A rant about “discrimination.”
One of the early long pieces I wrote on Tumblr. Holds up so-so-ish, I guess.
I’m sad that in 2010 there are people who believe that discriminating against anyone is okay.
Discriminating against any faith is wrong.
Discriminating against any person for their race or heritage is wrong.
Discriminating against homosexuals is wrong.
Discriminating against women is wrong.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, which I take to be that folks should be treated equally under the law, regardless of their race, gender, sexual identity, religion, looks, etc.
I think there should be no distinction between “straight marriage” and “gay marriage” — just “marriage,” inclusive of everyone who freely desires and chooses to get married. We don’t talk about “white marriages” and “black marriages,” and “interracial marriage” is losing the disparaging tone with which the phrase used to be uttered. Marriage is supposed to be between two people, not between two people and a church that neither of them belongs to.
On the matter of opposing institutional discriminatory practices, I have no quibbles.
HOWEVER!
What I’m interested in here, are the everyday attitudes that people have to discrimination, and to the word “discrimination.”
To discriminate means to “recognise a difference,” with synonyms such as “differentiate,” “distinguish,” “discern.”
You’ll notice that the 3 synonyms I mentioned there tend to carry either morally-neutral or weakly positive connotations.Except if you hated math, and “differentiate” conjures up frightening memories of Intro to Calculus. I apologise. For both the images and the lame joke.
But “discriminate” carries a distinctly negative connotation, one which I don’t think is merited by the definition above. In our daily lives, we discriminate between people all the time. Indeed, we discriminate against some people and for other people as a matter of human survival. We discriminate against unhinged quacks and for trained doctors so we can get the best care for ourselves and our loved ones. We discriminate against our non-friends and for our friends; our friends can make us laugh more, do more to support us emotionally, are genuine with us, and can blow shisha smoke rings like Popeye. We do the same thing in the dating/mating arena; we find our lovers more attractive than our non-lovers, we can see a future life with our lovers, our lovers can put their ankles behind their ears.
Characteristics such as humour, sensitivity, ambition, attractiveness, and especially the ankles-ears thing (trust me) are important in how we decide who our friends and lovers will be. Without powers of discrimination/discernment, how would we know how to choose our friends? How would be able to choose which doctor to go to? If we can’t see differences, everything looks the same, and we turn into Buridan’s Ass.
Now you might say that “discriminate against” means something different: namely, to “make an unjust or prejudicial distinction in the treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, sex, or age.” But if to “discriminate against” means to do something unjust, then saying that “discriminating against anyone is unjust” takes us on a circular route down the tautological drain. Similarly, “prejudice” is another word that, in its modern usage, conjures negative feelings when its meaning is far more flexible than just “hatred.” We’re prejudiced against having convicted sex offenders teach our children, and rightly so.
What we call “discriminating against” someone on the basis of race, religion, sexual identity, etc. entails a failure of one’s powers of… discrimination. When a bus driver bars a man from entering a bus on the basis of race, he is effectively saying, “everyone who looks like you is exactly the same. Therefore I will treat everyone who looks like you in exactly the same way.” The only characteristic that matters to the driver is skin colour, although the gentleman’s skin colour is entirely irrelevant to the functioning of the bus, the safety of the other passengers, his ability to pay the bus fare, and everything else involved in the transaction classified as “a bus ride.” He can discriminate between one race and the other, but he can’t discriminate between:
- A person of a given race and another person of that race.
- The person’s race and the person’s ability to pay, level of threat, etc.
- A relevant characteristic and an irrelevant characteristic.4. Being paid and not being paid.
These inabilities arise, mind you, while he’s doing his own job.
“You’re not like me. Everyone who looks/talks/believes like you is exactly the same. So I’ll treat all of you exactly the same way.” If that sounds like the instructions a programmer would give to a computer, it’s probably because it kinda is. Though it’s commonly associated with combustible emotions and fiery tempers, bigotry is actually quite a mechanistic way of behaving and believing. It’s why we often associate racists, sexists and religious bigots with knee-jerk reactions — for them, “don’t build that mosque!” or “the Jews did it!” or “God hates faggots (but not pedophiles)!” are automatic responses to external stimuli. No thinking necessary. Often, no thinking allowed.
What we call discrimination-against happens when one person** restricts/denies a transaction with another person based on characteristics that are entirely irrelevant to the transaction, while ignoring more relevant characteristics which would affect the feasibility of the transaction. What we identify with normal, civilised behaviour involves no less discrimination, and probably more. After all, to the discerning mind, there are more things to evaluate. It discriminates based on more relevant characteristics.
When choosing a doctor, it wonders “how successful has she been with her previous patients?” When choosing friends, it wonders: “how reliable, or intelligent, or caring, is this person?” The racist bus driver*** described above is just an example at the far end of the spectrum. But bad decisions happen to everyone, because the world is too big a place, relative to our minds and lifespans, for us to process everything as a unique item in the cosmos. Our bounded rationality has to find ways of coping with the big world. Just as we discriminate in order to survive, we form categories and generalisations to achieve the same end. We inevitably make mistakes some of the time, but we can prevent ourselves from making mistakes all of the time.
To an extent, the market will punish racist bus drivers, because they lose business to non-racist bus drivers. But there are some problems that markets can’t solve. So if we’re really serious about dealing with bigotry in ourselves and others, let’s be a little more discriminating.
Or we could take the route my old professor took. “I don’t discriminate, I hate everyone equally.”
* I’m using ‘he’ not because I don’t think there are female bigots. Obviously there are. Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter still exist. I’m just using it because it sounds more natural to me, phallogocentrism be damned.
** I’m using the word person to mean person/organisation/entity — not because I’m pretentious (although I totally am) but because it’s just neater.
*** Since asterisks make me defend my writing choices, I should say this: I used the bus driver/racism example through an inspired combination of historical significance and laziness, tending towards extreme laziness. Definitely wasn’t hating on bus drivers. I’m a big fan of public transport. I lived in Montréal for 3 years, and though I do have personal experience of encountering one racist bus driver, I’ve heard many more crack wise, assist the elderly, and go out of their way to facilitate passengers. I’ve also seen one or two ridiculously sexy bus drivers — they were ladies (sorry guys!) — giving lie to the stereotype that all bus drivers must be plain, fat and alcoholic. A little difference goes a long, long way.
Originally published at crimesagainsthumility.tumblr.com.
