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My Uncle John and “Fairness”

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

This past Friday, my Uncle John Maruffi celebrated his 82^nd birthday.  Congratulations, Unc!  We recently visited Uncle John when we went up to Connecticut to give my mother a surprise 80^th birthday party, and I was pleased to see that he is still going strong. 

When Unc came back from World War II, he had a hard time finding a job because, at that time, there was still considerable discrimination against Italians.  He had the skills, and he had been defending his country the same as everyone else, but there were plenty of job candidates; so employers could exercise their prejudices against Italians without paying too high a price. 

There were other situations in which my mother’s family was treated unfairly, too, such as when they were trying to buy a house, and people refused to sell to them because they didn’t want to let Italians into the neighborhood.  (No doubt they thought property values would plummet if they let Italians in!)

At that time, there were no special legal protections to force an employer to offer Uncle John a job or to force a family to sell a house to my mother’s parents, so they just had to make the best of it and find people who were willing to hire them and to sell them a house.  Unc ended up working at the Post Office.  For many years, he was responsible for planning the delivery routes and making sure there was someone there to handle each route every day.  It was a very responsible job, and he handled it well until he retired.  My mother’s family also ended up buying a different house, and I loved it because, when I was a kid, the town built a swimming pool across the street from that house, and I used their house as my home away from home during the summers – lounging around the house and then swimming at the pool.  What a life!

My grandmother occasionally would tell me about the discrimination she had experienced in New York City, where people would throw rotten tomatoes and eggs at the Italians, and where the Irish would refuse to walk on the same side of the street or even to sit in the same pews in church.  It is ironic that the Irish, who had suffered the same kind of discrimination a generation earlier, often were the most cruel to the newer Italian immigrants.  Grandma told me that I should never treat other people that way, and I took her instructions to heart.  Not only have I never thrown rotten eggs and tomatoes at other people, but I have tended to stand up for the outcast and underdog in most situations and have taught my children to do the same (often at substantial personal cost). 

Given the experience my Uncle had in facing discrimination, I found it interesting that, on his birthday this past Friday, the Louisville Metro Council passed a “fairness” ordinance, prohibiting discrimination against certain groups of people in housing and employment, including gays and lesbians. 

So, with all my concern about fairness and justice, do I think it would have been better if there had been a “fairness” law back then, requiring people to hire Italians like Uncle John, or to sell a house to my grandparents, or to sit in the same pews at church?  Absolutely not!

I am very glad that there were no such “fairness” laws back then, and that the law protected the property rights and freedoms of landlords and employers, because it meant that the Italian immigrants had to assimilate on a mutually cooperative, voluntary basis.  They had to find jobs with people who actually wanted to hire them, where they could become successful, and they had to find homes where people actually wanted to sell to them.  I am sure it wasn’t always pleasant, but it set the Italians up to become very successful.

As an Italian, I did not grow up with a chip on my shoulder, thinking that people owed me a job or owed me housing; instead, I believed I had to develop skills that would make me useful to a willing employer, and I had to find a willing seller to sell me a house.  In other words, I grew up being taught the skills and attitudes I needed for success. 

Take a look at where Italians are today – running some of the biggest companies in America!  The lessons the unprotected Italian immigrants taught their children and grandchildren have made them very successful.  You don’t hear about discrimination against Italians anymore; in fact, I am sure my children would find it difficult to believe that Uncle John and my mother ever faced such discrimination.   And that’s as it should be, and as it had been in the U.S., until we got all kinds of special legal protection for special groups of people. 

Now, thanks to these special legal protections, which arose out of the civil rights movement, the law gives some people a basis for suing others when they feel they have been discriminated against.  Many people now go through life with a chip on their shoulder, thinking that others owe them a job or housing, and developing grievances instead of job skills.  At the same time, the risks to employers and landlords who want to offer them an opportunity have increased.  If an employer hires someone from a protected group and it doesn’t work out, he is at risk of being sued if he fires that person.  The result has been unfortunate all the way around.

I have been in the position of being discriminated against in an unprotected manner and of being given special protection in the workplace, and I’ll take the discriminated, unprotected route any day.  When I was in the “protected” position, other employees assumed I got my job because I was a woman, not because I had the job skills.  In fact, they assumed I did not have the same qualifications as the men working around me.  While people were pleasant, I felt there was an additional hurdle I had to overcome that other employees didn’t have to deal with.  In other words, the special “help” was really a hindrance.  On the other hand, as a patent attorney in private practice, I have no special protections.  If people don’t think a woman is capable of doing good work in this field, they don’t bring their business to me, and I don’t have to deal with them. 

You don’t have to be accepted by everyone in order to live a very productive and happy life.  Not only that, but forcing someone to hire or keep you does not exactly engender a pleasant working relationship.  I only work with people who are willing to give me a chance, which has meant that I have been able to become very successful, not having to deal with people’s unfair prejudices.  In fact, some clients have said that they sought me out, because they felt a woman had to have stronger qualifications in order to succeed in a field that was so dominated by men.   

It is ironic that these special protections can only be enacted into law when society has reached the point that it is willing to treat these groups of people pretty well anyway – otherwise politicians would never take the chance of voting for the legislation giving them special protection.  So, at just about the time people are succeeding on their own merit and are becoming accepted, in comes a law that puts a debilitating chip on their shoulders and makes employers and landlords wary of them!  Thomas Sowell has shown statistics proving that African Americans were making great strides before the civil rights laws were passed, but the rate of  improvement leveled off after the civil rights laws were enacted, rather than continuing at the same pace or improving.  In other words, it appears that the special protections African Americans received under the civil rights laws actually retarded their progress rather than speeding it up. (Of course, those who operate out of emotion rather than logic and facts will choose to ignore these facts.)

If we really want all kinds of people to be able to succeed in our society, and if we want harmony rather than division, then we should get rid of special “protections”.  We need to let employers and employees (and landlords and tenants) work things out on a mutually beneficial basis without interference from the heavy hand of the state, just as the Italians, the Irish, and other groups have done throughout American history. I am very thankful that my Italian ancestors were not given any special help, and, if you are smart, you will try to make sure that your particular group doesn’t get any special help, either!

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