How well have you kept up with the great crusade against discrimination? Find out with the following jiffy quiz. Mark each item true or false: 1) A white female office worker, fired after she was caught fornicating on business premises during working hours, filed a charge of discrimination against the employer, contending that she had been dismissed only because her sexual partner was black.
2) A young man fascinated by an expensive dress in a boutique window complained of discrimination because the shopkeeper would not let him try it on.
3) A Caribbean-born stewardess alleged that her airline discriminated against her by asking that she desist from flaunting her voodoo equipment on the job.
4) A veteran faith healer claimed that a Midwestern university was guilty of religious discrimination in refusing to admit him to medical school.
5) A female clarinetist went to court intent on proving that a municipal all-male drum and bugle corps refused her membership on grounds of sex.
6) A state society of certified masseurs demanded that the phrase "massage parlor" be expunged from the language because the term tends to denigrate all practitioners of the hoary art of body rubbing.
Answers: Items 1, 2 and 3 are true. Items 4, 5 and 6 (so far as could be ascertained last week) are false.
How to evaluate your score: If you marked all statements false, welcome back from wherever you have been. If you marked all true, your consciousness has obviously been razed. If you racked up a perfect score, congratulations, but take note: your mind is remarkably attuned to the absurd and the ridiculous. Only such a mind can distinguish between the real and the fantastic among the cases that are increasingly popping up in the crusade against discrimination. Many complaints, as the quiz is intended to make clear, are more farfetched than the most bizarre spoof.
The reason is plain: Some of the farthest-out pilgrims of the struggle keep crossing over from the worthy to the frivolous, from the serious to the preposterous. Granted, the main thrust to assure fair play for all Americans goes on as plausibly as ever, its partisans earnest, their issues understandable, their purposes reasonable. Still, there must be some sensible bounds—no matter how elusive—to the claims that can be made in the name of nondiscrimination.
Consider the real-life episodes referred to in the quiz:
Item 1: This Chicago case reached—and was eventually dismissed by—the Illinois fair employment practices commission. The woman at first claimed she had been fired for giving a "birthday kiss" to a black male coworker, who was also sacked. But even after an investigation established that the kiss had led to something more, the woman still attributed her dismissal to discrimination. She argued that it would not have occurred had her partner been white. Questions: Is there not some limit to the personal habits and traits that an employer must tolerate? Would not this woman's employer be entitled to shield other employees who might be distracted—or even disturbed—by the spectacle of casual copulation in the office?