Craigslist.org was sued last week for housing discrimination based on the way people list the requirements for roommates. Saying you only want white, kosher, vegetarian roommates sounds reasonable but it is probably illegal.
I spent several years in the mid 1960s going to San Francisco apartments as a potential renter and being followed a few minutes later by a black or Chinese. Racial discrimination was rampant. I stopped working on housing discrimination when it became obvious that the laws weren’t enforced. They still aren’t, because ....
They still aren’t, because landlords, myself included, understand subtlety.
The law in the U.S. is always going to ban open discrimination and
people are always going to discriminate. If I were Craigslist.org I
would get the suit dropped by banning anyone from putting up a listing
that specified the nature or quality of the roommates (or buyers) of
anything.
The solution is to replace: “ I want a white, vegetarian, under 30
female, who likes rap music.” With “I am white, vegetarian, under 30,
single female, already have a boy friend, and I listen to a lot of rap
music.” That could never be illegal.
In the same vein there is a new website Prosper.com that
disintermediates personal loans. One side of the website are
prospective borrowers who describe themselves and their loan needs and
the other side are lenders who bid on the loan.
To make a good personal loan you need to know a great deal of personal
information about a borrower but 99.9% of the relevant information is
illegal to ask about. Consequently prosper.com has a great advantage
because, like the Craiglist.org issue, the potential borrower can
reveal as much information as he/she wants in order to get the loan. I
would guess that for many items, where revealing details would be
illegal or scandalous, the solution is to form organizations. Showing
organizations that you belong to, such as the Italian American Senior
Programmers - North Beach Chapter, would not be illegal but could
convey a great deal of information.
The whole point of this blog is that we now confront the stunning duality of our world. We oppose public discrimination but we need such discrimination to run our lives. The personal bulletin board and blog nature of the Internet is coming to our rescue.