Apr 25 2009
What is discrimination?
There was a recent posting in the Sacramento Bee that distrubed me. To prepare high school students for the upcoming standardized tests, the school put on various assemblies. There was one for blacks, one for latinos and one for asians. There wasn’t one for white students, but they could choose to go to one of the other assemblies.
Talk about discrimination!
The dictionary says that discrimination is making a distinction between things. Not all discrimination is bad. People can have discriminating judgement: the ability to choose correctly between two items. But discrimination based on race - that is ridiculous.
Some people might say its not discrimination because the people that were being discriminated against were white. That’s not true. Everyone was being discriminated against. The school seperated students on the basis of race - that’s racial discrimination - the seperation of groups, or distinction between groups - based on race. Discrimination doesn’t have to be against a minority. You can discriminate against the majority as well. Although there is no racial majority in California anymore, so everyone is a minority and can be discriminated against.
Why seperate students on the basis of race? The principal said it was to promote underachieving groups to do better on the tests. You know what helps students do better on standardized tests….teaching them to read, teaching math, and teaching critical thinking. Those three things help students do better on tests.
Seperating by race…that’s ridiculous.
