Quote:
Originally Posted by Sleeping in EQ
I grounded my surmising in the "feeling" of a particular circumstance. Discrimination is not just a feeling. It involves laws, behaviors, media representations, and a whole host of other phenomena. Your suggestion that a complex construct like discrimination is analogus to a feeling in a particular circumstance is both ridiculous and nauseating.
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I'm curious about the philosophy that underlies your words here (maybe this would be better in a different thread but I'm too lazy to start one). Are you asserting that discrimination
necessarily involves laws, behaviors, media, etc.? In other words, one can't consider one's self discriminated against on the basis of feelings alone?
If you truly believe that discrimination can't exist on the basis of feelings alone then I'm somewhat surprised because I had (perhaps incorrectly) considered you an academic and I think it's safe to say that academic institutions these days are among the biggest proponents of the idea that mere feelings (typically "hurt feelings") can be the basis of discrimination claims. Thus the proliferation of speech codes, sensitivity trainings, etc. If you're so inclined, I would love for you to expound upon the ideas that underlie your words above.
P.S. I should note that the use of the word "discrimination" in this sense implies improper or unjust discrimination but it's too tedious to explicitly spell it out every time I type the word. Obviously any time one makes a choice one discriminates, or recognizes the difference and discrimination isn't of itself inherently bad. I'm not a fan of words such as "discriminate", "diversity", and "black" taking on new connotations. It makes our language less rich and less expressive. When words take on new connotations, one can never know whether a word really means what it denotes or whether it is really a "codeword" for some other concept.