Almost everywhere we turn we hear that discrimination is a bad thing. Although I’ll probably raise a few eyebrows, I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Illegal discrimination is a bad thing, but people discriminate every day—and they should.

My eyes were opened to this while I was in a college class on how to create tests. Well-constructed tests must discriminate between those who know and those who don’t. If people don’t know the correct answer to a question but can easily get it right, then the test does not discriminate—and is therefore a bad test.

What discrimination really means

The word discrimination comes from the Latin word “discriminare,” which means to “distinguish between.”

When we go to a restaurant and decide on something to order we are “distinguishing between” foods we’d like to eat now and foods we don’t want to eat now. In other words, we’re discriminating.

When we go shopping and pick out a new shirt we are distinguishing between patterns and styles that please us more than others. Again, we’re discriminating.

Perhaps you’ve heard classy hotels or restaurants advertise themselves as places for people with “discriminating tastes.”

Similarly, everyone who hires discriminates when doing so. We distinguish between applicants that will perform a job and “fit” better than someone else.

What’s ILLEGAL is making race, gender, or nationality a factor in our distinguishing.

Sociologically, some have become verbally lazy

Unfortunately, the word “illegal” has been dropped in many sociological circles, and it’s diminished the quality of our language. Call me a hair-splitter, but I’m simply clarifying a difference in how people use words.

And lest anyone gets the wrong idea (and because some will make erroneous assumptions, I feel I have to state this), I fully disapprove of illegal discrimination. It’s wrong when someone either receives or gets denied something because of belonging to some group.

I fully support statements such as what appears in every government job posting:

The United States Government does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, age, membership in an employee organization, or other non-merit factor.

But the government does—and should—discriminate based on skills, attitudes, experience, and other factors.

In the workplace, we discriminate hundreds of times a day—and we should. But when people are involved, we must discriminate based on their merit (skills, education, capabilities, etc) and not because they belong to a particular demographic group.

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Filed in Opinion, Workplace, Job Seeking, Interviewing