Quote:
Originally Posted by Molten
My main point is that nobody can really tell right away what a persons motives are. It takes a little bit of time to really know the person before you can tell exactly what their motives are. Afterall, what happened to innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? I'm not saying there aren't signs that it might have been discrimination.
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As you're mentioning this, I thought I might add that discrimination is not necessarily a conscious process. Implicit bias occurs on a subconscious level, without the need for an articulable logical justification. (Explicit bias is where motives enter the picture.) This makes the problem of identifying and confronting discrimination harder: if someone is not cognizant of a another person's implicit bias that leads to discriminatory behaviour, it could be overreaching to ascribe that behaviour to a conscious motive.
Incidentally, the "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" stuff is a common law standard of proof for criminal charges. Technically, it's not applicable to the civil realm, where discrimination tends to be litigated. If you apply that as your personal standard of proof when judging discrimination, that's fine—but there's no legal requirement to apply that standard on a personal basis.