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Discrimination, sexism and Racism

It is quite amazing to see how racist and sexist people are while at the same time claiming to not be sexist or racist. If there is really a desire to remove racism and sexism in this world, then all decisions which are based on race and sex need to be removed, this include all advantages people are given based on their race and/or sex.

It is interesting to see the word "discriminate" be changed in meaning and become a politically unacceptable word. It used to be that if you had "discriminating taste", that meant that you liked the finer things in life. Now people want to make you think that it is a bad thing. People discriminate all the time and there is nothing wrong with it. If you are hetrosexual, then you discriminate against all those of the same sex when you are looking for someone to date. The same is true for homosexuals. People discriminate based on looks because they want someone they are attracted to. Is this fair? It is discrimination and it is not fair to those who they do not find acceptable to date, but that is life and it would be even more unfair to force them to date everyone. This is not to say that it is acceptable to discriminate when the race or gender do not matter, like in the workplace since you are not going to marry that person.

Personally I think that affirmative action, as it has been implemented, is one of the worse things that has happened in the workplace. Instead of helping those who are disadvantaged, they decided to use race and gender as important factors in hiring someone, instead of qualifications. They could have helped those people to become more qualified, but instead they forced unqualified people to be hired and to not be able to fire them when they could not do the job or had other problems. The main problem with this is that now when a person is hired, who is viewed as such a minority, that people assume that they got the job because of their race or gender, rather than their qualifications. This hurts the people who are really qualified and can create racist/sexist feelings in people. I have also seen and heard cases where people use their race or gender to claim that they are being treated unfairly, when the reality is that they are being given much more slack because the employers are afraid of a lawsuit. It is very difficult for a white male to take action against the race or gender discrimination that takes place because he is in an acceptable class where it is acceptable to unfairly discriminate against him. Some people talk of "reverse discrimination", as if it was somehow different, but the fact is that "reverse discrimination" is discrimination, no different than what many people have complained of. Why do some people feel that if they can get ahead by race and gender discrimination that it is acceptable? If they find any type of race or gender discrimination wrong, then they should find all wrongful discrimination unacceptable.

I heard of a story at CSUN where a white male lost his job so that a woman could be hired to replace him. Then times changed and the woman was gotten rid of so that a Hispanic male could replace her. She complained that it was not fair, yet what made it so funny was that she had the same thing done to her that she had done to the white male. It is funny how it was acceptable when she got the job and unacceptable when she lost the job for the very same reasons.

People find it acceptable to create clubs and groups which are specific to a race or gender. Why is is acceptable to have a group which is just for women or just for blacks, when it is not acceptable to have a group for just white males? The real answer, which many people don't want to accept, it that it should not be acceptable because to prevent a group from being created based solely on the race is racism. It is also the case that creating a group based on race in which it is targeted to a specific race is also racism.

Mnay years ago there was an effort to make English the official language of California. There were many people who claimed that it was racist in nature. The funny thing is that I worked with a person who was Mexican at the time and his feeling was that it should be passed. He said that unless you force people to learn English, they would always be second class citizens. Could it be that the racists were the ones who did not want everyone to learn English since then they could take advantage of them?

I heard that in the miltary there was a test for pilots which the pilot had to hold the plane stationary while under full power. This was a typical test that had been required for years. The problem was that many of the female pilots could not do it. Rather than failing the female pilots, the miltary had a male pilot sit in the second seat and hold the brake on. Why is this acceptable for female pilots and not male pilots? That is sexism and unfair discrimination in play. To me, either the test is valid and all should have to pass it or it is not valid and it should be removed for all. There are also similiar cases for police and fire fighters. The interesting thing I heard was that the females could take the g-stress better than the males in terms of fighter pilot flying.

There is often talk that women should get the same pay for the same job. This is very true, yet sometimes they want the same pay for not the same job. I heard of a case where there was unfair treatment based on sex for internal mail delivery people at a company. The men had to carry the mail cart up and down stairs, so as to not tie up the elevator, but the women were allowed to use the elevator. Shouldn't the men get more if they are forced to work harder carrying the cart up and down stairs? This is what creates a problem when equal pay is demanded because it is NOT an equal job.


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Index for Insanity, Inc.

Written: 15-Nov-2003

Updated: 25-Nov-2004

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