Paying minorities to leave

Abstract

In April 1962, white segregationists paid money to African Americans agreeing to leave New Orleans. In 2010, the British National Party proposed paying non-white migrants money to leave the UK. Five years later, a landlord in New York paid African American tenants to vacate their apartments. This article considers when, if ever, it is morally permissible to pay minorities to leave. I argue that paying minorities to leave is demeaning towards recipients and so wrong. Although the payments are wrong, it is not clear if they are impermissible, given the benefits for the recipients. I argue that payments are impermissible if at least one of two conditions are met: The payments demean or harm other members of society, or the payments are provided to recipients who have failed to consent to the payments.

Keywords

discrimination consent immigration voluntary transactions

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alexander

(1992) What makes wrongful discrimination wrong? University of Pennsylvania Law Review 14(1): 149–219.

Anderson

(2010) The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Arneson

(1994) Autonomy and preference formation. In: Jules L

Coleman

Allen

Buchanan

(eds) In Harms Way: Essays in Honour of Joel Feinberg. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–75.

Arneson

(2006) What is wrongful discrimination? San Diego Law Review 43(4): 775–807.

Benatar

(2012) The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Bosin

(2015) Discrimination and Harassment Claims could Increase Amount of Severance Offered. Available at: http://www.njbusiness-attorney.com/articles/discrimination-harassment-claims-increase-severance.html (accessed 20 July 2015).

Collins

(2003) Discrimination, equality, and social inclusion. Modern Law Review 66(1): 16–43.

Driver

(1992) The suberogatory. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70(3): 286–295.

Gibson

(2015) ‘I put in white tenants’: The grim, racist (and likely illegal) methods of one Brooklyn landlord. New York Magazine, May 12, 2015. Available at: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/grim-racist-methods-of-one-brooklyn-landlord.html (accessed 14 June 2017).

10.

Eidelson

(2013) Treating people as individuals. In: Deborah

Hellman

Sophia

Moreau

(eds) Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 205.

11.

Gerver

(2017) Paying Refugees to Leave, Political Studies 17(1): 3–22.

12.

Hellman

(2008) When Is Discrimination Wrong? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

13.

Kershner

(2016) She was asked to switch seats. Now she’s charging El Al with sexism. New York Times, 26 /2. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/world/middleeast/woman-81-to-sue-israeli-airline-over-seat-switch.html?_r=0 (accessed 14 June 2017).

14.

Khaitan

(2015) A Theory of Discrimination Law. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

15.

Khaitan

(2012) Dignity as an expressive norm: Neither vacuous nor a Panacea. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 32(1): 1–19.

16.

Khaitan

(2013) Prelude to a theory of discrimination law. In: Deborah

Hellman

Sophia

Moreau

(eds) Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 138–162.

17.

Lippert-Rasmussen

(2013) Born Free and Equal? A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Discrimination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

18.

Lippert-Rasmussen

(2006) The badness of discrimination. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9(2): 167–185.

19.

May

(1998) Masculinity and Morality. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

20.

Miller

(2005) Immigration: The case for its limits. In: Andrew

Cohen

Christopher

Wellman

(eds) Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 193–206.

21.

Moreau

(2010) What is discrimination? Philosophy and Public Affairs 38( 2 ): 143–179.

22.

Natalie

(2000) Autonomy and the feminist intuition. In: Catriona

MacKenzie

Natalie

Stoljar

(eds) Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 94–111.

23.

Nozick

(1974) Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

24.

Phillips

(2013) Our Bodies, Whose Property? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

25.

Pincus

(1994) From individual to structural discrimination. In: Fred L

Pincus

Howard J

Ehrlich

(eds) Race and Ethnic Conflict. Boulder, CO: Westview, pp. 82–87.

26.

Sandel

(2012) What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Penguin.

27.

Satz

(2010) Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Oxford University Press.

28.

Scanlon

(2008) Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

29.

Segall

(2012) What’s so bad about discrimination? Utilitas 24(1): 82–100.

30.

Slavny

Parr

(2015) Harmless discrimination. Legal Theory 21(2): 100–114.

31.

Smith

(2010) BNP would offer £50,000 to leave the country. The Independent, 29 /4. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bnp-would-offer-pound50000-to-leave-the-country-1957668.html (accessed 14 June 2017).

32.

Stark

(1997) Is pornography an action? The causal vs. the conceptual view of pornography’s harm. Social Theory and Practice 23( 2 ): 277–306.

33.

Steiner

(1984) A liberal theory of exploitation. Ethics 94(2): 225–241.

34.

Steiner

(2013) Liberalism, neutrality, and exploitation. Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 12(4): 335–344.

35.

Sundstrom

(2013) Commentary on Elizabeth Anderson’s The Imperative of Integration . Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy 9(2): 1–5.

36.

Tabuchi

(2009) Japan pays foreign workers to go home. The New York Times, April 22, 2009. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html (accessed 14 June 2017).

37.

Tyson

(2005) Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story. New York: Random House.

38.

Valdman

(2009) A theory of wrongful exploitation. Philosophers’ Imprint 9(6): 1–14.

39.

Velleman

(1992) Against the right to die. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17(6): 665–681.

40.

Webb

(2004) ‘A cheap trafficking in human misery’: The reverse freedom rides of 1962. Journal of American Studies 38(2): 249–271.

41.

Wellman

(2008) Immigration and freedom of association. Ethics 119(1): 109–141.

42.

Wertheimer

(1996) Exploitation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

43.

Yuracko

(2006) Sameness, subordination, and perfectionism: Towards a more complete theory of employment discrimination law. San Diego Law Review 43: 857–897.