Ah I see. Well this is a worse argument than the one I thought you were making!😅

Civil rights laws didn't force anybody to take a job working for a black person. They required that black people be treated like everybody else when it came to the jobs they could get. Because they are like everybody else.

Some business owners decided to close down rather than be "forced" to accomodate black people. That's their choice too, and totally in keeping with the Civil Rights Act. Because while free choice does equal discrimination (in the non-negative sense of the word), the question is:

"Is it okay to negatively discriminate against an entire group of people, for a characteristic they can do nothing about and that has no impact on their abilities or character, in such a way that they can't fully participate in the opportunities life offers everybody else?"

If you choose not to date a black person or to buy black-owned goods and services or to work for a black boss or invite a black person into your home, you're totally free to do that. You'd also be a racist obviously, but you'd be free to choose that too. I'd actually agree that nobody should (or could) force you to behave differently

But if you choose not to let a black person eat at your restaurant or work in your company or live in the area that s/he chooses because it's too close to your home, now you're violating his/her right to choose. That's the difference.

If you extend that mentality to a societal level like...oh, I don't know...forcing everybody with black skin to accept a lower standard of goods and services and education and housing and everything else by segregating them, you create a grotesquely unfair society. It might feel just fine for you as a white person though. So you're unlikely to be motivated to change it. That's why you need to be "forced".

So much of the rest of what you say here makes no sense. People would rather lose money than risk being sued for racism? What are you talking about?! This is almost laughably ridiculous.Do you think this is even close to a representative view of how people feel about black employees? Even in today’s insane racial climate, never mind, say, five years ago when things were a little more sane? Affirmative action certainly isn’t perfect. W might agree there. But this feels like propaganda that went straight from Fox News to your fingers without passing through your brain.

Of course handicapped people should be hired at the same wage as anybody else. What alternative do you suggest? Handicapped people are always going to be hired at lower rates than able-bodied people in certain professions, but when they are hired, why shouldn’t they receive equal pay and treatment? And if you think minimum wage is coercive, consider what happens to wages and standards of living for millions of low-skilled employees when employers can pay them as little as they want.

And where the heck do you get the idea that I'm advocating for mob rule? Seriously, find a word I’ve ever written that suggests this. I'm talking about making society as fair as possible for everybody. I'm talking about equality of opportunity. Simple as that. I'm not sure what you're arguing for.

I don't think you're looking at outcomes at all. Because if you were, you'd look at the outcomes of various people within our society and wonder why they're so unequal. You'd come to more nuanced conclusions than that everybody who struggles just suffers from a "victim mentality". Because while we'd agree that some people do suffer from that, it's far from the only explanation for the disparities in society.

So yes, if you try to force somebody to do something, you'll inevitably meet with resistance (not necessarily rejection). But some people resist any change whatsoever. Even changes that are obviously good. People resisted abolishing slavery, and giving women the right to vote and work, and giving gay people the right to get married. The fact that some people don't like a change isn't a reason to oppose it. You have to look deeper than that.

But you seem stuck on this idea that it's more important that people should be able to choose to be bigots than it is for other people to live free from bigotry. I'm sad that I'm having to expend all this effort to point out that this is just obviously morally and logically wrong.