Politics D15

Page D15

Politics The Town Voice Balanced

Call It Desgregation

By Arlon Staywell RICHMOND — An important task of an interviewer is to get past or clear up any fuzzy language, and if possible any fuzzy thinking.
It is especially important in the context of "news" and essential in the context of the "law" that meanings be clear.
Nevertheless, politicians are often deliberately blurry, and sometimes even the law can be.
Many legislators, politicians, commentators and people generally still struggle with the meanings of "obscene," "speech," "equal," "marriage," perhaps surprisingly "human life," and recently "discrimination."
At times thankfully long gone some people thought "humans" could be "property." Fortunately that has been resolved; there is no serious question. A "human" is no less human whatever the skin color, and "humans" cannot be "property."
Of course there are dictionaries that can go a long way in clearing up meanings, for quite many things anyway.
For example, does Richard Blumenthal's use of "in Vietnam" mean the same as "during the Vietanam conflict" or "in southeast Asia during the war"?
Checking the dictionaries we find that "Vietnam" and "Vietnam War" are separate entries, "Vietnam" being a country at one time split, and "Vietnam War" being between "North Vietnam and South Vietnam" or "communist" and "non-communist" forces with United States described as having "participated" on the side of South Vietnam or as having "supported" the non-communists. The terms "participated" and "supported" belie the fact that by the definition of very specific laws in the United States no war was ever officially "declared." The term "Vietnam Conflict" was often used by scholars seeking to avoid the technical question whether the United States was at "war," but it does not apear in many dictionaries. The Associated Press Stylebook entry for "Vietnam" merely adds "not Viet Nam" to the changing mix.
The attempt those many years ago to limit the war-making powers of the president to thiry days, at which time congress would rule on the matter, have since largely been abandoned. Now there are strings of "military operations."
All this considered, it would seem using "in Vietnam" for "during the Vietnam War" or "during the Vietnam Conflict" is inexact to a serious degree, but to be fair there does appear some inexactitude elsewhere. Remember that the standard for impromptu speech is lower than for prepared speeches or especially for presentations in writing.
Rand Paul and discrimination
A term particularly prone to fuzziness is "discrimination."
It is often used instead of the more meaningful term in the context, "segregation."
And that misuse leads to rather unwieldy fuzziness.
Discrimination is a good thing. Anyone with any sense at all discriminates many times a day. "Discriminate" quite literally means to "discern," "judge wisely," "recognize the difference between." All of which is perfectly legal, moral and good, and as mentioned, a regular daily practice of sensible people. It is segregation and specifically racial segregation which was made illegal. A competing argument of the times was that the "races" could be "separate" [segregated] but equal." In time that proved not to be the case. It was recognized that "desegregation" was going to be a necessary tool, at least for a time, to establish equality, and that merely equality of opportunity. There were court decisions and laws passed. And some specific types of "discrimination" were made illegal based on the necessity of avoiding segregation. But nothing about the ordinary and common uses of the term discrimination was made illegal or even objectionable. And any use of the term "discrimination" in ending segregation was probably a poor choice of words.
Restaurants are usually private property. The owners or anyone designated to act on their behalf can have people removed from the property for a wide variety of reasons. Incorrect attire ("no shirt, no shoes"), talking too loud, inability to communicate, likely to start a fight, not likely to make a purchase, reasons far too numerous to list in their entirety. The laws against racial segregation really didn't change any of that.
However the need to desegregate was so great that extreme measures were taken. Instead of saying "restaurants" a law might say "public accomodations" which made more forceful language suitable. And most people assumed that the more forceful language applied to restaurants.
In some future time it might be possible for the "races" to be "separate but equal." Remember, it wasn't the being separate that was the problem, it was the inequality of opportunity. Once equality of opportunity is established it might not really matter whether anyone is "separate" anymore. We know it didn't work in the past, but that is all we know about that.
The notion that everyone must be forced to accept anyone and anything is wrong. To disallow all "discrimination" is evil. If you want to sell a computer you can offer a lower price to someone with a child who is a good student, or you can offer a lower price to someone with a child who is a struggling student, whichever you believe will be the best use of that computer. You can discriminate quite legally for any number of reasons. If you go to a restaurant and none of the staff look like you, you can leave, go to a restaurant staffed by your own and probably get better food. Who knows? Your family can be all the same "race," most probably are. Your country is a different thing and should probably include more types of people able to live in "peace," but that should not be misread to mean acceptance of everyone and everything everywhere.

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