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> In practical terms, how can you acknowledge that "black people are discriminated against if there are no black people"? Think about how you would practically

> In practical terms, how can you acknowledge that "black people are discriminated against if there are no black people"? Think about how you would practically go about preventing discrimination against a group of people. I don't think any solutions require the acknowledgment that the group exists, officially. Discrimination can happen on a number of lines that are not in whatever survey the state creates so any effective solution has to address the tendency toward discrimination of all sorts. In the US, we don't collect information (officially) on sexual orientation or religion yet we still take steps to protect people from discrimination on those avenues despite having no metrics. I think collecting that data has a danger of creating a list of officially recognized groups which can be discriminated against (at the expense of those not tracked). This happens in the US with sexual orientation because it has not been in the list of things that it's illegal to discriminate against innthe past. Instead of just making discrimination illegal, it's only illegal to discriminate by race, religion or gender. If, instead, it were just illegal to discriminate, that wouldn't be an issue.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> yet we still take steps to protect people from discrimination on those avenues despite having no metrics. The issue is that the U.S.A. knows at-will employment to begin with where a man might be fired or hired for rather arbitrary reasons. In many countries, the onus is on employers to justify their reasons to make financial sense. Pertaining to Japan, I once had a discussion with someone from the U.S.A. who learned that sexual orientation is not a “protected class” in Japan, and he had assumed that that meant that one's employ could be terminated over one's sexual orientation. Japan, as it stands, is notorious for it's nigh impossibility to fire an employee for about any reason other than willful, dishonorable, illegal conduct. Even an employee that is not being sufficiently productive in Japan will be hard to dismiss if the court find that he still tries and puts in enough effort, but simply finds it hard to manage. — personal reasons, such as sexual orientation or anything one does at home is completely off the table, of course, and thus in no want of any special protection.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

> yet we still take steps to protect people from discrimination on those avenues despite having no metrics. The issue is that the U.S.A. knows at-will employment to begin with where a man might be fired or hired for rather arbitrary reasons. In many countries, the onus is on employers to justify their reasons to make financial sense. Pertaining to Japan, I once had a discussion with someone from the U.S.A. who learned that sexual orientation is not a “protected class” in Japan, and he had assumed that that meant that one's employ could be terminated over one's sexual orientation. Japan, as it stands, is notorious for it's nigh impossibility to fire an employee for about any reason other than willful, dishonorable, illegal conduct. Even an employee that is not being sufficiently productive in Japan will be hard to dismiss if the court find that he still tries and puts in enough effort, but simply finds it hard to manage. — personal reasons, such as sexual orientation or anything one does at home is completely off the table, of course, and thus in no want of any special protection.