Saturday, April 01, 2006

Discrimination Against Individuals vs. Groups

John at Discriminations (see blogroll at left) has a rather lengthy post on affirmative action, racial discrimination, et. al. here. In it he makes a point that I repeately make regarding the difference between treating people as individuals vs. treating them as members of groups.

What Michigan, and Bowen and Bok, are actually saying here is that there is no discrimination because there's not much of it, and what there is affects only some individuals, not their groups. Their argument is that discrimination against individuals doesn't count. The only discrimination that matters, that is in effect even worthy of being called discrimination, is against “groups” — and even then, only if its impact is severe enough to make a group “underrepresented.”


We are a long way from Dr. King's vision of a colorblind society. And yes, that is what he was striving for.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, that liberal Borg mentality!

Anonymous said...

I saw a story a couple of months ago about a state legislator in what seems in my clouded memory to have been either California or Michigan who called for the elimination of merit scholarships because they were discriminatory. Do you know anything about this, and if so, could you point me to the info, please?

Thanks.

Darren said...

It's not ringing a bell, but if it's California, I wouldn't put it past Jackie Goldberg.

Read all about her by typing her name into the search engine at the top left corner of my blog.

Anonymous said...

Nothing exposes Republican hypocrisy more so than race issues. They claim to be for a color blind society, but in reality the only run minority candidates in blue states (Michigan, Pennsylvania) or battleground states (Ohio, Maryland), never in Republican strongholds (ex-slave states).

They claim that they want to make race irrelevant when it suits them, but their actions indicates the truth, that race matters in America.

Darren said...

So it's impossible for a Republican to hold these values? Can only non-Republicans believe in Dr. King's ideals? Am I, by definition, a hypocrite?

When the libs will entertain Dr. King's ideals about race and Cesar Chavez' beliefs on illegal immigration, then I'll discuss your ignorant claims with you.