WIth Black Lives Matters, their primary focus is that of the Black Lives
Isn't that discrimination? Yes or no. Nobody wants to answer this simple question, for some reason.
Right. But you've already been presented an answer to that in this or another thread. Does giving to a cardiovascular disease charity mean you therefore want people to die of cancer instead? No? Okay then, principle safely established, end of issue.
No, giving to a cardiovascular disease charity does not mean you therefore want people to die of cancer instead. However, that's not analogous to my problem with BLM. I'm not accusing them or anybody else for WANTING any other color to be mistreated. I'm accusing them of being discriminatory on the basis of race. There's nothing analogous to that in the question of disease charities. So no, the principle is not safely established.
"Discrimination on the basis of disease" maybe, but that's a "bona fide" reason. One's skin color has no bearing on how a disease is treated (genetics maybe, and skin color correlates, but you get the point).
Maybe if charities started calling themselves "cancer patients matter!" or something, then I and many other people would react with "So other patients don't?! All patients matter!"
1) You are not separating it from concepts of specificity or prioritisation. Supporting BLM does not preclude opposing police abuse of anyone else: it is merely a compartment of, and complimentary with, wider activity against police abuse and racial inequality. This is basically the same concept as the CVD/cancer issue above.
Yes, being a "compartment" that specifically focuses on one race is still discrimination on the basis of race. Whether or not there is wider activity against police abuse and racial inequality is irrelevant.
You know what they had during segregation? Compartments. The black people would go in one compartment and the white people would go in the other compartment, and never the two did mix. Just because the colored drinking fountain was "complementary with" the non-colored drinking fountain, and in the end, both colored and non-colored people got to drink water, that didn't mean that it wasn't discrimination.
BLM is a "colored-only" drinking fountain that they created themselves.
2) Core to the concept of discrimination is injustice or unfairness. The baseline injustice is unequal treatment of races by the police, against their specific legal and moral remit. Can a measure designed to bring a discriminated group into line with other races' norms be viewed as "unfair" or "injust"? Without that injustice, arguments of "discrimination" have no weight.
I'm thinking about California's proposition 209, which states: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting."
Discriminating against and granting preferential treatment to someone on the basis of race are two sides of the same racist coin. In the context of employment, if you grant preferential treatment to black people, you are, in effect, discriminating against all other races. This particular doesn't care whether or not there is a societal injustice or with balancing the employment rates between the races.
Suppose that data revealed that black people didn't get enough vitamin D or whatever. Say a charity was created to provide black people with the vitamin D that they need. Suppose it went around giving vitamin D to every black person they could find and skipped over all the other colors of people. They're trying to do their part to address the disparity.
Suppose that there was a different charity to provide white people, and only white people, with vitamin D, even though it doesn't address a disparity. They're just doing it to be nice (or maybe because they're white supremacists)
Suppose that there was a third charity to provide Hispanics with vitamin C, but nobody has the data on whether or not this addresses a disparity.
Which of these three charities are discriminatory? Just the one white one? Maybe the Hispanic one, depending on the mystery data? All three?
My answer is that it is an unjust and unfair to focus on solving a problem for only one race, especially (but this isn't a necessary component) when that problem is not exclusive to that race.
Discriminating
is unjust and unfair. An act doesn't exist in a superposition of "discrimination" or "not discrimination" depending on whether or not it addresses an injustice or unfairness.
To answer your question:
> Can a measure designed to bring a discriminated group into line with other races' norms be viewed as "unfair" or "injust"?
Yes, it can be. It need not be, but it
can be. For example, if your measure is saying "no discrimination allowed!", then that's fine.
If your measure is "no discrimination against [group] allowed!" then yes, that's unfair and unjust.
3) At one level, you seem to be trying to manufacture a paradox similar to the paradox of tolerance (what happens when there is a call to tolerate intolerance?) In your form, it is discrimination to combat discrimination, because that requires us to specifically address a certain group facing unfair disadvantage.
I think you can combat discrimination
without being discriminatory.
Thank you for treating me and my arguments with respect. It was a pleasure replying to you.
