Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techinasia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 238 posts

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

#191

Post by amrangaye »

starkd wrote: post #143
foobarbecue wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't overt racists so much as subtle, persistent bias, which absolutely holds people back in very significant ways. See my comment about my grandmother. And... unless you're in a marginalized minority group, you really aren't in a position to know how racist people are. Oh yeah, I just remembered, we also recently had a president for four years who was overly racist. Remember his attacks on Judge Curiel?…

Not true. Any body can understand it. It's a basic human empathy characteristic. Telling people they are not in a position to know anything about it, is merely an attempt at thought control by disregarding their opinions. It's not really a discussion.

I don’t think this is correct. Just yesterday I was thinking about the many brave white people who fought as abolitionists to end the slave trade, risking their lives. But they could never truly understand what it was to be a slave, because they went home at the end of the day, whereas the slaves were not only forced to work without pay, they were also bred like horses, with the “strongest” ones forced to mate to make strong slaves. It doesn’t mean the abolitionists can’t understand and sympathize and even work at great personal risk to free slaves. So yes maybe anybody can “understand” it as you said - I’m not debating that. But it’s completely different to live with the constant humiliation and discrimination, getting things said and done to you that are not illegal, that ghe discriminating group then dismiss as you being a snowflake etc.

So yes you’re right anyone can empathize. But I don’t think that’s what OP is saying. You really cannot fully understand unless you live it. Just like you cannot understand true poverty in African countries, when you’ve spent your whole life living in a (relatively) rich one.

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

#192

Post by foobarbecue »

mbostleman wrote: post #174
foobarbecue wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't overt racists so much as subtle, persistent bias, which absolutely holds people back in very significant ways. See my comment about my grandmother. And... unless you're in a marginalized minority group, you really aren't in a position to know how racist people are. Oh yeah, I just remembered, we also recently had a president for four years who was overly racist. Remember his attacks on Judge Curiel?…

> Does this mean that it is not empirically measurable then? That would explain a lot because actual data is what I find missing from the claims of how prevalent racism is.

I certainly didn't mean to discredit empirical studies. I meant to remind a white guy saying that in his experience racists "don't hold any significant power in terms of holding people back" that if he was black, he might have a different experience.

As for empirical data, there's tons. Maybe start with this Brookings report since it's on the topic of the OP (housing) https://www.brookings.edu/research/biased-appraisals-and-the...

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

#193

Post by tibbydudeza »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #149
tibbydudeza wrote: post #48

Afaik Singaporean housing is based on a govt racial quota system - if you sell/lease your property it must match to the demarcated race for that area - there are numbers. It seems that he is an outlier being a mixed race couple - dunno how that works in that case ????. Also Singapore in the early days suffered from race riots between it's Chinese/Malay/Tamil (Indian) citizens and the founders did not want racial ghet…

Racial quotas only apply to buying public housing. Private housing and leases on public housing are a free-for-all.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/singapore-rental-racism-prc-...

"When co-founder of property listings website 99.co Darius Cheung and his pregnant wife Roshni Mahtani"

Now this is old article - circa 2017

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

#194

Post by foobarbecue »

starkd wrote: post #150
foobarbecue wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism is often subtle and insidious. I'll never forget asking my grandma what she thought of Obama when he was running for president the first time. She said "I like his ideas, but he just doesn't... LOOK right." The dog whistle version of this, which you heard public figures using on TV, was "he doesn't look presidential."

That seems like mind-reading on your part. Even if you are partially right, any individual's thoughts on this are generally more complex and likely to be expressed in different ways on any given day, and in the long term, tend to shift in ways that aren't easy to map.

Am I missing something? Did you know my grandmother?

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

#195

Post by ignoramous »

bhupy wrote: post #52
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…

Yup, minority here, and I wouldn't feel comfortable living anywhere except the US, Canada, the UK, and maybe ANZ. The Anglo-world in general is far more welcoming to people of color than anywhere else. I'm sure I could be comfortable wherever I am in the world, but it would be extremely difficult for me to thrive and see myself in a position of leadership (either in the private sector or the government) anywhere outs…

I presume your sense of belonging may have something do with your socio-economic status.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

latexr wrote: post #98
starkd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we have a biological tendency to be somewhat racist, but among every person that I've met who could be classed as being marginally racist, usually they do not really mean the things they say. Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. I say, marginally racist, because I have never met a full-fledged racist (in U.S. here). Peronall…

> Nearly every one of them will create an exception once they have a reasonable conversation with someone from another race. Daryl Davis¹, through conversation, convinced a number of Klansmen to leave and denounce the KKK. See “Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America”². ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Dav...

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by timwaagh »

yardie wrote: post #38
timwaagh wrote: post #24

Landlording is something that is likely to make a person more racist. A couple of bad experiences and you start preferring people similar to those that did not give trouble in the past.

