Discrimination Gone Awry

I don't watch much television. After being on the road today, I turned on the television after checking into the hotel, primarily to see if the Indy 500 was finished (it was). There was a news show on one channel that caught my attention, and I listened for a few minutes. I wasn't in on the very beginning of the story, but I think I've found sources on the internet.

The topic of discussion was a coffee house chain named Marylou's, which is being investigated by the EEOC for alleged discrimination. The complaint is that the shop is only hiring young, attractive women to work the counter. There is a question of whether there are discriminatory hiring practices involved.

The news program had a female anchor, along with three females on a “panel” who offered their thoughts on the issue. I am not sure what program I was watching – I turned it off after just a bit – so I can't tell you for sure who was on the panel. Two of the three, however, stated that they had no problem with the coffee shop establishing a theme of attractive, young females serving customers in pink T-shirts. They saw no reason for government interference – since hiring that particular type of person would be important to establishing the “theme.” (The third lady on the panel was opposed, basing her argument on the fact that coffee houses don't need such themes. She didn't word it that way, but that was the gist of her claim.)

What bothers me is that, after the two panelists had stated that the shop had every right to hire who it wanted for a theme, all three of the panelists agreed that there is a huge problem if the shop is only hiring young, attractive, white women. So age discrimination takes a back seat to creating a theme, and gender discrimination takes a back seat as well – but racial discrimination can't be tolerated.

I find this interesting … and troubling. If government should step in and require that hiring practices be non-discriminatory, then that should be applied equally to all forms of discrimination. If, on the other hand, a company is free to set a theme, why is the company not allowed to include race as a part of that theme? I know that I will ruffle a lot of feathers by daring to ask that question … but, in my mind, it is a logical question to ask.

The reason it makes sense to ask the question is that the primary reason that racial discrimination is wrong (and it is, by the way – I am not denying the wrongness of racism) is because it provides a benefit to some people, and denies others, based on a characteristic which has nothing to do with their capability of performing the job. Racial discrimination is also based on a factor beyond the individual's control – people don't choose to be a particular race, but are born into it. So making hiring decisions based on irrelevant factors which are beyond a person's control is simply wrong.

But the same is true of both age and gender discrimination. And the two ladies on the panel said that it's okay to overlook those characteristics in order to establish a theme for the coffee shop. So why is one type of discrimination not allowed, when other discrimination is acceptable? That makes no sense to me.

This does highlight how volatile an issue race continues to be in our society. But I'm not sure we can intelligently argue that one form of discrimination is worse than others. Attempting to do so clearly reveals the bias of those offering the argument.