Dealing With Discrimination
In discussing discrimination and the problems associated therewith, it’s important to distinguish between two types of discrimination. There is discrimination based on individual merit, for example, a college choosing applicants based on their academic records, or an employer choosing employees based on their education and previous job experience. There is general agreement that discrimination based on merit is entirely appropriate. It is the discrimination against classes of people that is not based on merit that is problematic and will be the focus of the remainder of this discussion.
Non-merit discrimination is usually motivated by prejudice against a particular group of people. Prejudice, in turn, has a variety of causes. We can trace the prejudice and discrimination against Blacks to our legacy of slavery.
Prejudice against hiring women is likely due to the traditional role of women of working in the home doing domestic chores and taking care of children. Well-intentioned but misguided attempts to protect women (the “weaker sex”) have resulted in the prohibition of women serving in the military, particularly in roles involving combat.
The mistreatment of homosexuals is probably due to the ick factor; most if not all heterosexuals find the idea of having sex with a person of the same sex to be repugnant. Some take the additional step of concluding that because they personally find homosexual acts to be repugnant, such acts must, therefore, be repugnant, and those who engage in homosexual acts are thus worthy of condemnation.
Some people attempt to deny their homosexual tendencies by overcompensating. For example, Larry Craig, a former senator who supported anti-gay legislation, was arrested in a men’s room for attempting to solicit sex. Craig denied the charge, stating that the fact that his foot touched the foot of the arresting officer in the adjacent stall was the result of his wide stance. Reconciling his support of anti-gay legislation with his solicitation of gay sex requires a wide stance indeed!
Successive waves of immigrants to our country, including the Chinese, Italians, and Irish have met with prejudice and discrimination as the result of xenophobia. The latest example is the antipathy expressed by some to immigrants from Mexico.
All too often, an entire ethnic group is stereotyped as the result of the actions of some of its members. A deplorable example of this is that Americans of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and put into internment camps during World War II when we were at war with Japan. Today, Islamophobia is rampant as the result of the threat posed by militant Islamic groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Religion is often used to justify discrimination. For example, in the South, the practice of racial segregation was justified by ludicrous statements such as: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, [M]alay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” Christian conservatives often cite quotes from the Bible condemning homosexuality. However, all of those quotations are from the Old Testament; there is no record in the Bible of Christ saying anything negative about homosexuals. As discussed in my article The Problems With Religion, the persecution of groups of people is on the list of evils associated with religion.
The government’s response to the problem of discrimination has been legislation prohibiting that practice. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and national origin. While that law undoubtedly hastened the end to racial segregation in the South, it did so by trampling upon the right of private businesses to choose their clientele, thus sacrificing principle on the altar of expediency. The end to segregation could have been brought about by market forces alone, albeit at a slower pace, following the repeal of the Jim Crow laws, which enforced racial segregation. A business that refuses to serve a segment of the population, such as Blacks, would be at a competitive disadvantage compared to businesses that serve everyone. Even when the excluded group constitutes a relatively small fraction of the population, as is the case with homosexuals, those who haven’t been excluded may express their disapproval of such discrimination by boycotting those businesses engaging in that practice. Similarly, there was no need for civil rights legislation to eliminate discrimination in employment and housing; market forces alone could have accomplished that goal.
While private businesses should be permitted to select their clientele and employees on any basis that they choose, government employment as well as all services provided by the government should be available on a non-discriminatory basis.
Another well-intentioned but misguided policy is affirmative action, wherein racial minorities, Native Americans, and women are given preferential consideration in hiring and college admission in order to make up for past discrimination. While purportedly designed to mitigate the effects of past discrimination, this policy actually perpetuates discrimination and in fact institutionalizes it. Those not in one of the groups designated for preferential treatment, namely, white men, are unfairly put at a disadvantage. Recent immigrants from Africa whose ancestors were not the victims of slavery or discrimination are given preferential treatment based solely on the color of their skin. Even members of one of the preferred groups may be disadvantaged as a result of being stigmatized. For example, an employer interviewing a college graduate who happens to be black may wonder whether that applicant was admitted to college based on merit or due to affirmative action.
Affirmative action is a policy promulgated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the goal of having the numbers of racial minorities and women employed reflect their proportions in the general population — equality of end result. Now, given that people have very different talents and abilities and life situations in general, it is possible to have either equality of opportunity or equality of end result (or neither), but you can’t have both — with one exception, namely, forced equality of end result with no opportunity for advancement. It seems ironic that an agency with “equal opportunity” in its name would be willing to sacrifice equality of opportunity on the altar of equality of end result.
Another example of a policy that promotes equality of end result at the expense of equality of opportunity is the practice of reserving the parking spaces closest to facilities for handicapped parking. Unless you subscribe to the Marxist (“… to each according to his needs”) model of resource allocation, it is clearly unfair that the disabled should be given preferential treatment regarding access to parking spaces. The disabled could be accommodated without being given preferential treatment by converting the current handicapped parking spaces to premium metered parking spaces. While these premium parking spaces would be available to everyone, they would be used mainly by the disabled because most able-bodied people would be willing to walk some extra distance in order to avoid paying the parking fee.
While racial segregation has been eliminated, we still have segregation by gender. There’s no good reason for having separate restrooms for men and women; the stalls provide adequate privacy. Having unisex restrooms will take some getting used to, but so did the elimination of racially segregated restrooms in the South. Besides saving money, unisex restrooms would resolve the issue of which restroom transgender people should use.
