What is not discrimination?

One thing from class that stood out to me from class this week was the idea of the different types and levels of discrimination. There was the micro (individual), macro (institutional), and structural. The most interesting to me was the latter of the three, and the idea of unintentional, indirect discrimination. I couldn’t help but try to think of how much racism is in my life or the lives of average Americans without even knowing its there. Under the umbrella of structural discrimination is the fact that minorities who live in a more impoverished inner city environment, lack access to a better school thus hindering success later in life. While this is what Marger states, I fail to see how this can be a form discrimination. It isn’t race/ethnicity that is stopping minorities from moving into a better neighborhood so that their children can get into a better school. I see how this is a hardship, injustice even, but I feel that it shouldn’t be labeled as discrimination, even if it is unintentional discrimination.

That being said, where is the line? What isn’t construed as discrimination? During the U.S. antebellum years, could a northern abolitionist wearing a shirt woven from cotton picked by slaves be an act of discrimination? Could a student participating in a history lesson that celebrates Christopher Columbus and ignores his treatment of Native Americans be an act of discrimination? If I went and bought a pair of Nike sneakers assembled in china by cheap, sweatshop laborers under the control of an American corporation, am I discriminating? These are radical ideas, I know. But last class left me with the idea that everything is in some way connected to a racist though or discriminate action, which led me to the question of where is the line drawn between discrimination and acceptable discrimination, or even normalcy? Is this even possible in this day in age? And lastly, looking at that chart on page 70 in Marger, can one truly and honestly say that they do not discriminate?

Meredith Cotter - Post #3