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10.6.2002
You Can Stick Your Hand in a Warm Place Until That Happens!
From the 9/29/02 article by Randy Cohen in the New York Times:
"Q: After a lot of house hunting in the competitive Bay Area, a friend found a bungalow he liked. The real-estate agent said it worked against my friend to be a young single man. The owners wanted their house to go to someone they liked -- for instance, a family with kids. So my friend took along a woman and her son who posed as his fiancee and future stepson. Was that ethical? (P.S.: The owners accepted his bid.)
A: Is it O.K. to deceive people to make them like you so you can get something out of them? If the answer were yes, your friend could be criticized for his lackadaisical efforts. He couldn't be bothered to take the sellers out dancing, ply them with liquor, fly them to Hawaii. He has much to learn about being a cad. However, the answer is no. Deceit, in love or real estate, is not honorable. The question would be more difficult if it entailed not just some putative quirk of the sellers but their entrenched prejudice. It would be tough to rebuke an African-American family for having used a front to buy a home in a lily-white suburb in 1955. However, even in such a case, that's a tactic of last resort, not a first step. Had your friend faced genuine housing bias, he would have had to choose among two competing philosophies. The first holds that if someone acts illegally toward you, you can respond in kind: you can cheat a cheater. The more fastidious response is expressed in the traditional dictum ''Two wrongs don't make a right.'' I advocate the latter approach; your friend should take the high road and act honestly. Such probity would, incidentally, put him in a better position to vindicate his rights should the matter end up in a courtroom. It is significant that in this particular case your friend had nothing to go on except a Realtor's rumor: it was not clear that the sellers discriminated based on marital status, something that would be illegal in some places and unethical in all. Before engaging in any chicanery, he should have contacted the housing authorities to learn if there was indeed a pattern of prejudice in this area, and if so, whether those officials were taking steps to counter it. (P.S.: That his scheme got your friend what he wanted doesn't make it right. Effectual is not a synonym for ethical.)"
Note from jobfairy.com: This is the San Francisco Bay area. The guy's probably trying to avoid that none-too-subtle anti-gay bias. (Whether he is queer or not, he's a single guy who is perceived that way. See how prejudice isn't rational?) So morally, it is the equivalent of blacks in the 1950s. That's the first issue I have with this.
The second is that when you pursue the "contact the authorities, file paperwork, and go to court" route, you wind up wasting energy on something that will probably not produce results. At least not results that benefit you right now, when you need them, like as in when you want that particular house and it's a tight market and you want to move sometime this century.
The third issue I have with this is that it runs counter to the Job Fairy philosophy. Hey - this is where our paths diverge - and I'm not sorry. It is OK to fight back against your oppressors, and by using any tactics that will be effective. Cohen writes from a straight white male perspective. That's nice, but not all of us enjoy heterosexual white male privilege. Those in power don't give any of it away without a fight. You have to take it.
Look at our Founding Fathers. When they fought for independence against the British, they were vilified all over Europe because they dressed in earth tones, daubed their faces with mud, hid behind trees and stone walls all while shooting at the neatly arranged rows of English soldiers in bright red uniforms who marched in the open down the road. Unconventional, but effective. You don't hear us singing "God Save the Queen" these days, do you?
The point is that you're justified in doing whatever you have to do to defend yourself against the unjust. There's no middle ground on this. You either believe in self-defense or you're willing let others walk all over you your entire life.
There's an economic war going on. It's waged mostly against women, who have the most financial vulnerability to start with, and have been socialized since Day One to not fight back when things get tough because it's unladylike. Screw that! Defend yourself, and don't listen to those who tell you it's not OK to do so.
And thank goodness for the Realtor who tipped off the home buyer to the seller's distinctly anti-capitalist behavior. It's nice to know that there are decent people out there who don't act as enablers when others are total bastards.
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