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Where do we draw the line between public and private behavior? Consider:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued an opinion last month … that people seeking roommates are shielded from fair-housing laws by the First Amendment’s protection of free association. … The Fair Housing Act prohibits denying housing to someone based on a protected characteristic, such as race or religion. It also prohibits making or publishing discriminatory advertisements for housing. …
Two years ago I undertook a study of 10,000 housing ads posted to Craigslist … 5,000 ads for rentals and 5,000 ads for roommates. … The vast majority of discriminatory ads were taken out by people seeking roommates — that is, by ordinary individuals looking for someone to help share the rent. … Most of the ads expressing a racial, religious or ethnic preference were placed by members of minority groups who were seeking roommates like themselves. …. These people were in violation of the Fair Housing Act and subject to civil prosecution.
Just as it would be abhorrent for the government to prevent people of different races, ethnicities or religions from living together, it would be equally offensive to block people of a shared race, ethnicity or religion from living together. … If the 9th Circuit had ruled differently, the potential for backlash would have been enormous and support for a crucial civil rights law would have been undermined. (more)
Surely the main reason a landlord might care about your race or ethnicity is because your neighbors might care. If your neighbors are willing to pay more to live next to people with a race they like, then your landlord might try to accommodate their preferences. So assuming you’ll have your own private room in any case, what is the difference between apartment-mate and housing discrimination? It is mainly the difference between who you’ll share a bathroom, kitchen, couch, and big TV, and who you’ll share a garage, elevator, laundry room, playground, pool, or exercise room — and of course the bathrooms, kitchens, couches, and big TVs in your lobby and community center. Is this really what we think is the difference between acceptable and unacceptable race discrimination?
I suspect the real difference is that we are willing to blame and punish landlords, who are seen as rich and dominating, but not ordinary people. If we saw Craigslist as similarly rich and dominating, we might blame and punish them as well.
What if a group took an entire floor of an apartment building, declared it all to be a single apartment, and sought the required dozens of “roommates” from a given race? If they did it without the help of a rich firm, they’d probably get away with it. But if a rich firm helped, it would be outrageous racism!
Added 7a: Imagine Romney was revealed to have once rejected an apartment because blacks lived in the neighboring apartment. And imagine Obama was revealed to have rejected a roommate in college because he was white. How different would the resulting scandals be?
What Is Private?
As some of the better objectors to Hanson's argument have pointed out, what he has done is claimed that the line between discrimination the state should allow and discrimination the state should not allow is a quantitative one, not a qualitative one. The part they object to is Hanson's claim that there are factors at work in the quantitative analysis besides "being forced to share a kitchen is more intrusive than being forced to share an elevator"; that is, "the greater the size of the firm, the less discrimination the state should permit". I don't have a dog in this fight, but there are interesting issues here to consider.
1. Jean is a 23-year-old woman with a college education who lives alone. (a) Should the state prevent her from discriminating between sexual partners on the basis of race? (b) If she wishes to do so, does it matter why she prefers one race to another? (c) If she has a reason, does it matter whether that reason is backed by evidence? (For example, maybe she thinks black men's penises are too big but has never slept with a black man or done any research into whether this is true). (d) Should she be able to advertise (on Craigslist, for example) for potential sexual partners with explicitly race-based restrictions? (e) Does the answer to any of the above depend on what race Jean is or what race she wishes to discriminate against?
2. Jean is a 23-year-old woman with a college education who lives alone. Since prostitution has been legalized, she has been the sole proprietor of her own prostitution business, which is operated out of her home and of which she is the only employee. (a)? (b)? (c)? (d)? (e)?
3. Jean is a 23-year-old woman with a college education. Since prostitution has been legalized, she has been working at Bedford's Brothel Inc., whose CEO is a man. There are 100 women employed to provide sexual services. There are 50 other employees, 60% of whom are male, including management, guards, bartenders, health services, and janitorial staff. All of them (except management) are unionized and receive good pay and benefits.
(a) Should the state prevent Bedford's from discriminating against potential clients on the basis of race? Do the gender politics within the corporation matter? If Bedford's isn't allowed to discriminate, should individual prostitutes it employs, such as Jean, be allowed to? Should the union be allowed to negotiate for provisions prohibiting certain races or allowing individual prostitutes to discriminate based on race?(b)? (c)? (d) If Bedford's is allowed to discriminate based on race, should it be allowed to advertise this? If the union is able to negotiate terms allowing its members to discriminate based on race, should it be allowed to point this out when trying to recruit new members?(e)?
The point here is to try to figure out exactly which intuitions are driving the policy and, once we find them, figuring out whether they are rational and whether we should keep them.
William Easterly says that empirically Schelling's model doesn't match the data.