Discrimination is a big feature of social life and social discourse. While discrimination conjures images of the civil rights movement and of race riots, discrimination is common in and the norm in all of human activity. For instance, if you help an elderly person to lift something, without being prompted, you have just discriminated for them on the basis of their age. The selection of a mate is nothing but the discrimination against many other possible suitors and the discrimination for your one true love. Discrimination is a curious concept in terms of when people tend to bring up the topic. While nearly ever person can all point out to times when they have personally been discriminated against, its much harder for people to point out when we discriminated against others. In fact there is little interest in discussing this side of the equation at all. Furthermore many groups that rail against discrimination and against the larger homogeneous society frequently discriminate in equal measure within their group and against the larger group as well. Thus the term discrimination actually means is..

“what others have done to me or to my group,”

…and it is more generally a plea for extra benefit based on an extremely hazy notion of fairness. Fairness being whatever improve’s the condition of the person pointing out the discrimination.

Meritocracies

Selecting for more talented people is called a a merit system and for those societies who practice it, it is called a meritocracy. People are in general in favor of a meritocracy, at least when asked their views. However, they generally work against meritocracies by attempting to use their personal connections to enhance their job prospects…this being the opposite of a meritocracy also known as a the “old boys network” and when preference is given for family members it is referred to as nepotism. How much individuals give out benefits based upon meritocracy and how much by personal connection often has to do with how competitive their own personal situation is. If they control a monopoly then there is a tendency to hire family members, if they work in a more competitive situation, then they will tend towards hiring based upon merit.

Limited Benefits

The point we want to bring up, which is very rarely brought up with regards to discrimination, is that there are a limited number of high paying jobs and a limited number of resources in general. Some type of discrimination will be used and will always be used in order to limit the access to “life’s blessings.” Improvements in the lack of discrimination for certain groups of people means fewer benefits for those that were previously the beneficiaries of discrimination. Even under the “expanding pie” fallacy, that is often employed by those that propose that there are no economic or other limitations to a society, there is is still the limit imposed by relative good. In well off societies the well off compete for benefits such as status, living location and life partners, therefore even if the pie continually expands (which it does not of course, and the environmental disaster that is happening in slow motion around us is showing the limitations of growth) there will always be a relative competition for the good things. The better and more valued something is, the less there is to go around.

How Politically Incorrect

No doubt this post will bring up a number of disagreements and form cognitive dissonance with many readers. Its extremely important to mirror the illogical way that society defines discrimination and to think of discrimination in terms of how it is often explained in US society. The author will no doubt be accused of being indifferent to the past discrimination of this group or that group. This is an expected response from those that have immediate emotional reactions to arguments. Actually this post is about the concept of discrimination and how it used to ask for more benefits, but never used to provide more benefits. If one wants to use the argument of discrimination in an unbiased way than one will spend as much time admitting one’s own discrimination against others and offering full benefits to everyone who asks, as they spend using the argument of discrimination in order to get more for oneself.