Laws play their role. Sometimes they walk fine lines between usefulness, uselessness and harmfulness, but they are not unequivocally useless in all such cases. Consider the gay awakening. When I was in high school the world was a qualitatively different place for homosexuals. A worse place.
The axis around which culture has pivoted on this and other issues, is difficult to name. But, an important part of it is just defining, explaining, defending (and sometimes even legislating) what is by our standards an asshole position. If you are so hung up on the idea that men are shagging each other in this world that it affects how you interact with people, you are an asshole. Society says so.
To this day, many non assholes are uncomfortable with gays. Maybe it's conservatism, cultural habit, latent homosexuality, whatever. But, if you're talking to an intelligent young person chances are they'll think of you as a crazy asshole if you start making fidgety mean statements about gays. That's the cultural change and it's a powerful force.
Legislation is a part of that. Perfectly enforceable or not, it allows an avenue for enforcement of blatant cases and formalizes the moral position of our time. Thou shall not be a crazy asshole that gets bent out of shape around the idea of a gay neighbor.
Legislation's role in this is sometime minor, sometimes major and sometimes ineffective. I have no illusions about what legislation can achieve without the winds of change at its back.
But, there is such a thing as our society.
We'd all like to think we're better. That's what leads us down the path of legislating out way out of prejudice. It's not a solution. To me, the article suggests an alternative way to fight it: information. Forget equal opportunity, affirmative action, whatever label you want to put on it. Publishing the data, putting a name with the prejudice on display for everyone to see, is the proper fight. Then the people who profit from the prejudice, and those who participate in the system, can be pressured to change. Failing that, society can marginalize them.
So while you may not change a particular person's mind, you stand a chance of changing their kid's mind. There was a time, not that long ago, in America where if you were Black and drank from the wrong water fountain our sat at the wrong spot in a restaurant, you would be killed by a mob.
Legislation about segregation changed that for the better. Probably not in those living in the day, but their kids and kid's kids.
Many people are routinely convicted/fined/sued for anti-discrimination laws. So clearly they won't "always be able to manufactor plausible deniability".
- basic right of owner to rent property to anyone he likes without explaining the decision (and not to rent to anyone else...)
- basic right of hotel owner to accept anyone he choses (and deny access to anyone else)
- basic right of restarant manager to accept anyone he chooses (and deny service to anyone else)
- basic right of transportation owner to accept anyone he chooses (and deny service to anyone else)
- basic right of hospital operator to accept anyone he chooses (and deny service to anyone else)
Now pick your minority: it might have been Jews or the Slavic for the Nazis, it might have been the blacks in South Africa -- or the US, or homosexuals in Russia. Or the red-headed, the fat, the old, ...
Once you step onto this path, it's hard to put hard stop someplace
Not really. You could define some as basic services and deny discrimination on those. Much like e.g. some basic utilities are already prohibited from cutting off supply to debtors while most businesses can.
I'm not saying I agree with not legislating equal treatment, but the slippery slope is not inevitable.
Based off of your opinions in this thread, I highly suggest that you never rent out your property. Your opinions on what the law says will likely end up with you in jail.
Likewise, if you own a shop, you cannot refuse entry to your property based on race/ethnicity. You do not have an absolute right to do whatever you want with your property.
Property rights aren't absolute. They certainly don't trump civil rights, and anti-discrimination laws are amongst the core of our civil rights laws.
You do not have "the right" to choose to not rent your property to someone. If you think it's one of your rights, and you're in the property market, you should talk to a lawyer.
You're quite free to believe it's not racist, and that the sky is purple, but the law has different ideas and will act accordingly.
PS a little thought experiment: you're renting an appartment and two people show up - one white and one black, with similar income, jobs and credit history. You have to pick one, so how can you prove your decision was not racist?
Numerous laws will look at an action and your thoughts to decide what crime you were convicted of (e.g. murder vs manslaughter, theft, intent to commit $CRIME, etc.)
You have to pick one, so how can you prove your decision was not racist?
Cripes, simple examples like that aren't what anti-racism laws are for. It's when 10 black people turn up and the landlord tells them the apartment is gone, but it isn't.
Laws against (say) homosexual sex, or norms/laws/rules mentioning homosexuality in schools/TV kept many homosexuals in the closet, hidden and powerless. I hope we can do the same for racism.
You don't need to change their deep thinking, necessarily. Just their behaviour. That starts the social change.