Time Essay: The Sensible Limits of Non-Discriminiation

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Much of all this silliness and confusion stems from simple blindness to what a polyglot society is really like. The U.S. is a patchwork of many subsocieties (based on race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, education, cultural taste, language, region). Every group naturally tends to exclude outsiders under certain circumstances. But this need not inevitably conflict with the achievement of a society that does not shut anybody off from any reasonable path or opportunity. The notion of an open pluralistic society becomes a contradiction in terms—unless there is some common-sense limit to both its openness and its pluralism. To define that limit is hard. Perhaps it can be fixed only case by case, as in conflicts between equally valid constitutional rights (free press v. fair trial, for instance). At least a grain of oldtime horse sense needs to be applied to the situation. Too many excursions into absurdity will achieve more than amusement; they could make the whole cause of fair play seem silly.

Frank Trippett