I Have A Dream

Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech is well known. It's an uplifting dream of removing segregation and racial discrimination. I, too, hope to see unfair discrimination based on race or even gender eradicated from humanity. But allow me to stress the word "unfair." Discrimination is not always a bad thing. We discriminate against all kinds of things and with many inputs.

Imagine that you are trying to pick a partner for a relay race. You're given a piece of paper with two candidates and solely the information that one is black and one is white. It is possible to discriminate based on a dislike for one race, but it is also possible to discriminate based upon statistical knowledge. You don't have to pick the white guy just because you hate black people or vice versa. You can pick the black guy because you may have witnessed more successful black athletes. The statistic may be wrong or it may be right, but it could be a valid observation. If 90% of the time an Ethiopian wins races, it might be more worthwhile to choose an Ethiopian to be your partner. This isn't racism; it's mathematical wisdom based upon the knowledge a person possesses.

We generally have the ability to take more things into consideration though. If we know height, we might go for the taller person. If we know weight, we might go for the lighter person. But hey, if we're looking for a wrestler, we just might go for the heavier person. Statistically, Chinese people might be shorter and lighter so we may avoid choosing a Chinese wrestling partner. Is this racism? Of course not! I think many Chinese people are great. I work with many Chinese people and I certainly don't hold their race against them. But my experiences and the information I've been privy to says they're generally shorter and lighter. So if that's the only information I have, I would likely not select a Chinese person for a wrestling partner.

Today, we so fear being labeled as racist that we tend to go overboard. It's scary simply to mention a person's race or to acknowledge the difference. I'm scared just writing this that people will take something out of context and label me racist. When I'm in the presence of a black person, I might fear mentioning the quality of another person as being black because I might be accused of being racist. It's ridiculous. Race is a piece of information to be taken into consideration with a slew of other pieces of information for many different aspects of life. To avoid the impression of racism, however, companies go out of their way to hire a decent number of people from other races. Is this not racism in and of itself? You can't go out of your way to select people of a different race to prove you're not racist. This is indeed first degree racism at its finest. It's the very thing they're trying to not be accused of. They avoid the accusations by being all the more racist. This is happening in workplaces and colleges all over; both for race and gender. It needs to stop.

The reason companies get away with this form of racism is that our measure is screwed up. It is not an adequate judge of racism to measure non-segregation. To start, it's a human trait that we wish to be with people like ourselves. Does this mean we hate people who are not like ourselves? Of course not. I would not wish to live in a neighborhood where I'm the only white guy. I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood where I'm the only male, the only American, the only English speaker, the only guy who plays video games, etc, etc, etc. This does not make me racist in the slightest. Even if every city or company were comprised of all one race, that would not by any means indicate that racism is occurring. At best, it could only give rise to a suspicion, but it in no way proves anything.

This form of prejudice needs to stop and we need to stop fearing race so much. Differences in race is a beautiful thing. Different cultures is a beautiful thing. Only when those cultural differences begin hindering life for another does it become a bad thing. Let's acknowledges our races, our cultures, our ways of life, and embrace them. Embrace the differences, embrace the skills that one race/gender/culture might provide over another. We are not all created equally though we are all created such that we should be given equal respect.