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It is illegal in the USA to discriminate AGAINST someone’s race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, or citizenship.

In the same breath, the law says that we MUST discriminate FOR these same groups. These groups are now protected classes, with special rules that discriminate in their favor and against all other classes, and provide special privileges to these protected classes. AKA Affirmative Action.

Sounds a bit hypocritical to me.

COMPONENTS

Let’s take a look at different components of this discrimination discussion:

• Stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people.
• Prejudice refers to the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes someone holds about a group.
• Racism is a type of prejudice used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others
• Discrimination consists of actions towards a group of people. Keyword here is action.

EXTREME EXAMPLE

For an extreme example of what I believe is Anti-Discrimination Hypocrisy, let’s look back to about six years ago in Ferguson Missouri. Ferguson is about the same size as Orange TX and is located just outside of St Louis. In the last census, about 63 percent of Ferguson’s population was black.

Statistically, blacks were detained by the police in 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches, and 93 percent of arrests (Missouri Attorney General’s Office 2014). Also at that time, the black unemployment rate was three times that of the white unemployment rate.

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown Jr., an 18-year-old African American man, was fatally shot by 28-year-old white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.  Brown was fleeing from a robbery and assault he had committed at a nearby convenience store. Beginning the very next day, riots and significant looting occurred across the city.

On August 11, 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened a civil rights investigation into the incident. Seven months later, the federal investigation cleared Wilson of civil rights violations in the shooting.

Four months after the shooting, a grand jury returned no indictment against the policeman. Following the grand jury announcement, protests, looting and fires again broke out in Ferguson and in 170 other cities across the U.S.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) conducted an investigation into the policing practices of the Ferguson Police Department, and in March of 2015, announced that they had determined that the Ferguson PD had engaged in discriminating against African Americans and applying racial stereotypes. The U.S. Department of Justice also concluded the white officer shot the black man in self-defense.

So, while the police were applying racial stereotypes against the blacks, the blacks were rioting because they believed in a stereotype against the police as being racist because the blacks believed the police followed a stereotype of blacks as being law breakers. Talk about a vicious circle!!

MORE COMMON EXAMPLES

If it’s against the law to discriminate by these classes, how come we spend so much political capital worrying about how each of these protected classes did vote and/or will vote? Why does the media spend so much time discriminating about the protected classes?  Why do the politicians spend so much time (and money) specifically going after the protected classes? Is that, too, illegal?

No, it’s hypocritical.

2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

The democratic party candidates for president started with more than 20 people, 8 of them were reported to be “people of color”; there were 5 women among the group, 3 combat veterans, 1 openly gay candidate, and even two Jews. As for non-protected classes? 2 Billionaires, 13 millionaires, and a big bunch of white males.

The media and the party promoted the fact that there were more candidates from protected classes than from non-protected classes.

As the primary season worked its magic, the democrat field of candidates is now down to three candidates: 1 woman of color, and 2 white males, one of whom is a Jew. The woman is a combat veteran, Biden had a deferment from military service, and Sanders was a conscientious objector.

Many of the losers of color who dropped out blamed their losses on racism. I think they lost because they didn’t convince the voters of how good they were – and that has nothing to do with racism.

2020 STATE ELECTIONS

The Sunday, March 8^th 2020 edition of Houston Chronicle included an article entitled, “Male judicial candidates had a tough election night.” The article states that “no male candidate finished above a female candidate across Harris County’s 11 contested district judge races.”

But here’s the winning quote, “I think there’s a growing recognition that it’s important to have a judiciary and elected officials who reflect diversity, at least from a gender perspective. For a long time, there was a bias against women candidates, and I think it’s probably fair to say that there is now a bias for women candidates.” The quote is attributed to a Jay Ayler, political consultant. (Who could not be found on Google.)

WOW! You can say that that about women because they are a protected class, but would it be ok to say the same thing about men? I don’t think so.

NEWS MEDIA

When a newspaper identifies individuals accused of a crime by race, it is racist by promoting negative stereotypes of a certain minority. But when a politician segregates voters into blocks by ethnicity – the black vote, the Latino vote, etc. it is called supporting diversity.

How come the same laws that make it BAD to discriminate against “protected” classes also make it GOOD to discriminate in favor of those same protected classes????

MY TAKE

The second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence starts, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

I believe that instead of protected classes, we should be concentrating on treating everyone as equals, just as stated in the Declaration of Independence, almost 250 years ago.

Creating protected classes just doesn’t seem to fit the word EQUAL.

J.David Derosier consults with small business on planning and marketing issues, and provides web design and hosting services through OhainWEB.com, an accredited business with theBetter Business Bureau that is rated A+ by BBB. He can be reached at JDAVID@Strategy-Planning.info