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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>In principle, it would be like police enforcing certain traffic laws (say, about changing lanes or making a turn without signaling) much more strictly against black people than against white people.

This is easily reconciled if you distinguish between the public officials doing the selective enforcing, and private citizens selectively deciding who to do research on. Let's say 20% of waiters at a restaurant under-report their tips to the IRS. It would be objectionable if the IRS decided to target one guy in particular because the agent had a grudge on him, but it's far less objectionable if the IRS acted on an anonymous report that the guy was evading taxes. If anything, it would be more objectionable if the IRS didn't act, and said "well 20% of waiters are evaders as well, so it would be unfair to investigate that guy because we don't investigate the rest".

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> This is easily reconciled if you distinguish between the public officials doing the selective enforcing, and private citizens selectively deciding who to do research on.

So you're fine with private employers who do criminal background checks on black applicants but not white applicants? Or a third party entity that does background checks on all black people (and only black people) and then submits the results to employers whenever they apply for a job?

Being black is a protected class. Being an asshole is not.

Glad you called it for what it is.

The fact is that LACNIC, AFRINIC, etc. are actually contractually bound to investigate allegations like these and to follow up on them, no matter where they come from. They're doing the job they are supposed to. To bring racial qualities into a contractual dispute, ouch GP.

It's actually an irrelevant point, because we're talking about entities in a foreign country where US law on what constitutes a protected class doesn't apply.

If a racist organization in South Africa started doing compliance checks on only black-owned businesses world-wide and providing the results to vendors, would you have companies everywhere discontinue doing business with black-owned businesses because they're "contractually bound to investigate allegations like these and to follow up on them, no matter where they come from"?

“Being an asshole” (and having and expressing opinions more broadly) is a protected class too, but the protections are weaker; it’s only government actors who are directly bound by such protections.

> Being black is a protected class. Being an asshole is not.

So you're fine with employers doing criminal background checks against Democrats but not Republicans? Or just investigating which one you are and then making the hiring decision directly based on it?

We're talking about the principle, not the law. The law can be changed. What constitutes a "protected class" isn't in the constitution.

There is a step further to take, in this example, as the public regulator can decide whether or not to accept that they selectively enforce based on the bias in the tips they receive.

In the real example at hand, as long as the US government is happy with the de facto regulatory behavior of private individuals and organizations, they can maintain the status quo, perhaps at some cost of effort.

If this leads to justice at a low political and financial cost, then it is not necessarily a problem that defaults are selectively maintained, of course.

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