Part One: Discrimination is Everywhere
EVERYONE HAS HEARD ABOUT SEX DISCRIMINATION, RACIAL discrimination, and age discrimination, but what about height discrimination or language discrimination? What about beard discrimination? Or discrimination against people who kneel in church? This section of the book shows that discrimination exists in obvious, and sometimes not-so-obvious, places. In short, discrimination is everywhere.
1. Discrimination Runs Rampant
“IF YOU’RE SO SMART, WHY AREN’T YOU RICH?” THIS CHALLENGE shows only that there are exceptions to every rule. Other things equal, smarter people are richer than the rest of us, and this bit of folk wisdom is well-known to most people.
Statistical analyses have shown, too, that height is correlated with pay. As a matter of fact, every extra inch added to a businessman’s stature translates into roughly $1,000 of extra income. Pity the poor but short executive officer.
2. Affirmative Action Chickens Finally Come Home to Roost
IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME. IT HAD TO HAPPEN. AND FINALLY, it did. Two pink-skinned, fair-haired firemen have created quite a ruckus in Boston. They were hired under a minority preference plan, and therein lies a sad tale of woe.
3. Racism Flares on Both Sides
WHOEVER SAID THAT POLITICS MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS must have been thinking of Doug Collins and Harry Rankin.
4. Exclusion of Bisexual is Justified
THE BIG BROTHERS OF GREATER LOS ANGELES IS IN TROUBLE with the forces of law and order.
This organization—dedicated to matching fatherless boys with adult males who can guide, counsel, and advise them—has had the temerity to exclude homosexuals and bisexuals from its pool of potential candidates on the grounds that they will be improper role models.
5. Catholic Kneelers
A BATTLE HAS BEEN BREWING AT OUR LADY OF LOURDES ROMAN Catholic Church in Stellarton, an eastern Nova Scotia mining town. Six parishioners have insisted upon kneeling, not standing, while receiving communion, despite an explicit determination to the contrary by Bishop William Power of Antigonish.
6. Human Rights Commissions Interfere with Individual Rights
THERE IS A POLITICAL MAXIM THAT RUNS SOMETHING LIKE THIS: “If a man is not a socialist in his twenties, he has no heart. If he is still a socialist in his forties, he has no brain.”
7. Watch Your Language
LANGUAGE IS CRUCIAL TO CLEAR COMMUNICATION. IT MAKES distinctions. We can hardly express ourselves without it. Our very thoughts can either be brought forth, or not, depending upon whether we have sufficient verbiage with which to attain this end. If the pen is mightier than the sword because it can determine the direction in which this weapon is aimed, then words are even mightier than the pen, for without the former, the latter is useless.
8. Sexist Advertising and the Feminists
THE WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES IS STILL RAGING.
The city council of Kamloops, British Columbia, placed an ad in its tourism brochure featuring an attractive bikini-clad woman kneeling at the feet of a businessman who was reclining in a beach chair. Accompanying the ad is the message “Where Business and Pleasure Come Together—in Super, Natural High Country, Kamloops, B.C.”
9. No Males Need Apply
THE MANITOBA HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION STRIKES AGAIN. Only this time, not on behalf of a discrimination-free society, but in favor, it would appear, of one segregated on the basis of gender.
Claudia Wright, head of the MHRC, attended a female-only conference on the media, and participated in one of the workshops, despite her acknowledgement of the fact that the Manitoba Human Rights Act prohibits sex discrimination. Talk about sending in the fox to guard the chicken coop.
