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Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

techinasia.com

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Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#61

Post by throwaway0a5e »

searchableguy wrote: post #6

A lot of people have misconception that all Indian food is oily and strong in smell but that's far from true. That is the primary reason given for excluding Indian tenants everywhere. For some reason, north Indian food is over represented by a significant margin. On top of it, people expect restaurant style food to be cooked at home except nobody does that. Most young people do not use strong ghee or spices. With pro…

There is no shortage of contexts in which HN will happily tell me it is not ok for me to be able to do something because there are some other people who might do it wrong in a way that has some minor negative effect on others (heck, half the time the effect isn't even guaranteed, it's just a risk) and I should just bend over and take it with a grin because that's the pro social thing to do.

Why is this any different?

And to be clear, IDGAF about Indian food. IDGAF about people who microwave fish in the office. My dispute is with cognitive dissonance.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#62

Post by shlant »

yunohn wrote: post #46
lettergram wrote: post #30

Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their rea…

> remind people the world is far more racist > generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination I would definitely agree that all humans have the capacity to be racist (other-ist) and that racism is not confined to the USA (obviously). But it’s ridiculous to claim that somehow “it’s worse than the USA” and that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person.

> that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person.

The OP literally said "It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction" in the next sentence

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#63

Post by oytis »

jrockway wrote: post #16
Victerius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how laws can prevent discrimination, to be honest. LLs can refuse to rent to anyone for arbitrary reasons without being required to divulge the true reason.

It being illegal means you can drag the landlord to court and ask them to explain their thinking to the court. You can say, look, here's the income and rental histories and credit scores for your tenants in separate apartments, here's documentation saying we are above that, so what's the reason for the rejection. And, lying under oath is its own crime. This is like saying "murder shouldn't be illegal because everyone…

Does it work like that anywhere? At least in Germany the burden of proof in discrimination cases are on the accuser, and perpetrators have to be stupid enough to say it out loud to lose their case.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#64

Post by RHSeeger »

lettergram wrote: post #30

Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their rea…

I heard it said once, about how prevalent and deep racism runs in various societies, that

- Americans are racist

- Europeans wrote their thesis on racism

- Asians wrote the original sources on racism that the Europeans cite in their thesis

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#65

Post by idk1 »

TomVDB wrote: post #10

Was surprised to see “Singapore”, expected “Bay Area.” When I left my last rental after buying a house, my elderly white landlord asked me to help him put the property on Craigslist. When I did so and mentioned the Cupertino school district, he asked me to remove that part because “it would attract too many Indian families with kids” to avoid the curry smell. He had no issue with other Asian ethnicities, the previous…

I'm white and my husband is British Indian. Back in 2010 now before we were married he got a few rental rejects, one specifically mentioned the curry issue. He's never cooked a curry in his life. I just want to give him a hug when these things happen, it's awful.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#66

Post by starkd »

lettergram wrote: post #30

Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their rea…

But, I suppose, an important question to ask is: which is worse? The overt in-your-face racism or the subtle more nuanced racism that avoid stating it directly? In a lot of ways, the candor is better, since at least you know what you are dealing with. A lot of the efforts in the U.S. have merely driven it underground, and the efforts to counter it have become sort of draconian in themselves (e.g. more "thought police").

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#68

Post by choko »

justinsaccount wrote: post #53
lettergram wrote: post #30

Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their rea…

Speaking of "overt": South African Racism vs. American Racism https://youtu.be/XUuLDkDSJKg Gist of his answer is south African Racism is "blacks can't live here", US Racism is "well you could live here, but your loan was denied, sorry"

It's illegal to deny loans on the basis of race. Your race is also not a factor in your credit score.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#69

Post by jokethrowaway »

rowanG077 wrote: post #51
yardie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad there isn't a service that could look into the historical background of prospective tenants to gain references, criminal, credit, job and salary information. Completely objective and mostly without inherent prejudices. We may even call it something like "a background check". Just spitballing ideas!

Because someone who has a stolen food from a store once is a bad tenant? Or someone who once forget to pay a credit card bill is bad tenant? Landlords should simply not be allowed to deny a potential tenant unless they can't pay. You don't play games with living essentials.

You've obviously never been in the position of being elderly, living in a country where pension funds got dilapidated by politicians (no matter how much you paid into it), needing money and your only source of income being a flat you're renting.

My dad had one squatter, who was a respectable 60 years old lady: she just stopped paying and the legal and justice system is so shit that it took more than a year to get her out of my dad's flat - meanwhile she trashed the flat, changed the gates to lock us out and started burning stuff.

You don't get to decide who lives in my property, I do and you can be damn sure I'll think very hard what's my chance the tenant will pay or not based on any data I have available. If they're students or asylum seekers they're more likely to trash the place and go unpunished.

It would be less relevant if I could reclaim my flat immediately (fine, I'll eat a loss of a month of rent) after breach of contract, but that's not the world we live in.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#70

Post by raarts »

tokai wrote: post #49
raarts wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Globally speaking, the US is one of the least racist countries.

You have to post your source on that. The surveys I find put the US in the most racist countries category. Not the most worst of the worst, but definitely in the worst end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
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