Can a positive discrimination be used to overcome ethnic discrimination?

“Positive discrimination is regarded as the preferential treatment of members of a minority group over a majority group, either by sex, race, age, marital status or sex orientation.”

Could this thing be positive? Could discrimination be a positive thing at all?

Correct answer is no. It is not right to favour one group of people over another, no matter of the reasons you are doing it. This regards to positive discrimination as well. There are so many laws protecting minority groups by race, gender, sexual orientation and so on, but actually no laws protecting the majority of ordinary people. Why is that? Probably laws are protecting minorities so heavily that at some point they start discriminating the majority.

I will illustrate my thoughts by giving an example with Eastern Europe. Everyone knows about the ethnic conflicts that are taking place on the Balkans. There are many minority groups which cannot or do not want to get integrated which causes many ethnic conflicts. Probably one of the most problematic minority groups the Eastern European countries all have is the Roma minority. There is a particular problem in these countries because the percentage of Roma population there is higher. Basically these people or at least most of them do not integrate to the countries they live in and do not even consider themselves as their citizens. Sometimes they cannot even speak the language properly. But the biggest problem is that they live a nomad life and do not follow the rules. They pay no taxes, do all kinds of fraud, riot, abandon their children or send them to beg or steal, etc. Basically they are living off the state.

This is a huge problem the Eastern European countries face with this minority. Unfortunately they cannot do anything about it. They cannot restrict the Roma because it would be considered as an act of discrimination by the Western European countries which suggest that the Roma population should be integrated. But let’s not forget the fact that in August 2010, France expelled from the country a number of Bulgarian and Romanian Roma families and with this act it violated their rights of European citizens which was an overt discrimination.  It also outraged the 2004 EU directive on freedom of movement. However France is one of the leading countries in the European Union and also one of its founders so it had the power to uphold the decision to export the “unwanted Europeans” even though the EU tried to take steps towards legal action against France.

Eastern European countries cannot do anything like that because some of them are new members of the EU and they are not in a position to take decisions which will be contested by the other EU member states. So here we come again with the Roma citizens extradited back to their countries. But the governments of these countries are not allowed to do anything against them because it would be considered as an act of discrimination. On the other hand they cannot integrate them because of the specificity of this ethnic minority as it is not amendable to integration. So here it comes the problem with positive discrimination. The majority of the population is discriminated against because for example if a Bulgarian or Romanian citizen does not pay their electricity bill, it will be switched off. But if a Roma citizen does not pay, nothing will happen to them.

Positive discrimination is even worse than the normal discrimination because you benefit just a small group of people at the expense of the society. That is why I think Eastern Europeans are not racists or discriminators they are the real victims of discrimination. And discrimination in any form cannot be a solution to a particular problem. Because problems do not have colour or gender and they cannot be solved this way.