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!

Could work. Could also be considered an invasion of privacy. Depends on your jurisdiction.

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

#198

Post by rowanG077 »

speakfreely wrote: post #177
rowanG077 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes it's painfully obvious who is giving their idealistic opinion and who is speaking from personal experience.

I just place people being able to have a roof over their heads over the needs of the rent seekers that are even in a position to squeeze the lower class by having essentially superfluous property.

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

#199

Post by bhupy »

ignoramous wrote: post #195
bhupy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, minority here, and I wouldn't feel comfortable living anywhere except the US, Canada, the UK, and maybe ANZ. The Anglo-world in general is far more welcoming to people of color than anywhere else. I'm sure I could be comfortable wherever I am in the world, but it would be extremely difficult for me to thrive and see myself in a position of leadership (either in the private sector or the government) anywhere outs…

I presume your sense of belonging may have something do with your socio-economic status.

It certainly does! But that's different from racism, which is the entire point. I have never felt like my race has been a barrier to reaching my current socio-economic status, and do not believe there to be some magic socio-economic ceiling imposed by the accident of my skin color / heritage. A middle-class Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Latino doesn't have much (if any) disadvantage relative to a white American from West Virginia or Alabama of the same economic status.

This has been true for pretty much every group of immigrants to America. I recommend reading this thread which makes the argument better than I ever could: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1469031915768279045

> The American immigrant story -- arrive with little, work hard and move up over three or four generations, win a place in the middle class and a place in the national tapestry even in the face of discrimination -- is still firmly in place, folks.

And it's easy to take this for granted, as Americans, but this kind of economic convergence within 3-4 generations is not universal. Muslim immigrants to France suffer from multi-generational poverty.

I know for a fact that if I tried hard enough, I could become the CEO of Google (like Sundar) or the CEO of Microsoft (like Satya), or even "fail" into a Director/VP position at any Fortune 500 corporation. I know I can probably become the Mayor of a major city, or a Governor of a major State, or even a member of Congress. I know that my Indian-American wife who is accomplished in her own right can potentially become the CEO of Vimeo (look her up!). I know I can probably become a star stand-up comedian (like Hasan, Hari, or Aziz). I know I can probably become a star actor in a Hollywood Blockbuster (like Mindy or Kal).

I type this comment while on vacation in Stockholm, where the streets are currently littered with campaign posters for the upcoming election in September 2022, and I do not believe that I or my children can ever see ourselves on those posters and be accepted as Swedish — no matter how hard we tried. I'm not confident that I'd ever be considered to meaningfully lead H&M or Ikea or Volvo, at least not over a white blonde Swedish person with generations of Nordic lineage. As I said above, I'm sure I'd be comfortable living in Sweden — it's a remarkably easy place to live — but my success is capped by the color of my skin in a way that it simply isn't in America (or Canada, UK, and maybe ANZ).

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

#200

Post by mbostleman »

foobarbecue wrote: post #192
mbostleman wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does this mean that it is not empirically measurable then? That would explain a lot because actual data is what I find missing from the claims of how prevalent racism is.

I certainly didn't mean to discredit empirical studies. I meant to remind a white guy saying that in his experience racists "don't hold any significant power in terms of holding people back" that if he was black, he might have a different experience. As for empirical data, there's tons. Maybe start with this Brookings report since it's on the topic of the OP (housing) https://www.brookings.edu/research/biased-apprais…

This study, by it's own admission in the summary, does not have a cause for the 23% net difference in house values (55% gross, 23% remaining after adjusting for home quality, maintenance, and other market characteristics). Specifically:

"The question is: What explains this? We don’t know with any precision. In our paper, we reviewed literature on racial bias and pointed to its potential as an explanation, writing: “Our findings are generally consistent with the widespread presence of anti-Black bias.” We left it for future work to explore some of the relevant mechanisms that link bias to valuations and quantify their importance."

So the thought is that it MIGHT be bias (a bit presumptuous then to title the study "Biased appraisals..."). And we are waiting on future studies to actually provide the causal link.

But even if every bit of the 23% delta is caused by racial bias, we need to consider the trend. As far as I can tell every important sociological data point on this matter (employment, wealth, marriage, laws, etc.) has been improving decade after decade. I don't know what numbers this same study, or one equivalent to it, would reveal from say 5 or 7 decades ago, but I assume it would have been substantially worse.

All of which is to say that proposing a narrative that racism is rampant and getting worse does not seem to be supported by the data. To the contrary, it would seem that it is less than it's ever been and continues to decline.

EDIT: To be clear, I am not suggesting you or anyone here is proposing a narrative that racism is rampant and getting worse. But I think it's safe to say that proposal is prevalent in pop culture.

Post reply on HN