You should be able to fire someone for any reason. It's immoral to fire people accused of crime, you should treat your employees with respect, but there should be no law involved.
I disagree. You shouldn't be able to fire someone for being Jewish. You shouldn't be able to fire someone for not voting how you want them to. You shouldn't be able to fire someone for not having sex with you. There are a lot of things that you shouldn't be able to fire someone for.
I might be repeating someone here, but the problem is that once you start enforcing laws against things like this you also give the other party the opportunity to slap employers with false claims of sexism/racism. Which in turn might actually lead to even rational non-biggoted employers favouring (other factors being equal) groups that are less likely to make such claims if the employee is fired. Biggots are not going to hire you in the first place, so who's winning here? Ok ok, in many cases the person who hires you is not the person who fires you, so (surprise surprise) it's not that black and white.
Maybe being a heterosexual white male I'm not feeling the problem first hand and that affects my judgement, but usually when thinking these things I come to the conclusion that laws written with good intentions to abolish all sorts of nasty things end up doing more harm than good (and no I'm not a ultra-libertarian either).
The only place that should not be allowed to discriminate is the government since they represent all people.
Freedom of association is the key hear, you should be able t o associate with anyone you'd like to and vice-versa. Now I'm of course not advocating any sort of discrimination, but I do think it should be allowed. Just as I don't advocate hate speech, but I think it should be allowed.
So market forces can't hold this sort of behaviour in check, and this can lead to the suppression of an entire culture, which is where the issue lies.
As for the history of discrimination, I believe that the majority of it was actually codified into law. So, I don't know if we can blame individuals acting on their own. Has there ever been a group that was shunned where it wasn't codified into law/sponsored by the government?
> Has there ever been a group that was shunned where it wasn't codified into law/sponsored by the government?
What comes first though? The government is made up of people. So people have to have these attitudes first and foremost before it becomes codified into law. If the public violently disagreed with said laws, then they would be repealed as wildly unpopular.
I've known plenty of people like dantheman before. They believe in and value the right to private property, which means believing that it is right to let other people do what you don't like with their private property. Add to that the belief that a personal business is private property, and you get the conclusion that no matter how much you personally dislike it, business owners "should" be allowed to discriminate.
By contrast if your belief in private property is not so absolute, then you're more willing to tolerate society restricting the free use of private property in ways that society does not like.
Different fundamental values leads to different conclusions. Even with agreement on the facts, the laws, and how bad discrimination is. And arguing "should not", "should too" back and forth will get you nowhere.
A business is private property and I can hire whoever I want there, discriminating on factors such as suitability for the job, education and other associated factors.
Religion, sex, skin colour and other personal attributes are not amongst those and for very good reason, discrimination on those grounds affects the other party economically, individually and as a group.
In spite of all those rules there is enough workplace discrimination going on as it is, take those rules away and we're right back in the 1950's.
A couple decades ago, businesses in the US would have argued the same thing, claiming that Black and Hispanics are naturally lazier.
Think about a company like Walmart, Ikea (or any company you frequent that has a near monopoly). How would you like it if they suddenly don't like your race and decided to stop selling to you or allowing you into their "private" stores that everyone else can shop at?
Seeing how you come from a predominately white country, I can understand how you cannot conceive this to be a problem.
Incidentally you're wrong about the "couple of decades ago" timeline. The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, and the Heart of Atlanta case of 1964 upheld its constitutionality, and the Ollie's BBQ case of 1967 upheld that it applied even to businesses with little obvious interstate commerce (this matters because Congress' authority to pass the Civil Rights Act stems from their ability to regulate interstate commerce). So the basic issues were litigated 40 years ago.
That said, it is still depressingly easy to find people today who make the same arguments. They are just not legally allowed to act on them.
And last time I checked, a couple decades ago also includes 50 years ago.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/couple
an indefinite small number : few <a couple of days ago>
Hint: the phrase "a couple" does not always mean 2.
And that works both ways, you can't be forced to attend the birthday party of a white supremacist either. (personally I'd rather avoid such people completely, effectively discriminating against the minority of white supremacists).
The discussion above has a 'scope', the scope is workplace discrimination. You can expand the scope but you can't expand it and declare a parent of the conversation of not addressing your expanded scope by poor phrasing at the same time.
You phrased it as though you support discrimination under the cover of private property. Private property is being used as a blanket excuse for discrimination which is being rightfully challenged in the US in situations such as this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093375 There are obvious cases like this where the line between public and private is blurred, and at great cost to the welfare of minorities.
And that works both ways, you can't be forced to attend the birthday party of a white supremacist either.
That analogy is incorrect. The correct analogy is being able to choose to attend the birthday party of a white supremacist where admission was being offered to the general public except blacks.
Birthdays normally are 'invite only', and as long as they are they are private functions. Birthdays open to the general public are not common (at least not where I live).
Open to the general public but closed to some subset (the people with red hair, people born on Tuesday and so on) are possibly illegal but as long as they are in someones private dwelling they have the right to toss out anybody for whatever reason so it's going to be very hard to know what the real reason is. In my country if I tell you to leave three times and you don't I have the immediate right to even use force to remove you, whatever my reason for not wanting you in my house.
Houses are special, they are not generally open to the public, and in case they are no doubt the rules change but that was not the example used. So don't twist it that way.
A man's home is not always his castle. You cannot use it to break laws. At least in the US, you cannot:
1. Murder someone on your grounds unless in self-defense. If someone is found shot 5 times or in the back, you will be charged with murder!
2. Set lethal booby traps.
3. Smuggle illicit goods.
4. Having dogs fight like Michael Vick.
5. View child pornography.
Discrimination by selectively serving the public on private grounds, I believe has not yet been tested in the court of law, but this was the excuse that many private businesses had in the past when they decided to serve white people only.
And it's at the hiring time that members from the general public are allowed to compete for jobs.
The process is akin to the fact that everyone in the public is in my potential circle of friends, and once a friend you may be allowed in my house. But that doesn't make my house anything close to publicly available.
I hope we didn't jump into the "should not"/"should too" argument.
But it isn't and it doesn't.
Sadly reality never works that way; hence laws :)
- Did you do it?
- Do you have any evidence that you are innocent?
- What is the evidence against you?
In this case, if they just talked to him for a bit and gave him a few days to investigate and gather evidence, they could have avoided firing him.
Thanks!
edit: I wonder what earned you the down-mod, you simply answered my question in a way that seems to make sense in the original context.
(I just made that up.)