How come whenever society stops discriminating against one group of people...

[FreakyLocz14]

...they find another group to discriminate against? In America, we went from race and women to sexual orientation. My guess is that once all sexual orientations become generally accepted by society (pockets of discrimination will always exist), we'll shift our focus to transsexuals. After that begins to become accepted, people will find some other classification so they can discriminate against that class.

I'm seeing a pattern going on in human behavior.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Umbreon Bob]

Theyre different and the majoraty dont like it. Thus not accepted into the community. Its quite simple actually.

 

[Oryx]

Just because we didn't accept women or people of a different color in the past doesn't mean we accepted people of another sexual orientation either. We're steadily improving as far as our relations with others. I went to a Catholic high school, and met more gay and lesbian people there that were accepted by the student body than in the public school I had attended before that. One of the most popular people was gay, and there was a lesbian couple that everyone liked and in fact got many votes for cutest couple my senior year.

I'm not saying that we're there yet, but we're getting there.

 

[Ivysaur]

People always need to feel they are "better" than someone somehow. So, if you aren't "special" enough to get noticed in the crowd, the easiest way to feel better than someone is considering some people to be "worse" than you in some way, shape or form.

So, if they are educated to think women are equal, then they'll think black people are inferior. When they are educated to think better about black people, then gays are inferior. When they accept gays, then people start hating the French. It's hard to stop, really.

 

[Ninja Caterpie]

These groups have always been discriminated against. It's just when another group's discrimination is 'solved', they realise they could get the same treatment so they speak up and say "WE GET DISCRIMINATED TOO!" and everyone starts arguing on one side or another and it looks like it all started just then.

We don't move on to discriminating another group; we're stopping discrimination, one group at a time.

 

[twocows]

These groups have always been discriminated against. It's just when another group's discrimination is 'solved', they realise they could get the same treatment so they speak up and say "WE GET DISCRIMINATED TOO!" and everyone starts arguing on one side or another and it looks like it all started just then.

We don't move on to discriminating another group; we're stopping discrimination, one group at a time.

It's more this, really. Women, homosexuals, and others similar minority groups have always been discriminated against; they're just speaking up nowadays.

 

[Sydian]

This day in age, everyone and everything seems to get discriminated. Race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, those are the the big guns it seems. It doesn't go away though. Laws get passed to appease the masses, and you think it's done, but there's still black jokes, women in the kitchen jokes, priest and the rabi, etc. I'm sorry, but it's just not gunna go away. It's always there, from what I see. And where you live also plays into it, I think. For example, I live in Alabama. I'll leave it at that, because I'm pretty sure I can already tell what you're thinking.

 

[Esper]

My guess is that once all sexual orientations become generally accepted by society ... we'll shift our focus to transsexuals.

Already been going on for a long time jsyk. And 'transgender' is the better, more inclusive, more accurate word to use.

We don't move on to discriminating another group; we're stopping discrimination, one group at a time.

Couldn't have said it more succinctly than that.

To my mind it comes down to resistance to change and visibility. Go far enough back in history (or maybe not that far at all) and it was forbidden to cross social classes. You had straight white Protestant males discriminating against other straight white Protestant males whose only difference was that they were poor, but that didn't stop them from being called degenerates and other awful things. Despite this you had people who were so totally progressive that you'd think they came from the 21st century so it's not like the idea of accepting people was completely alien, it was just that people were set in their ways and didn't want to change. People as a whole only seem to (begrudgingly) accept one change at a time and anything else makes them go "We already let you have all this and now you want more? You're trying to bring down civilization with your deviance!" And groups struggling to gain acceptance play into this as well, at least historically. For practical reasons or simply because they had their own blinders you had groups that said things like "We'll worry about racial equality and then maybe we'll talk about women's lib." And so on.

Visibility is tied to this. The media isn't that great at presenting multifaceted, complex topics so it often just shows one issue and two sides. You get Movement A pushing for change and some kind of group representing traditionalist ideals opposing it. There's no room in the spotlight for Movement B, let alone C. They've been around just as long as A, but don't expect the public to know that.

Laws get passed to appease the masses, and you think it's done, but there's still black jokes, women in the kitchen jokes, priest and the rabi, etc. I'm sorry, but it's just not gunna go away. It's always there, from what I see. And where you live also plays into it, I think.

