Lies, Damn Lies

Positive Discrimination and glee

Positive discrimination is a dirty word. It seems unjust from the outside, and tends to be generally opposed. I'm moderately in favour of it.

Why? Well our society is unjust. The representation of women and minorities in high paid workplaces and parliament is poor. Worse yet, this is a situation that reinforces it- women don't want to become engineers because women don't become engineers. If we make no action then it will take a very long time for society to become equal- there is no real trend for it without pushing. We know that positive discrimination works- the all female shortlists massively increased the amount of women in parliament, until it was decided that such lists were wrong, and now there is no such increase.

By being white and male, I have priveleges that others don't have. I am the default- anything else in media or work is considered the other. This is an unequal situation.

Bear in mind that positive discrimination is obviously still discrimination, but that doesn't necessarily matter. White males do not need to have the scales balanced- they are already tipped in their favour.

Look at this link. Avatar (I'm going to call that rather than the airbender bit), was very much a show which celebrated Asian traditions... and was casted for white people. Such actions should be unacceptable.

Worse yet was Glee's choice to hire an able-bodied person to play Artie's role. The casting crew make the usual excuses about how wonderful the actor was, he was just right for the role. I'm always a little curious about such declamations- they stink of laziness to me. Frankly, unless there is a serious reason why a disabled person could not play their role, a disabled person should play that role. Why? Well disabled people would not be able to play any of the other roles. Other people auditioning had many options, but disabled people had ONE role they could apply for, and an able-bodied person got it instead. There was really no-one else? Theres a lot of talented people out there, I refuse to believe the actor who plays Artie was very good. Something like this simply should not be acceptable.

Labels: politics, rant

posted by Mr K @ 11:11 am