Discrimination.  No matter how many ways you look at it, discrimination is an ugly word.  It is also at the forefront of the news these days.  Whether it’s regarding race, gender, or sex, discrimination in all its ugly forms is still alive and well in this country.  We like to tell ourselves that we’ve made a lot of progress on the issue.  And that’s true, but it’s not enough and it’s certainly taking its sweet time.  This point was forcefully brought home to me when I read an article about a charter school in Alabama that was making history by being the first integrated school in Sumter County.  The first fully integrated school in the county.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Brown vs. The Board of Education ended segregation in the schools in 1954.  In 1969, the federal courts demanded that the state of Alabama stop segregation in public schools.  Yet, here it is 2018 and the first integrated school in this county opened its doors.  I was stunned.  Clearly, we have not made that much progress.  Click to read article.

I can’t speak about racial discrimination from the victim’s point of view.  While I may be half Hispanic, I look and act like the white person that I am.  I won’t pretend that I understand.  How can I?  It’s never made any sense to me to judge a person based on the color of their skin.  I wasn’t raised that way.  And I was lucky to attend a public school that celebrated every color of the rainbow.  My first exposure to a world where color mattered was when I was about 14 years old and a girl new to the school made a comment to me about there being a lot of black kids in school.  I was shocked and didn’t know what to say.  When my brain started to function again, I asked her why she would make that comment to me.  Her response was that at her old school (which was a small town in Utah) there were only white kids.  I followed up with asking if it mattered.  Her response was that she didn’t think so, it was just different.  Which was an honest response and not racist in any way.  And I think that’s the point.  There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the differences.  Where we go off the rails is when we treat people unfairly because of those differences.  That’s learned behavior.  People are not born racist.  They are raised that way.  It is taught to children with the most damaging being where it is purposefully taught and encouraged.  I didn’t see real discrimination being practiced until later when I was traveling with the debate team in high school.  The non-white members of my team did not always get treated appropriately when we traveled to other parts of the state.  It outraged me then as much as it does when I see it now.  It’s not an easy issue and there are no simple solutions.

It’s the quiet discrimination that is more insidious.  This is more prevalent when it comes to the work environment.  There are many reasons for the pay disparity and employment numbers, but discrimination is the primary reason.  Women and minorities make less money than white males doing the same work.  We can rationalize the reasons why this happens but it’s still discrimination.  And while quotas may have helped right some wrongs in the overall hiring practices of businesses, it has not ended the practice of discrimination in the work force.  In my opinion, quotas may have helped boost diversity, but it came with plenty of negatives.  To be honest, I don’t want to be hired because of my gender.  I want to be hired because I’m the best person for the job.  And anyone who thinks differently is not helping their race, gender or sex.  Quotas have also helped to create the current environment of hostility from some white men.  No, I don’t have any statistics or empirical evidence to back up my opinion.  I base this on a gut feeling based on the comments I hear on the cable news shows.  Any hint of a person being hired for any reason other than skills and qualifications sends the wrong message.  Have I had to work harder to prove myself?  Absolutely.  Have I made less money because I was a female in a male dominated industry?  Of course.  I’m proud of the fact that I proved to the company I worked for that gender didn’t matter.  And it did change the culture of the company.  My only regret is not fighting harder for equal pay.  One fight at a time, I guess.

In today’s climate, it seems to be so much more hostile than it has been in years.  I think that’s good because it takes upheaval to generate real change.  Maybe we got a little complacent after the civil rights movement in the 1960’s.  Going along with the flow may make it easier, but it doesn’t solve any of the problems.  Unfortunately, it sometimes takes conflict to see real change.  The way that I see it, this country is at a fork in the road.  To the right is to regress and continue the open practice of discrimination.  To the left is to attain true diversity and color blindness – to be able to see people for who they are and not how they were born.  Only time will tell who wins the battle for control of the wheel and which fork of the road we choose to travel.

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I gave up my satellite television service last week.  Friday morning at 3:31 am to be exact.  And yes, I stayed up late to milk every, last little bit of programming.  I know exactly how pathetic that sounds.  It was important that I rip off the DVR band aid before the new fall shows started to air.  And to be honest, I haven’t missed it over the weekend.  And I know that I will celebrate when I see the bounce in the budget next month.  Still…I feel like a moment of silence or words need to be said over the death of an era.  I remember as a kid what it was like to get that first cable box.  Movies ‘til Dawn on KTLA was the bomb!  And I’m old enough to say that I saw MTV launch with the first music video.  There was a certain status that went along with having cable service.  You were living large if you had cable or satellite service.  Now it’s just an unnecessary expense having been made extinct by the internet.  Another nail in the coffin of my youth.