Where you are certainly does. I never hear jokes like that where I am.

 

[Mr Cat Dog]

Unless you're a heterosexual male aged 18-49 of a certain social standing and have the religious and ethnic complexities of the majority of your populace, it's probably likely that you have both suffered discrimination and will suffer it in the future. As much as legislation can help with outward discrimination, it doesn't really temper inward prejudice which is the cause of it all. Attitudes can change and societies can improve as a whole, but there'll still be people who not only refuse to do so, but are active in their discrimination by passing their attitudes onto children and the like. Discrimination will probably never totally disappear for this reason, and this is why whenever perceived discrimination goes down (like overt racism post the US Civil Rights movement circa 1960) heretofore unperceived discrimination goes up: it's not actually going up, more people are just becoming aware of it. However, we can still reduce discrimination by putting light on a lot of issues: it was a Supreme Court Justice who said it best when he said that 'sunlight is the best disinfectant'.

 

[FreakyLocz14]

Let's not forget that in our attempts to combat discrimination against minority groups in the States, we've started discriminating against the majority. Two examples come to mind for me, one discrimination de jure (by the law) and the other discrimination de facto (cultural discrimination).

De jure majority discrimination, also known as reverse discrimination is defined as "discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group". We do this with affirmative action laws. For our friends not versed in American law, Wikipedia says that "Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including 'race, color, religion, gender, or national origin' into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group." A classic example is when colleges give take race into consideration when admitting prospective students in order to increase minority enrollment. The problem with this is that a well-qualified applicant might be declined admission simply because he or she is not a minority that the school wants to increase in its student body. This happened in the case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (438 U.S. 265). In this case, a National Merit student with a 3.51 high school GPA and a 3.46 college GPA was rejected from UC Davis' Medical School even though "special applicants" with significantly lower academic profiles were being admitted. These applicants were of racial minorities and the school had a policy of exempting them from or lowering standards for admission in order to increase the enrollment of minority students. The United States Supreme Court ruled that these sort of racial quotas are unconstitutional, since they violated Bakke's Equal Protection rights. The Court did not declare all affirmative action policies unconstitutional; however, stating that "a properly tailored affirmative action program designed to promote diversity could survive strict judicial scrutiny."

I've noticed that while it many people express their pride when members of a minority (i.e. black pride, brown pride, LGBT pride) they are seen as brave, but when someone who is a member of a majority group expresses "white pride" or "heterosexual pride" they are seen as bigots. Why is this the case? White people and heterosexual people had no say in what their race or sexual orientation would be anymore than those in the minority did. This is a form of de facto reverse discrimination.

 

[Livewire]

I've noticed that while it many people express their pride when members of a minority (i.e. black pride, brown pride, LGBT pride) they are seen as brave, but when someone who is a member of a majority group expresses "white pride" or "heterosexual pride" they are seen as bigots. Why is this the case? White people and heterosexual people had no say in what their race or sexual orientation would be anymore than those in the minority did. This is a form of de facto reverse discrimination.

I'm not sure where you're getting the 'seen as bigots' part from. I highly doubt there are those out there pointing fingers at people for being in the majority in the country. White pride/Heterosexual pride gets expressed like, every day, in so many shapes and forms in our media and culture without reprisal. It's also known as 'mainstream' (I use that term lightly) American culture.

 

[TRIFORCE89]

I don't think society woke up one day and said "What a sec, we have no one to put down today. Spin the wheel... and... boom, [whatever group]"

I think, that to a certain extent, all those groups you mentioned were looked down upon at the same time. However, certain groups of people to "precedence" so to speak due to numbers.

With such numbers reasonably addressed now, that leaves the remaining population.

It's not that we liked homosexuals before, for example, and don't like them now because women made some progress and we needed someone new to look down upon. We probably always discriminated against all those groups. It's just society is making progress, and bringing to the forefront those groups who have yet to see equality.

 

[FreakyLocz14]

I'm not sure where you're getting the 'seen as bigots' part from. I highly doubt there are those out there pointing fingers at people for being in the majority in the country. White pride/Heterosexual pride gets expressed like, every day, in so many shapes and forms in our media and culture without reprisal. It's also known as 'mainstream' (I use that term lightly) American culture.

