Term "visible minority" considered harmful

A UN committee released a report today on Canada's efforts to combat racism. The report praises Canada on some aspects of it's anti-racism programs but says that the term "visible minorities" may not be "in accordance with the aims and objectives of the [International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination]". The convention says that "distinction based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin is discriminatory".

Great. Now we can no longer tell the difference between a black man and a Ukrainian because to make the distinction between them (that is, to employ another definition of the word, to discriminate) based on the colour of one's skin and the other's nationality is "discriminatory". Um yeah. Aren't we pushing this a little too far? I mean, how far am I from being an "individual with low amounts of skin pigmentation from a city near the coast with parents and in posession of a penis"? Come on! Sometimes we need to differentiate between two people or two groups.

Now, I understand that penalizing one group or another based on these distinctions is what is really at issue here. That doesn't stop me from being a bit frustrated that there are actually people somewhere in the world paid to come up with this shit, write it down and hand it out to other people who are paid to read it. We could be solving "real" problems but instead we are haggling over what to call somebody who is black. How to talk about a deaf person without mentioning the fact that they can't hear.

Talking about people's differences or referring to them in some way is not discriminatory. There is only a problem when those differences cause you to judge based on those differences instead of based on personal merit. Now go home, make friends with a black deaf retarded gay woman and call it a day.