http://www.msnbc.com/news/928992.asp?vts=3D062020031050&cp1=3D1
Discrimination *against* is as old as humanity; whatever one may think about it, it's a fact of life, and one has to deal with it. Putting someone else down seems to appeal to some people as a means of winching oneself up. Doesn't have to be a race issue (just look at scientists, lace-teachers, etc, sniping at one another), though "race" (and I use the quotes adivisedly, since it meant something else in Poland than it does here in the US) is the most common one.
In US, it happens to be easy, because with so many different people differing in looks (colour as well as mode of dress), one can find a target without much effort; one doesn't have to "dig". But, in Europe, Jews managed to be be herded into ghettoes for hundreds of years. And, during WWII, Hitler had no trouble isolating and eliminating both Jews and Gypsies ("tainted" "to the fifth generation", mind you), even though many of them had no external "marks"... I'm half-Jewish, half-Polish, with coloration that's more typical of Poles than of Jews (or, Jews, as Poles perceive them; which is not at all the same thing <g>), and wholly atheist (no wigs and "full coverage" for me). It made no difference; I was never fully comfortable on either side of the "fence". And the "fence" was definitely *there*, in most minds, even those "benignely disposed" (ie discriminating *for*)...
It's my considered opinion that, even if were all *identical* -- in looks, mode of dress, DNA even, one group would would still find ways of isolating other groups as targets for derision (and -- in extensio -- for keeping *down*). "Divide and and conquer"...
The less there is to divide among the ever-growing number of those aspiring to the equal piece of the pie, the greater the necessity ("necessity"?) to divide those who want a shot at the "trough"... Discrimination is the easiest (and cheapest <g>) way of gaining/maintaining control over the disaffected and the disenfranchised; that's Marxism 101; the very ABCs... :)
As for the men/women issue... :) There was a totally fascinating article a couple of days ago (and I cannot find it, *drat*; the papers got all mixed up, and the web stories have different wording, different focus, etc) about the Y (male) chromosome, and how it reproduces (the snake eats its head, in essence; the old phrase "go, bleep yourself" gets a new meaning <g>), which is totally different from what the X (female) chromosome does to keep itself alive.... As a sidebar comment to this discovery, some numbers were thrown in for one to munch on... As far as I could understand it, genetically, a woman differs from a man by about 2%. A chimpanzee differs from a human (I don't think they said which gender) by about 1.5%... What a wonderful, scientific way to produce another dividing "fence"; and, after all's said and done, I wonder who ends up "with" whom, discriminating against whom...
----- Tamara P Duvall mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland
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