I'm not referring to the media. When a group of black students get together to form a pride group, no one on my campus made any fuss about it. A group of white students wanted to form a similar group, and a lot people made it sound like they were Klansmen (I know for a fact that it was just like any other ethnic-based club since I was an AS Senator at the time and voted to approve their charter, which didn't pass).

 

[Axolotl]

You cannot say that society has moved on to another section of culture to discriminate. There is discrimination everywhere, and everyone is guilty of it even in the slightest, most mundane amounts. I just play "Where Is The Love" when I feel in need of some moral empowerment so I don't feel in the depths of depravity. As humans there will always be discriminations in our society. It can be argued that it leads towards societal progression so it is good to an extent. If society was perfect and the world was to a point of moral behavior, there will be no need of existing. Just as one cannot understand happiness without first understanding pain.

 

[Dawn]

...they find another group to discriminate against? In America, we went from race and women to sexual orientation. My guess is that once all sexual orientations become generally accepted by society (pockets of discrimination will always exist), we'll shift our focus to transsexuals. After that begins to become accepted, people will find some other classification so they can discriminate against that class.

I'm seeing a pattern going on in human behavior.

What are your thoughts on this?

Because like we've been saying for centuries, humanity is not perfect, never was, and quite frankly, shouldn't be. I don't want to see a world with a bunch of idealist libertarians trying to beat every flaw out of hum--oh wait.

 

[Virgilia]

They don't blend in with the crowd. If you're not a part of the crowd, you're not cool. In my opinion, being different is cool.

 

[Esper]

I'm not referring to the media. When a group of black students get together to form a pride group, no one on my campus made any fuss about it. A group of white students wanted to form a similar group, and a lot people made it sound like they were Klansmen (I know for a fact that it was just like any other ethnic-based club since I was an AS Senator at the time and voted to approve their charter, which didn't pass).

Well, I think this happens because if black students want a club people are okay with that since they think something like "black people have a harder time in a white man's world" or "why do white people need pride when they're already the dominant culture?" You can argue whether that's true or not, but I think a lot of people find "white pride" at best unnecessary at at worse an endorsement of hate groups. I mean, in the US at least, it's easier to understand the reasons or need for forming a black pride group than a white pride group.

 

[Yurusumaji]

I think it's more like when we settled here everyone was discriminated against except wealthy, white, straight men. Over time each group of people being discriminated against has just found the courage to say, "This is not okay. You cannot discriminate against us when we have done nothing wrong." First it was women, then African-Americans, now it's gays and vegetarians.
​

 

[Livewire]

Human Civilization is founded upon inequality, that's just how things work. It's ugly and sad, yes, but people will always be discriminated against or "enslaved" in some way.

 

[Dawn]

I'm not sure where you're getting the 'seen as bigots' part from. I highly doubt there are those out there pointing fingers at people for being in the majority in the country.

Well then you'd be surprised. I may not be a man, but I'm pretty close to the prototype otherwise. I have to deal with reverse discrimination all the time! One of the most common forms I see is this little phenomenon, where you are presented with two equals, one representing a minority, and one not representing a minority, and despite the fact that they're treated as equals, if you don't go with the minority, you're racist/sexist/whatever. You remember that whole thing where if you chose Pokemon White version you were racist! That, except more serious. =|

Also, on the note of discrimination but not necessarily related to reverse discrimination. People have a tendency to take equality way too literally. To be fair, we as a whole use the term equality wrong, and it's our fault, not theirs. However, as a result of our political incorrectness, we now have people that think if someone believes that two groups of people shouldn't be the same or treated the same, that person is racist/sexist/whatever.

In reality, racism and sexism and all that jazz only applies to any sort of belief that puts one group above or below another. It does not apply to putting them on an equal level but keeping them separate.

(See: Separate but "equal")

In some cases, such as racism, the differences between two groups are so ridiculously minor that a concept such as separate but equal becomes... too big an answer to such a little question. In that case, equality was much more efficient an answer, even if in theory, the two groups would never be /exactly/ the same.

However, this does not hold true for other forms of discrimination where the differences between other groups are probably a lot greater. Equality is not always the answer.

For racism, it seems like it is. I mean, can we all agree that when blacks and whites became legally equal, it turned out real good in the end, even if the end isn't perfect? That probably applies to any other form of racism too. I can name some other popular "discrimination issues" where equality might /not/ be the right answer though.