Positive Discrimination

RedEyedAbyss

Not quite as offensive as the usual discrimination, but still offensive in the sense of treating people as "other" just because their race is different. I mean, non-whites have every right to be stupid too!

Sub-IJBM (risking a gender derail): I really hate the You Go Girl trope.

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The You Go Girl trope seems to be talking about those who underestimate females getting beat by a female, so it doesn't really seem like it is gender discrimination in that case unless the girl was someone who wasn't even an athlete and just happened to win because she has a feminine body.

The redirect does look rather annoying though...

RedEyedAbyss

I hate the notion of needing to prove something about the female sex. The only person you should need to prove anything to is yourself, as a human being.

ClockworkUniverse

Most hilarious example of positive discrimination I've heard of: on a standardized test (that'd be the NMSQT, if anyone cares), one of my classmates wasn't expecting to do well, so he just kind of screwed around on much of the personal information you had to fill out.

Well, he won a scholarship that was reserved for African-Americans. The principal called him into his office, kind of stared at him for a moment and asked "Daniel...are you black?"

Anyway, he had to write the National Merit Scholarship people and tell them he was white, which apparently caused him to become less intelligent.

AHR

That's not really positive discrimination. I mean, I know that someone put out a scholarship for 500 dollars, or 5,000, anywho, and all you had to be was blonde.

RedEyedAbyss

Obviously when you're getting money, you don't care as much, but that really comes off as a Stealth Insult.

LouieW

Abyss_Worm,

Yeah, I agree that discrimination is annoying in general. I think that positive discrimination can actually mess with people's self-esteem (i.e. the idea that they or their group cannot succeed on their or its own without help). If I remember correctly, sometimes people in developing countries dislike outside interference for that reason. I guess that a misplaced sense of pride can often play into that too though.

That being said, I think the issue can be kind of complicated, especially in situations where certain minority groups have had to deal with systematic discrimination for many years. Still, I do not believe that race or minority ethnic status by themselves justify discrimination.

I feel like YouGoGirl should be a DiscreditedTrope at this point. I mean, I think it can kind of be interesting, but I also feel like it has been overdone and seems to indicate that women need to prove something about being women (as Abyss_Worm) said.