Statement #2
Those of you who reguarly read my blog will remember that I am studying to be a teacher/instructor, so I have to be able to explain in detail. Let’s see if I can write a coherent analysis for statement #2.
Let me start out my analysis of Statement #2 with this—I feel that everyone should be treated equally.
"Reverse religious/racial discrimination (the discrimination of one race or religion against another based upon historical precident, in reverse. Ie.- Protestant vs. Catholic, Black vs. white) in order to "pay back" the original target for past transgressions, is justified."
This statement actually does have some basis in ancient philosophy, although the initial idea has been corrupted by its current use. The philosopher Aristotle felt that, in order to lead a "virtuous life," people should always walk a median path leaning neither to far in one direction nor the other.
An explanation of this theory; If we think of the two extremes of an attitude towards money, the high extreme might be greed, and the lower extreme might be "stinginess" or perhaps being overly thrifty. Either extreme would not make us virtuous people according to Aristotle. An analogy of this would be to imagine yourself on a boat going down a river with rapids and trying to keep the boat from grounding on either side. At times you would have to stray slightly from the center of the river towards one side or the other to avoid rocks and currents, but for the most part you would try and keep the boat in the center. The center of the river would be the "virtuous path" and keep you safe.
To understand today’s corruption of the theory, remember that I am speaking of an attitude. It is your intention (attitude) to keep the boat in the center of the river, not the actual activity of rowing the boat.
Discrimination is the activity (rowing) that results from some sort of prejudice (attitude). It is our beliefs that form our attitudes, which result in our actions—or, to follow-up with our boat analogy, it is our belief that if we don’t keep the boat in the center we’ll ground the boat, which we don’t intend to let happen—so we act to keep that from happening (row). However, if we stray to far in either direction or extreme, we ground the boat. In the case of prejudice, if we allow our beliefs to form an attitude that tells us that our way of thinking, living, worshiping, etc. can be the only way, we then feel justified in acting on that attitude by discriminating against others.
So, to complete Aristotle’s theory, although we sometimes have to stray from the median or midpoint of an attitude to overcome obstacles in either direction, we should never reach either extreme. In the case of prejudice in our society today, it is quite possible that we have strayed so far in one direction that we are now discriminating rather than practicing tolerance of each other and our beliefs. The excuse and justification for this has often been that because one group has been discriminated against in the past they should have preference now to make up for it.
Our society is simply now practicing the activity of discrimination against different groups rather than changing the beliefs that cause the attitudes to begin with. We have encouraged the original groups who were the target of prejudice to demand and recieve better rather than equal treatment. I don’t begrudge anyone equality, however, I do object to any group receiving preference over another. We can’t reasonably expect to repay one group by penalizing another and attempting to do so merely reinforces a negative attitude in one or both groups.