Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
The store that brought you t-shirts bearing offensive Asian characature washing clothes with the slogan "Two Wongs Make It White" continues it's enlightened policies.
In the article, Larry Elder…long at or close to the top of the Troublesome Negro list…has the most precious quote:
Well, no. Then it also would be OK for a restaurant owner in Selma, Ala., to claim he doesn't hire African Americans because white waitresses and cooks make his white customers more comfortable and are better for business.
"And that argument died a long time ago,'' said Garry Mathiason, a senior partner at Littler, Mendelson, which represents about 30,000 employers. "It's not only legally wrong, it's not accepted by society.''
I didn't get her name, but I'm guessing Brittany or Jordan. She was standing at the check-out counter yesterday of the Abercrombie & Fitch store at the San Francisco Center on Market Street. She was blond, thin and wearing a spaghetti-strap camisole and a cutoff-jeans miniskirt low enough on her hips to reveal the waistband of her Abercrombie & Fitch long johns.
"Can I help you?''
"I'd like to apply for job,'' I said.
"Oh,'' she said, momentarily flustered. "You want to check on an application?''
"No, I'd like an application.''
She handed me the form, then at my request left to fetch the manager. Huge photographs of fresh-faced blonds covered the walls. As I waited, two actual fresh-faced blond employees, trying not to be obvious, peeked around the wall to take a look at me for themselves.
Word had spread: A middle-aged woman in a turtle-neck and slacks was asking for an application. To work here. With us. I must have seemed to them like a slab of headcheese trying to sneak on to a plate of petits fours.
The fresh-faced blond manager couldn't have been nicer. He said all the right things: The store was always looking for good people, so drop off the finished application any time.
But I haven't turned in the application. I don't need another job, and I know -- and the surely manager knows -- I don't embody the carefully and expensively created A&F persona.
Neither, apparently, do young minority applicants, according to a class- action suit filed against the 602-store chain. The plaintiffs claim Abercrombie & Fitch discriminates against minorities by pressuring stores to hire sales associates who fit the "A&F look,'' which from their catalogs, advertisements and looping videos in their stores, is white, young and preferably blond. The plaintiffs claim they were denied jobs or squeezed out of jobs because of their race or ethnicity.
Posted by P6 at December 9, 2003 11:05 AM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2463Yet another variation of the "sex with beagles" argument.
I have a lot of respect for Larry Elder. He takes a consistent, philosophically informed position on this, as he does with all things.
It is this: Are people free to act within their own values as long as no one else is harmed, or must we all be slaves to what "respectable society' thinks we should do? Larry Elder says that no one is harmed if A&F wants to create a particular image. No harm done, as long as other businesses are free to do the same, and customers are free to choose the stores that appeal to them. What is the harm? It offends the sensibilities of modern-day victorian prudes?
Oh, but if A&F is free to do this, then EVERYONE would do it, and blacks would not be hired in Selma, Alabama! And of course, if someone makes it legal for people to have sex with beagles, why, EVERYONE would be having sex with beagles!
This is a stupid, emotional, and, ultimately, tyrannical opinion.
If you don't like it, don't buy from A&F. (I don't, but it is because I hate their schlock.) The question is, would it be morally right for you to take a gun, put it in that manager's face, and say, "Hire this frumpy middle-aged black woman that will do absolutely nothing to persuade your target demographic to buy product from you, or I am going to shoot you"?
That is what a law does. It puts a gun in someone's face and says "Follow this rule, or I am going to shoot you."
Brian, I've been dealing with the issue of context being necessary to keep from saying stupid things for a while now.
Oh, but if A&F is free to do this, then EVERYONE would do it, and blacks would not be hired in Selma, Alabama! And of course, if someone makes it legal for people to have sex with beagles, why, EVERYONE would be having sex with beagles!
The difference is context.
There are any number of people who want to discriminate, right out in public, and would were there no legal penalty.
I don't know anyone that wants to have sex with beagles. Do you?
Phelps:
That is what a law does. It puts a gun in someone's face and says "Follow this rule, or I am going to shoot you."
I thought you liked guns.
My 'sex with beagles' point was to point out how ridiculous the slippery slope argument is. The original article stated that if one store is allowed to discriminate, then blacks will not be able to work anywhere, ever again. Of course only some small few would have sex with beagles, but there are those who would say that if it were legal, then EVERYONE would do it. Same with the drug prohibitionists (if drugs were legal, EVERYONE would be doing them!)
There should not be any legal penalty for discrimination at all. It is so...Orwellian and creepy. A person looking for a job is does not own the job, therefore they have no claim to it when it is refused no matter what the grounds.
Personally, I don't see why anyone would want to discriminate. I don't care. That is their value system, and not mine. Just as I don't think it is right to impose my religious beliefs on anyone else (despite the fact that their choice of where to worship and tithe is equally discriminatory), it is not my place to impose my morals on anyone else.
The way I see it, if I do not like the way a particular business behaves, then I will not do business with them. I have lost nothing. If they refuse to hire me, or refuse to do business with me, I have again lost nothing. In fact, I would gain by the fact that other businesses, seeing that I am a willing and paying customer, will cater to me for the same reasons that the others refused me.