Write

Reverse Discrimination

dis‧crim‧i‧na‧tion  /dɪˌskrɪməˈneɪʃən/
Pronunciation[di-skrim-uh-ney-shuhn]
–noun
1. an act or instance of discriminating.
2. treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.
3. the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgment: She chose the colors with great discrimination.
4. Archaic. something that serves to differentiate.
Source: Dictionary.com

Oooh…I just read an opinion piece where the phrase “reverse discrimination” was used.  Just like the “50% of all marriages end in divorce” myth that the media likes to propagate, “reverse discrimination” is another term that’s really meaningless if you poke at it a bit and it annoys me every time I see it.

Look at the definition of “discrimination” - do you see any color mentioned there? 

Discrimination knows no color.  “Reverse Discrimination” is nonsensical.

Comments are closed, but you can read the 1 comment from someone else.

  1. Steve Fulford on March 11, 2007

    Mike,
    I worked at Australia Post, where the rules against discrimination were/are very strict, however, after a staff meeting where updates were announced to these rules I decided to try out the “reverse discrimination” option. A certain minority group would send their monthly magazine through my section, the cover of this mag quite often had, in my opinion, very distasteful and sickening images on the front cover. So I approached my management and asked them to contact this group in the aim of covering the front of their mag as I found it very offensive. It worked!! I even had support from staff who didn’t agree with my personal opinion, they had to because I said that I felt discriminated against.

    Steve

Back to Article

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.