Today, discrimination appears to receive a high profile. But yet, discrimination continues.
Often, discrimination is based on ignorace. People's pre-conceptions of situations, the realities of which they know nothing.
Sex discrimination has a very high profile. Treating one gender favourably (or less favourably) simply because they are of that gender is blatant discrimination - but for many years it was the norm.
In general, sex discrimination is taken to be favouring men over women. For this reason the Sex Discrimination Act tends to refer to "her". However, sex discrimination does not necessarily only apply to women - see the case if a significant number of men who were unfairly disadvantaged by the policies of Strathclyde Police.
Race discrimination also has a high profile, although it's implications can get interesting - could calling me a "silly Jock" get you into trouble nowadays? But why should people be treated differently just because of their origins or the colour of their skin?
Disability discrimination should have a high profile, but is perhaps still one area where blatent stereotyping continues, sometime deliberately and sometimes accidentally. Read this item about a Hotel which fell foul of the Disability Discrimination Act
Religious discrimination is something which, opinion indicates, continues in the modern Scotland. In saying this, people tend to think about Protestant and Catholic - about Rangers and Celtic (although similar claims might be made of other football teams). But religious discrimination also exists in other areas of life in Scotland today. Some may consider that the Muslim population are open to discrimination - but so too are Chrstians, and just because they are willing to say they are Christians.
Returning to the thought that discrimination is often based on ignorace and people's pre-conceptions of situations, the realities of which they know nothing. If we are to remove discrimination from our society, each one of us needs to enquire deeper into situations where our thoughts are that "they" are this or that - it's time to enquire deeper and find out the facts.
