Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
You are wrong, and this was just discussed upthread.
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And you, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit, are of course right. At least as far as the legal part goes. Of course a retailer has no obligation to stock goods meant to appeal to a segment of the population, even if those folks are historically discriminated against.
What bothers me is that when retailers become so huge and influential, on the supply side as well, they can really impact what marginalized people have the opportunity to purchase. Banking services, for example: Wikileaks -- who so far retain the presumption of innocence -- has been seriously hampered by the refusal of the merchant banks to handle their donations.
So I don't think it's totally straightforward. I agree with others above that this is primarily a moral argument. However, I don't think the blanket excuse of market forces is really good enough. The kind of public services in which discrimination is prohibited, in Canada at least, can in some cases be provided by non-governmental or commercial organizations. I'd like to see what would happen if a bank, for instance, refused to offer mortgages to gay people.
Here's the relevant statutory definition of discrimination where I live (British Columbia):
"(1) A person must not, without a bona fide and reasonable justification,
(a) deny to a person or class of persons any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public, or
(b) discriminate against a person or class of persons regarding any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public.
because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or class of persons."
This seems to me to describe Amazon's actions, certainly in "moral" terms. And I note that many of the "public" services in which discrimination is very clearly prohibited operate in the market sphere. Marginalized people have won rights by standing up for them, often at great risk. Not very many white people in the South, back in the early 20th century, saw anything wrong with treating African-Americans as second-class citizens. At the risk of sounding glib, Rosa Parks could after all have taken a taxi.