Not to call the late George Carlin on his math, but there are a lot more than seven words that are unacceptable in polite company. I’m not talking about “cusswords.” No, those are fine on pay TV, and most have made their way into the lexicon of free TV and the networks. No, I’m talking about those Words That Shall Not Be Uttered. Some of these words are so inflamatory that even uttering them is taboo. Take the “N” word, for instance. (Of course, the “N” word is only verbotten if you’re a WASP. It’s apparently perfectly acceptable to use if you’re black.) Or the “F” word – again, it’s apparently okay in a movie, but not okay on basic cable. Then there’s another class of words – words that have become weapons. These are words that have become marginalized, with meanings that are narrowly-defined…words that are used to label opponents, verbally tar and feather them, within an inch of their (public) lives.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you “Discrimination.”
All someone who wants to play the ‘race card’ need do is to cry “discrimination” and they are instantly afforded every consideration. The one they accuse is presumed guilty (don’t bother to wait for the trial or an accquital – there won’t be one). They get their 15 minutes of fame as the latest poster child du jour of the disciples of divirsity, and the rest of us are encouraged to assimilate into the non-discriminating collective.
What a load of crap.
Here’s the deal, gentle reader: discrimination is NOT a bad thing. In fact, you do it a thousand times every day, whether you realize it or not. It’s BIGOTRY that’s wrong. Let’s take a little trip over to the land of Mr. Webster, and see what I mean…
In the vernacular, a “bigot” is someone that hates you, not because of anything you did, but due to your affiliation with some group – a race, religion, political preference, or look.
To “discriminate” is to be able to tell the difference between two or more things, and express a preference for one of them.
Get up in the morning and think about what you want for breakfast. Congratulations. You’ve just discriminated, when you chose orange juice over milk, or bacon over sausage. (For you vegans out there, when you choose soymilk over tomato juice, you’re discriminating, too.)
Discrimination is not inherently bad. In fact, without it, everyone of us would be paralyzed when confronted with even the simplest of decisions. Where discrimination gets a bad name is when it’s used in tandem with bigotry, to enable someone – anyone – to short circuit the decision-making process, based on a cultural bias.
Here’s an example from my past. I once headed an in-house ad agency for a software company. When a new position opened up, I reviewed portfolios. Not artists. Portfolios. I met the artists only after their portfolios made the cut. I discriminated soley on the basis of talent. Got talent? Get hired? Can’t draw your way out of a wet paper sack? Take a hike. This policy helped me grow the department into a really strong group of talented artists. Then the company hired an HR director. Uh oh…
The first thing the HR director did was to tell me about his new hiring policy. I would have to give preferential treatment to minorities and women, and he would have final say over all new hires, to insure that my department mirrored the demographics of the D/FW area. Um…small problem. On my staff I had one black guy (who was insanely great at technical illustration) one WASP/white guy, one white guy who’d been crippled as a child in a bus accident, and a bunch of women – of several races/extrations. I headed up a department that was a veritable “rainbow connection” compared to the bastion of nerdy white guys back in development. Now the VP of Development was no more a bigot than I was – he just couldn’t find many women or minorities that knew how to code. I was fortunate to find a wealth of graphic design talent, and I could not have cared less as to what race, gender, or political preference they were. (For the record, a goodly number of them were liberals, and I’m a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now.)
I pointed out to the HR guy that the art department was a meritocracy, and if he wanted it any different, the deadwood hired to meet some arbitrary personnel quota was NOT coming out of my budget. (To his credit, once he realized my department was probably more “PC” than most companies in the Bay Area, he backed down.)
Here’s the point. Everybody discriminates. Everybody. Some people discriminate on the basis of merit. As the foundation of societal evolution and capitalism, that kind of discrimination is essential to our survival as a society. Some people discriminate on the basis of prejudice or bigotry. That’s bad, no matter who’s behind it, or who’s being targeted. (For those of you not paying close attention, that means that it’s every bit as evil for a black guy to hate someone for being white, as it is evil for a white guy to hate someone for being black.) However, as George Carlin was fond of saying, “words mean things.” When we empower a word with the ability to condemn by way of labeling, we stop honest analysis and evaluation in it’s tracks. Labeling may be easy, but it’s also mindless. It promotes jingoistic slogans over insight and reason. And if I may discriminate for a second, I’ll take insight and reason over mindless slogans and sound bytes any day.
Leave a Reply