Discrimination

The word, discrimination, has a negative connotation because it's mostly used when one person is unfairly denying another person some right that others have. When I was a kid, I thought discrimination was a synonym for racism.

But discrimination has a broader application than that, and it's morally neutral. To discriminate is to make a distinction and to prefer one thing over another. That can apply to races, and that's wrong, but it can apply to all sorts of other things, and it's not wrong.

When it comes to dating, we discriminate between people we're attracted to and people we're not attracted to or people we respect and people we don't respect. When it comes to hiring a contractor or an employee, we discriminate between people we think are competent and people we think are incompetent. When it comes to food, we discriminate between food we like or that's healthy and food we don't like or is unhealthy.

In some cases, it would be immoral not to discriminate against people. It would be immoral, for example, if you did not discriminate against a sexual predator when it came to hiring a baby sitter. Leaving your kid in the care of a sexual predator is immoral and irresponsible, so you have an obligation to discriminate when hiring a baby sitter.

I'm not saying all this just to be persnickety. If somebody asks me whether or not I approve of discrimination, what should I say? I know they are probably thinking about situations where I would probably agree with them that it's wrong to discriminate, but I can't just tell them I'm against discrimination because that wouldn't be entirely accurate. And I can't tell them I think discrimination is okay without giving them the wrong idea.

If somebody is race baiting, it probably doesn't help much to say, "It depends," but if somebody is race baiting (or baiting in general), they're probably not going to let you qualify your statements with explanations. They're going to interrupt you and pretend like you just said something awful before hearing you out.

"He who gives an answer before he hears, It is folly and shame to him" (Proverbs 18:13).