The essay “Discrimination is a Virtue“by Robert K. Miller deals with the very sensitive subject of discrimination. Generally, the term discrimination is used in a negative way – namely to point out racial or social discrepancies among people. However, when looking up the term in a dictionary or thesaurus, the actual meaning of discrimination has a positive connotation, for instance meaning to differentiate, to compare or to distinguish. Over the years, unfortunately, the word has been constantly misused and thus, everybody associates something negative with it.
The Democratic presidential nomination race has sound the death knell for the word discrimination. Both candidates, Clinton and Obama, have very unique personalities and promote slightly different concepts; however, they both represent one party. Through this unique combination of 2 Democratic presidential hopefuls, a “white female” and a “black male”, the word discrimination has become more fashionable than ever. Additionally, I believe, the media providers, such as CNN or CBS News fuels these flames, thus contributing largely to this unnecessary discussion of voting for a black male or a white female. People’s sensitivity to this word has been over-exhausted and when they talk about who to vote for, it seems that skin color and sex are the key criteria for their decisions. Especially in this presidential nomination race, racial and gender differences have been over-emphasized and it is really disturbing for me that no one seems to care about the political content and agendas they stand for!!!
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4 comments:
I really liked the way you expressed your feelings about the presidential race. I also agree that the media and people are looking at this in the wrong way. Everyone is too concerned about whether or not they want their next president to be the first female or the first black male in office.I also feel that what they really stand for and who they are as candidates are being overlooked.
I like your word choice in this assignment. You explained the positions very well on how the word is used negatively. I agree that people are basing their decisions off race and gender and not focusing on what they are actually saying. Disagreeing or not voting for someone because of what they stand for is ok, it is what we were raised with, we are not going to agree with everyone, but disagreeing because of race and gender is not legitimate. I also agree this word is used too negatively, I always thought discrimination meant racism, I never knew the real meaning until this reading.
I found Miller's article to be very interesting as he pointed out how our society misuses the word discrimination. I agree with you that as citizens of the United States, in choosing our president we should care more about the decisions being made . You made a very good point when you mentioned how the media fuels the flame as they emphasize that Clinton is a woman and Obama is a black man.
I liked what you stated. It seems to me that both are trying to pull the "discrimination card" to try and guilt people into voting for them.
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