polls are Subjective: relating to or determined by the mind as the subject of experience; characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind; phenomenal; arising out of or identified by means of one’s awareness.

In other words there are bound to be discrepancies among the polls counting numbers, depending on which news organization does it? Poll questions from all angles of ideologies and topics have historically been loaded questions designed to get to a desired outcome. Poll takers have honed this practice down to an exact science. It has now become accepted to do this, therefore we can pretty much predict whats going to come of them by knowing who conducted it. We subconsciously expect them to be flawed right out of the box but still tout the results out loud. So the success of them rests entirely on gullible people.

@annabee you are absolutely 100% not interested in responses to your question – that much is clear. You are more interested in asserting that your gut feeling is more reliable then actual polling information. Your age comes into play because your stubborn refusal to entertain any opinion other then yours is typically associated with younger folks. As we mature we tend learn that we learn new things by listening.

@ragingloli I have not said or even implied that enforceability should dictate law. As I said upthread, you are the one who made that assertion in order to try to make the point that I think anarchy is the way to go. That remains a ridiculous leap in logic.

I am interested in the responses, I just don’t agree with answers that rest upon fallacious methodologies. If rejecting such nonsense makes me an “immature child who values her opinion more than anything” then so be it. I’m an honor student. I think I understand science and use critical thinking just a little bit. You’ll have to do better than give me arguments that can be equated to creationism or direct passages from the bible. Now I have given you an intellectual critique to why polls are fallacious and exposed the inaccuracies of you equating the objective science to subjectivity. If you have any respect for this conversation, you will either respond in the same manner, or say nothing at all.

I assure you that using my gut is the last thing I do. My gut only applies to areas where there is no science: such as polls. or types of trash “studies” such as “liberals and atheist are smarter than conservatives” that rest upon the same inherent fallacious methodology as the polls.

That was an interesting conversation. I would add that the reason the Supreme Court came down on the side of the same-sex marriage supporters was quite simple. The demand for recognition of these unions was defended on civil rights grounds. Not on religious or moral arguments. It is discriminatory to refuse services to LGBT people if reliable proof of their inherent undesirability is not forthcoming. You know what services I mean: domestic violence protection, security of survivors’ rights, joint ownership of property, etc.

I’m going to have to side with annabee with pretty much everything. Just to add to the poll battle, if the majority of the population wants gay-marriage, then why are only 13 out of 50 states allowing it? Doesn’t seem to sync up at all.

Two more examples, years ago, as I recall, there were polls done on lobbying. Something like 85% Americans wanted to see it go away. Now, in 2013, did it go away?

Finally, a famous historical example, FDR and his new deal. The new deal was stricken down two times for being found unconstitutional by the higher courts. Most Americans wanted it passed, hardcore like, but the courts turned it down. How did it become constitutional on the third attempt? The higher courts members died of old age, giving FDR the opportunity to pack the courts with his pro-new deal crew. As you can see, what the population wants and policy making are two separate things.

@tomathon – The higher courts members died of old age – Maybe FDR’s lawyers had better arguments the third time.

@annabee oh well if you are an honor student what need is there to listen to the opinions of others when asking for them? Thanks for clearing that up.

@bea2345

Heh, yeah, right, it just happens to be that their arguments improved after the committee dies. You reminded me of a joke. When an optimist walks into cemetery, he doesn’t see crosses, he sees plus signs.

You left me some excellent choices, SuperMouse. Either I agree with you, or if I don’t agree, I’m a pompous know it all who only values only herself. Nice.

Lets see, woodcutter and tomathon seem to agree with my arguments, do you think the same of them as you do of me?

@annabee you really have quite a little attitude there. Question, did you actually read any of my posts? Because I never agreed or disagreed with you or asked you to agree or disagree with me. I shared my opinion regarding your question and tried to explain why @janbb surmised (correctly I might add) that you are young.

Ok, I’m done trying.

It helps having a bad conscience for people who hide it.