Tuesday, July 8, 2008

New And Improved Discrimination

On this side of the river, there's a river district folks hoped would be thriving by now, but it hasn't. Meanwhile on the other side of the river it appears they are doing great business. Among the many reasons this side is doing worse than the other; discrimination. Here, the homeless can just walk on in, sleep, and perhaps even die under the bridge; meanwhile, across the river, just to get to the place you have to drive a car to get there.

Also, more and more, we are starting to see dress codes, mostly aimed at the gangsta/thug style. The racially sensitive may decry this on racial grounds, but it applies equally across race- some white kid is just as likely to show up like that.
But implicit in that dress code is the implication that you have a choice; if you don't, don't bother showing up.

I don't necessarily find this evil. After all, we are talking about places to shop, and the destitute don't have enough money to shop anyway. This does, however, show how the average middle class person can be quite self-congratulatory about his 'non-discriminatory' thinking. In fact, race is sort of a 'forest for the trees' concept because we aren't actually discriminatory against our economic equals (or betters). It's the poor, uneducated, and threatening we don't like, and we'd like to avoid that in all colors, thank you very much.

But one can see where the apparent myopia of the middle class comes from. If the people least like you are deterred from ever getting near you, how could you form ideas or policies that actually include them? For every man, a bubble, so that our cherished and ever more esoteric opinions can be held, safe from intrusion.

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