Discrimination should be a normal aspect of people’s everyday lives. Otherwise, the next time a white male comes up to you and says he’s a Chinese woman, you’ll have a difficult time telling him otherwise.
Think that example is ridiculous? Consider the college students at the University of Washington who had trouble telling a reporter from the Family Policy Center of Washington, who is a white white male, that he isn’t a Chinese female.
People must discriminate in order to live in a society that has rule of law, strong character, and which makes decisions prudently. The word “discriminate” — which used to be necessary aspect of people’s rational decision making — has been hijacked for political reasons, used as an umbrella for racist acts and redefined.
Near the end of the Collegian’s recent interview with Libertarian Presidential Candidate Austin Petersen (“‘Taking over the government,’” April 14), he said “people who discriminate against other people are bigots,” while talking about why he doesn’t support certain Christian bakers who refused to bake cakes for same-sex weddings.
Discrimination and bigotry are not the same thing, but the difference is now largely lost in American popular culture. Even many conservative Hillsdale students don’t bat an eye at conflations of bigotry and discrimination like the one made by Petersen above.
It’s not only liberals who say that discriminating against people for any reason is bigotry, but nearly all other respectable American political and social institution center and right ideologically.
In fact, between 2006 and 2007, the results from a search for “discriminate” on dictionary.com, changed from
To make a clear distinction; distinguish
to
To make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality.
If discrimination is making decisions on basis with no merit, then surely it is a vice that should be actively combated in society, right? To discriminate against another person on the basis of their group, class, or category is mean.
Actually, discrimination is a healthy and necessary part of everyone’s everyday lives. People can’t say “yes” to everyone all of the time and so they necessarily discriminate.
Someone might discriminate against another student who is disruptive in class when forming a study group for the class, or a coach will discriminate against the player who has been consistently late to practice by giving him or her fewer minutes in the next game.
Hillsdale College proudly discriminates against all but the best students applying to the school.
There is little debate in society over the merits of this type of discrimination — the real controversy, in many cases today, lies in making a distinction, or discriminating, on the basis of perceived orientation, most notably sexual orientation.
While the word “discriminate” is stigmatized, the real issue is actually the basis for which people discriminate.
And America has really screwed up in this regard before. America historically discriminated on the basis of a person’s race. That type of discrimination is not only an inexcusable mark on the country’s history, but is immoral, and meritless. But America is making another mistake by refusing to discriminate on the basis of a person’s perceived gender identity.
In sillier instances this means that students at the University of Washington have trouble telling an adult male that he isn’t actually a seven-year-old who needs to apply for the first grade. But more practically, this means many Americans have no ability to tell a man whose perceived identity is female that he can’t enter the women’s restroom.
And on Friday, May 13 President Barack Obama called a joint directive by the Departments of Justice and Education which says that Title IX requires the protection of transgender rights, including the rights of transgender students to use bathrooms that don’t match their birth sex, the government’s “best judgement” on how to deal with the growing issue.
Bigotry and discrimination are not the same thing. While doing so without malice or ill will, it is important that Americans make a discrimination about whether a person is a male or a female before the distinction is totally erased in our culture.
If things in society have a definition, then we need to discriminate to protect them. Or, we can reject those former societal definitions and discriminate against those who try to uphold them.
Either way, we’re discriminating.