I agree with Carmen that extended conversations on such complex topics as discrimination is rarely constructive.

However, I would like to point out a few gaps in the thread that may be of interest.

Firstly, it is I think important to maintain a distinction between the broad, cognitive aspect of discrimination, which is ethically neutral (for example our ability to discriminate between a range of stimuli such as colours, smells and sounds) through to our ability to discriminate on moral grounds, such as whether an individual may be responsible for anti-social behavior on grounds of intention or by accident.

We make many such discriminating judgments everyday, including making a distinction between groups of people, for example if they represent a threat or a friendship group.

So, it seems naive to suggest that all discrimination is reprehensible or sub-optimal in these conditions.

Identifying disadvantage I believe is something that is also critical to feeling empathy, since we would be unable to respond to a wounded animal for example if we were not able to tell the difference between an injured creature and a creature that just happens to have motility functions we do not have, such as a fish that uses a tail to propel itself efficiently through water.

Treating animals and people differently then seems to be an indicator of high level sentient functioning, since it prefigures nurturing, appropriate threat responses, efficient networking and much else besides I would imagine.

Now that is out of the way we can turn our attention to the pejorative sense of the word discrimination, which is almost always synonymous with violence, disparity and harms of one sort or another that can be avoided if (as Carmen says) they could be avoided in some way.

The suggestion that the broad, general meaning of discrimination as cognitive predisposition is as 'wrong' as the narrow meaning of harming another creature or human being based on self-centered prejudice masks the two different meanings and so the phrase 'Two wrongs don't make a right' isn't a helpful metaphor here.

To use Orwell again: 'discrimination means that we ignore the fact that we live in a world where not all people have the same opportunities and that people of certain gender or color are privileged' is not meant to define discrimination only in gender or racial terms.

Orwell here is providing two exemplary cases, race and gender as being among the most ubiquitous traits where people are making distinctions that don't relate to the issue at hand (eg. a persons ability to write quality software) which we know depends on other things such as using a good quality copyleft license ;-))

Also, finding exceptions to the general rule that white, male interests are generally over represented in all the most influential and powerful places around the world does not destroy Orwell's point which is pointing out that these named power asymmetries are so common, collectivist discrimination would seem to deliver an outcome where more disadvantaged people (howsoever this is assessed) would undeniably solve the problem of lack of representation of disadvantage people so again, this is not at all contradictory but a direct intervention to solve an identified problem of lack of representation in whatever group or organization we are assessing.

Finally, we come to what i think is the main problem, which is how do we identify the (so called) 'disadvantaged' or 'minority' interests?

This is where Carmen's view is important, because to suggest a person of colour or a woman is disadvantaged to an extent that they ought to be given special privileges over white men in every job interview is not where we want to be.

I agree also that the concept of equality is just as much a means as it is an end, so how we get to a state of equality has to be equal also if only to avoid the critical self-defeat as Carmen is keen to point out.

Where people tend to disagree is largely contingent on many factors which means it's rarely possible to be 'wholly against this type of discrimination' without taking into account the circumstances in each case, for example what the aims or goals of a particular policy are trying to achieve.

I would take issue with the view that the LGBT community approached their struggle for equality with judicious deployment of characters/people in popular media. I think a lot of LGBT rights activists would argue that their cause has been hard won, with many set backs and not least with unrecognized work from lawyers, business people, educators and professionals doing what they can to make the lives of LGBT folk better.

All of this of course necessitated active discrimination since playwrights, TV producers, directors, financers, lawyers and many others would have deliberately written such characters into their movies, advertisements and so forth to give the LGBT community a voice where there was previously only bigotry and ignorance.

I would also take issue that low privilege is inherent to low income. Means testing for income doesn't for example highlight the cases where people have very little income but have vast personal assets that are simply accruing capital, such as in offshore centres, in some property portfolios and in startups to name only a few.

In terms of the idea that the redistribution of wealth is the best way to approach equality doesn't deal with the socially situated problems of institutional corruption in government, politics and business; logistical problems (problems with access to technology, employment, goods etc.) wherever national infrastructure relies on provisioning by profit-seeking, exploitative corporations; and uneven levels of numeracy and literacy both geographically and socio-economically - all of these are of course would still be prevalent in a so-called, 'progressive', egalitarian society based on a fairer redistribution of wealth, since our capacity for wasting public money is of course legendary.

It would be especially problematic to accept uncritically the idea that positive discrimination somehow engenders low expectations. This narrative is especially worrying since it tends to demonize beneficiaries of such schemes as somehow being unworthy of benefits, which I eschew on the grounds that such a view is divisive, controversial and tends to privilege the already privileged, by which I mean those that do not feel they need any support from such institutional incentives for whatever reason.

/ mat