Just as we no longer have racially segregated sports leagues, we should likewise do away with separate men’s and women’s leagues. Some may justify such segregation by gender by asserting that women don’t play as well as men. That’s probably true on average, but clearly some women play better than some men. Tall basketball players perform better on average than shorter players do, but that fact doesn’t justify having separate leagues for tall and short players.
Football players are at considerable risk of injury due to tackling. If women were to play along with men, their risk of injury would be even greater, due to the fact that they are, on average, smaller and less muscular than men. Replacing conventional football with touch football would greatly reduce the possibility of injury without detracting from the excitement of the game; baseball, a non-contact sport, has a fan base comparable to that of football. With the elimination of tackling, there would be no good reason why women couldn’t play on football teams alongside men.
One form of discrimination that has been institutionalized in our society is based on age. An example is the age of majority, currently 18, at which time a person is bestowed the legal status of adulthood, which includes the right to vote and the right to enter into legally-binding contracts. One might argue that discrimination based on age is merited because both physical and mental maturity are positively correlated with chronological age. However, people mature at different rates. Treating individuals differently based on the class to which they happen to belong is stereotyping and should have no place in our legal system. In any case, the choice of 18 for the age of majority was not made on any rational basis; the age of majority was previously 21. Another example of the arbitrariness of age-based restrictions is the fact that the age required to purchase tobacco products is 18, while one must be at least 21 in order to legally purchase potable alcohol.
The age-based restrictions imposed by law mentioned in the previous paragraph, as well as others, such as the age of consent, are presumably predicated on the use of age as a surrogate for mental maturity. A more accurate assessment of mental maturity could be obtained by tests designed for that purpose. Individuals would be granted the legal status of adulthood if and when they pass these tests, regardless of age.
There should not be a minimum age required to obtain a driver’s license. Passing the required driving and written tests should be sufficient.
Immigrants to our country must first pass a citizenship test before they can become citizens. The purpose of this test is presumably to ensure that those who wish to become citizens have a basic knowledge of our history and government in order to become good citizens. If passing a citizenship test is deemed to be a requirement for being a good citizen, it should apply to native-born Americans as well. Accordingly, I propose that passing the citizenship test be a requirement for voting in lieu of the current age requirement. I understand that this proposal may bring to the mind of some of the literacy tests that were used in the South to unfairly exclude Blacks from voting, but if the citizenship test is administered fairly, there shouldn’t be a problem. If the citizenship test were to be used as a qualification for voting, such widespread use would make that test more susceptible to being compromised. To prevent this, the method described in my article Our System of Education: The Problems With It and How It Can Be Improved to eliminate cheating on tests could be used.
While we’re on the subject of eliminating age-based restrictions, let’s do away with the requirement of being at least 35 years old in order to be president; convincing a majority of the voters that you are the best candidate should be sufficient qualification. Also, I see no reason why workers should be forced to retire at a certain age; people should be allowed to continue to work as long as they are willing and able to do so.
The media unwittingly contribute to stereotyping by the well-intentioned but, in my opinion, misguided policy of repeatedly mentioning the race and/or gender of a person who is first in that category to accomplish some noteworthy achievement. For example, Sally Ride was one of many astronauts, but she is remembered in particular because she was the first female American in space. A more recent example is the media constantly referring to Barack Obama as the first black/African-American president. (Actually, Obama is of mixed race, but that’s a technically.)
While the repeated mentioning a person’s demographic status (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) in connection with his (or her) achievement may make that person’s achievement more memorable as in the case of Sally Ride, it has the unintended effect of negatively stereotyping the demographic group to which that person belongs. Here’s why.
For an event to be newsworthy, it must be either unusual or unexpected. For example, a horse able to do arithmetic is newsworthy because horses are generally incapable of that feat. By contrast, a ten-year-old child able to do arithmetic is not newsworthy because most children that age have that ability. Thus, mentioning a person’s demographic status in connection with his achievement implies, however subtly, that the achievement is noteworthy because a person of that demographic status is not expected to have the capability of performing that feat.
Mentioning the status of the person performing a feat is appropriate when that status is relevant to the ability to accomplish that feat. For example, reporting that a blind person climbed Mount Everest is newsworthy because blindness adds a degree of difficulty to what is already a challenging undertaking.
Another problem with this excessive attention paid to a person’s demographic status, particularly in the case of candidates running for elected office, is that it can be a distraction from the relevant issues. When Hillary Clinton was a candidate for president, the media repeatedly stated that, if elected, she would be the first woman to be president. Voters should choose their candidates based on characteristics such as that candidate’s governing philosophy, proposed policies, and character; the candidate’s race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. is or at least should be irrelevant.
Some might justify emphasizing the demographic status of those accomplishing noteworthy achievements on the grounds that these achievers provide role models for children in those demographic categories. In the case of race and gender, these characteristics are clearly visible to children and so need not be mentioned. Regarding sexual orientation, which is not generally visible, Millennials are, in general, more tolerant than previous generations of those in demographic categories other than their own, so there is reason to believe that prejudice and discrimination will diminish over time.
Chief Justice John Roberts stated: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” I would generalize that statement to all forms of non-merit discrimination as the best way to eliminate the latter.