Discrimination on Our Doorstep

      I see “Gattaca” as more of a social commentary than a dystopian warning flare set in “the not-too-distant future.” If you think about the kind of discrimination we see in the movie, namely, discrimination based upon genetics, you'll realize we've always been doing it.

      Yes, that's right; I'm saying we actually don't need some sort of fancy DNA test to tell us who we think is and isn't capable. When I thought about most of the qualities upon which we discriminate—gender, skin color, athleticism, physical and mental stamina, etc.—I realized that they were already linked in some fashion (with the note of a few exceptions) to each person's genetic code.

      In other words, we don't need to worry about “[having] discrimination down to a science” in the near future because it's already here.

      Racial/coloration discrimination is probably the most obvious evidence of this. A person's skin color comes directly from his or her genetic background, and for centuries Western society has believed that people without white skin are socially, morally, physically, and (now) genetically inferior. Ironically, one of the actors in “Gattaca” delivers the line “Blood has no nationality,” but according to Western society, it does.

      Thankfully, many of us have abandoned such views, but some groups still believe in racial discrimination.

Please stop saying you're doing "the Lord's work." You're making the rest of us who are actually trying look bad.

      We even pick on people who are mentally different than us. I cannot count how many times I have heard “retard” used as an insult. Some cases of mental retardation come from genetic abnormalities, and our using that term as an insult reveals that we must have some sort of propensity to discriminate against and regard those people who have that condition as “inferior.”

      I'm reminded of the sister of an old friend of mine. She has Down's Syndrome, so she was picked on growing up because she looked different, talked different, and acted different than the rest of the students. Some of them couldn't get past the genetics and see the sweet, outgoing girl she really was.

      And now we have this sentiment in society that says it might be okay to abort or euthanize a fetus that will probably have genetic abnormalities when it's born. Without getting too controversial or moralistic, I have to wonder how fair it is for us to do that without knowing what impact that person may have. Some of my most meaningful experiences have come from interactions with people who are “handicapped” or “different.”

      So, yeah, “Gattaca” was close to the bulls-eye, but not quite there. Genetic discrimination isn't in the future; it's here, with us, right now. Our continuing discrimination while paying lip-service to the idea of equality keeps putting us farther and farther away from a potential utopia.

(Image of the Klan march on Washington taken from southernnationalist.com.)