Ever been the subject of bias?

Paul and I were living in an apartment (a friends husband and sister had cancer and we moved there to be near enough to help if something happened. Eventually both the husband and sister died.)

When Mary (our friend) moved, Paul and I started looking for a new place to live. There was a house down the street from us that we thought would be a nice place. Paul went over and applied. A few days later we picked up a call from our answering machine that said, "Yeah, this is Dave, I'm calling back about the apartment for rent on South KK. I'm just calling to let you know that the apartment has been rented, in case you were wondering about a callback. OK? OK." Then there's a very slight pause (probably as he's hanging up the phone) then you hear him clearly say, "Fag."

We thought about letting it slide but decided that we didn't want him to do it to anyone else. We went to the Fair Housing Commission and played the tape. They got a lawyer for us and did their own tests which showed that the folks were definitely discriminating.

They asked us what we wanted out of it. We said we didn't want anything and that we just didn't want them to do it to anyone else. They told us to put a dollar amount on pain and suffering. We didn't know what to say. We just picked a dollar amount out of the air ($1,000).

In the end we had a date with a judge who listened to the tape and agreed that it was the guy on the phone (they claimed we doctored the tape). The judge didn't give us anything (we didn't want it anyway) but he did award the lawyer fees ($2,000) so we were happy about it.

A landlord would not even show me a rental house because I was young and single. The dipshit didn't even ask for references. I was just starting work and had a good salary as an entry level engineer. I did not realize that I had been discriminated against at the time.

Friends of mine could not get an apartment because they were an unwed (hetero) couple.

And yes I've experienced that under the breath "dyke" kinda thing, quite a few times, though I've never lost an apartment over it (that I know of).

I lost an orchestra gig once when the conductor called me after the audition to have lunch with me. I tried to believe that it was all innocent and he just wanted to talk about the song selections, but it wasn't. That wasn't exactly biased against me being gay (though telling him I was gay was a lot easier than just saying, No, I don't want to sleep with you).

I never did anything about that because I was young and afraid of being blacklisted. It happens.

More people need to take a stand like you did.

Being straight, white and male, I can't recall any episodes of discrimination in my life.

..My parents live in a nice town in CT...about 20 minutes outside of Hartford, and until last year, my brother attended the high school in that town. He's not a perfect kid, so my parents have been called in more than once, and almost every time that made my mother cry and be very distraught. So once I drove up from NYC and went with them. You see, we emigrated here from Russia in 1991, and while I don't have any accent, my parents have a very heavy accent, so you can tell they are immigrants. I was disgusted when I saw how the VP of the high school spoke to them...as if they weren't human, these 'immigrants', that type of attitude.

Needless to say, I lost it a bit...but before I left the office, I politely threatened her with bad press (I have a friend reporter at Hartford Courant) and a lawyer...After that, she didn't call them in much more.

At the end we pulled my brother out, to do home schooling, just because the environment of that particular school was pretty bad (not because of me), just the teachers and administration weren't doing a good job in our opinion.

Because my atheism came out. I didn't brag about it, but the owner of the store kept pushing me about where I went to church, and I got fed up with it. Told him I didn't go to church, didn't believe in it, please stop asking me about it. Next week, I was off the schedule.

When I went to the local labour board about it, the person in charge said he was more worried about my soul than my job. He was an elder in the LDS church in town. At that point, I just gave up and moved on.

Yeah, I should have pushed on up the chain, but I was in Alabama. How far up the chain was I going to have to go before I'd find someone who gave a damn?

and I was a single mom, this happened to me OFTEN. Most landlords were not even subtle about it. "We don't want any problem kids living here." As if just because I was single, my kid is automatically a 'problem'. Back in the early 80s, it was common to be told 'this is an 'adult only' complex.' Even if it was against the law, it was a common thing to run across.

I was recently looking to move and had found a perfect townhouse. The landlady was nice and I filled out the app. She called me back and said, "Sorry, the owners will not rent to you because you had 'too many' last names show up on your credit report. What the fuck? Because I have been married twice I'm now considered a bad credit risk? And it wasn't just the last names "Your middle initial keeps changing." Well, DUH... sometimes it is listed as my middle name I was given at birth, sometimes it was listed as my maiden name used as my middle name. She made it sound like I was some kind of scam artist or something. Jesus.

Then there are the landlords who couldn't determine what race I was, and would try to find out by asking off the wall questions. "You go to the beach alot? You sure got a nice tan." Or they would start in about their family geneaology and then start asking about mine. I do have an exotic look and no one can really guess what race/ethnic group I fit in. I've been mistaken for creole, hispanic, native american, mediterranean, arabian, etc. In truth, I'm just a dark-skinned white girl (jewish, german, and irish).