I was reading the LA Times today and there is a story that I heard about yesterday on NPR about a bill that’s in the senate that establishes that HMOs cannot discriminate against people based on their genetic makeup, specifically genes that are known to predispose them to certain diseases like breast cancer and Alzheimer’s.
Of course, this immediately reminded me of the movie Gattaca with Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law.
It also reminded me of another phenomenon that we studied in my race & ethnicity course this semester, called “redlining.” It’s a practice whereby racial minorities are denied access to housing opportunities in certain neighborhoods because their presence there could drive values down. It’s interesting because the practice doesn’t necessarily reflect prejudice on the part of the agents themselves, only a recognition of the fact that in neighborhoods where black residents live, white residents can have the tendency to move away, thus creating a riskier situation.
We read of a specific example of this; it was an account by a college professor who was a black woman trying to purchase a home in a distant area and conducting the transaction solely by phone. Nearing the end of the process, the agent faxed her some paperwork to sign, including a mandatory equal opportunity something or other in which he had indicated her race as “white.” Though she was hesitant, she corrected the error and soon found that the bank was asking for a much higher interest rate and down payment, even though this kind of disclosure was meant to discourage the practice that it was in fact facilitating.
In the movie, genetic discrimination was also illegal, but at the beginning Ethan Hawke’s voiceover explains that employers found easy ways around it in the form of “voluntary” drug tests or simply a “found” sample like a hair or skin particle. So I’m skeptical.
P.S. The professor fought the practice and was eventually able to purchase the house under the original terms.
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