The purpose of anti-discrimination laws is not to reduce hate, or even, to make things more 'ok.' The purpose of anti-discrimination laws is to prepare just plain folks for the coming anti-judgmental laws. If you can somehow be made to feel guilty for seeking the best relationships in business, commerce, employment, or even your personal life, then you can be made to feel guilty for seeking the best value in any phase of your life. And, in the flawed theory of the long dead 19th century German philosophers and their naive One Pie World, that will mean more pie for some who now have less. We are bobbing adrift in the wreckage of those dead 19th century German philosophers, and it is not clear if the species will survive their nonsense. The atavistic Tribal Gene runs deep, and it keeps surfacing in our politics, in spite of our constitution.
Irrational discrimination is clearly its own punishment; but, that is the hook. If we can be made to identify 'irrational discrimination' with 'discrimination' with 'judgment,' then it is not a distant lurch to painting all judgement as 'irrational judgment,' when in fact, judgment is just the tool by which rational folks seek the highest value when confronted with a choice between multiple values. Irrational choices--based totally on skin color, for example, would be their own punishment. However, ruling out otherwise rational choices in the coincidental presenceof skin color is equally as absurd, and provides no feedback with respect to the choices which DO result in values. Which is what makes Affirmative Action a crippling program.
So, as a hypothetical employer, how dare you even ask if a prospective employee is educated, or, what her grades were, or if she is capable at all of carrying out her employment. She says she needs a job, and that is all you need to know. For you to be judgmental, based on her abilities, and to seek the 'best' employee available to you, is a blatent act of 'discrimination' against those less able.
Or, so we must be all trained to think, come The Revolution.
Look at the sad facts of Affirmative Action as a constructivist act to tool society, as if folks were multicolored interchangeable tinker toys and their only important characteristic was their color. Let's face it, when it was implemented, maybe by some with good intentions, the intent was to accelerate the advancement/success of African-Americans and try to make amends for centuries old crimes. And, slavery was a crime; there is no doubt about that. However, the legislation was not written that way; it was written to include all minorities. So, instead of being a program specifically intended to cripple -- I mean, artificially accelerate the advancement of African-Americans, the intended benefactors of this cruelty--I mean, assistance, found themselves in a pool competing with latinos and even, God forbid, orientals. So, employers, eager to meet their Affirmative Action goals and check off the appropriate boxes in their government bid contracts, discriminated within that pool by using their judgment and selecting the best available candidates from within that pool. To the extent that this competition existed, in fact, is what saved the African-Americans who did benefit from the program, but there is no doubt that the program, as a whole, has not turned out to be targeted bonanza that some might have hoped for 30 years ago. When Affirmative Action quotas can be met by hiring any 'minority,' they will. And, we will not hear too much complaining about that, because it would truly sound pathetic, so, we don't. I think--finally-- pride keeps folks from saying, "That one wasn't quite good enough; we need a special program just to cripple us."
.
