10-15-2023, 04:17 AM
Thoughts on this:
I see pretty frequent posts (to /r/waterloo) ostensibly complaining about "landlords" only accepting applications from prospective tenants of a specific ethnicity (or gender).
But often when I read into this, it's not "landlords" but "roommates". People are looking for a roommate to sublet to. While this might still make them technically a landlord, they are also a roommate.
FWIW...I don't really think the same standard can be applied. I think people have a right to be choosy about who they live with. I think it's probably still individually racist for a person to exclude someone from consideration as a roommate because of their race, but I find it much harder to call it illegal discrimination.
To take a different example, it is also common for people to choose roommates based on gender, but people are much less likely to call that sexist, despite it being exactly the same scenario.
Do you think people should be allowed to discriminate who they room with based on race? Or am I just crazy here?
I see pretty frequent posts (to /r/waterloo) ostensibly complaining about "landlords" only accepting applications from prospective tenants of a specific ethnicity (or gender).
But often when I read into this, it's not "landlords" but "roommates". People are looking for a roommate to sublet to. While this might still make them technically a landlord, they are also a roommate.
FWIW...I don't really think the same standard can be applied. I think people have a right to be choosy about who they live with. I think it's probably still individually racist for a person to exclude someone from consideration as a roommate because of their race, but I find it much harder to call it illegal discrimination.
To take a different example, it is also common for people to choose roommates based on gender, but people are much less likely to call that sexist, despite it being exactly the same scenario.
Do you think people should be allowed to discriminate who they room with based on race? Or am I just crazy here?