Discrimination and prejudice are phenomena that have haunted human society virtually for as long as it exists. Numerous groups have been severely mistreated due to their gender, race, religion, nationality, and similar characteristics. I agree that this has to be stopped and that such characteristics are irrelevant for determining if someone is good or bad person, friend, worker. That said, in the 21st century, another phenomenon is becoming more and more prominent – reverse discrimination. As I love examples, here they come.
In my country, as well as most other countries where they represent a significant minority, Roma people suffer from very high discrimination, prejudice, poor life conditions, and lack of possibilities. To solve this, my country is giving free education (including university), free healthcare, free public transportation, and much more to all who declare themselves as Romani. At first, this sounds totally OK. But if you think about it for a moment: Hey, not all Romani are poor and not all other people are middle to high class! With the rules as they are, even rich Romani get tons of benefits that even poor members of other nationalities don’t! If we want to help, we should find a way to help all people living in poor conditions, not all Romani. If you ask me, helping (as well as not helping) someone just because of his/her nationality is unfair, unjust, even insane. This has gone so far that some members of non-Romani nationalities in my country are taking new IDs and declaring themselves as Romani to get the free benefits.
For centuries, even millenniums, women have been regarded as unequal to men in most cultures. This has led to serious women issues such as forced marriages, domestic violence, low education opportunities and much more. It is just to put an end to this and we should make sure that such things don’t happen anymore. However, the society very often, by protecting a "weaker" group too much, actually discriminates the "stronger" group, in this case men. Example number two. In my country, women have lower prerequisites to enroll into a military academy than men do. What does this lead to? This leads to: Although person number 1 can do 15 pullups and 30 pushups while person number 2 can do 10 pullups and 20 pushups, and person number 1 can run 15 km/h while person number 2 can run 10 km/h - thus the person number 1 is obviously a better candidate for a military academy than the person 2 is – the person 2 might be enrolled instead of the person 1 if the person 2 is a woman and the person 1 a man. Is this far? Do men have some sort of incentives if they want to become a steward(ess) or a secretary? No, they don’t and they shouldn’t! Men are generally better for army occupations while women are generally better for positions with a lot of communication and/or multitasking. There are exceptions among us and those exceptions should be respected, but no one should ever be picked or unpicked over someone else just because of the gender.
The reverse discrimination is getting so much mainstream and accepted that it’s almost shame to grunt about it. Let’s help this GENDER or that NATIONALITY… NO! Let’s help ABUSED people, DISABLED people, POOR people, HOMELESS people, etc. They are the ones that need help. Let’s not fix discrimination by discrimination!
Please let me know:
- Has this article made you think?
- Do you agree with me or am I forgetting something?
- Do you have more examples? I love examples! : )
If you liked this article then you will probably also like my recent article about human morale.
Have a wonderful day, week, and life!