POST # XXVII - 'DISCRIMINATION' and 'DISCRIMINATION': A Tale of Two Meanings

Historically, the verb 'to discriminate' has meant (OED) "Make or recognize a distinction, esp. a fine one; provide or serve as a distinction; exercise discernment."

If I correctly understand the concept, such discernment is a prerequisite for Critical Thinking.

However, since the Civil Rights Movement in America, the verb 'to discriminate' has come to mean (OED) "Make a distinction in the treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. unjustly or prejudicially against people on grounds of race, colour, sex, social status, age, etc."

It seems that as the two meanings have become conflated, Critical Thinking has come to be seen as 'old-fashioned' and obsolete.

The latter has been aggravated by some genres of psychotherapy that focus on how a distressed person "feels" rather than on how he/she "thinks".

For my part, sexist that I am, I have taken it upon myself to formulate the present careful discrimination (albeit complementary) between procreative (as distinct from 'creative' and 'mere reproductive') male and female interaction without discriminating against either male or female.