Stop thinking that!

New Metropolitan Human Relations Commission Executive DirectorDawn Cummings explains what the agency does:

Metro combines law enforcement with education and outreach, Cummings explained, with types of discrimination falling into three groups: overt, covert and unconscious.

"In our line of work we don't see a lot of overt discrimination...because people know that they can get into trouble for saying that they are treating persons differently because of race, national origin, gender, religion or disability," Cummings said, though she said that overt discrimination is still performed by hate groups.

"What Metro mostly deals with is the covert discrimination -- those who try to hide it because they know it is illegal -- and also the unconscious discrimination," Cummings said, with the latter being the most dangerous, in her opinion. "Unconscious discrimination is that internal prejudice that we may or may not recognize that we have, these internal biases that influence our decisions every day."

Send in the thought police! I mean, how do they know if I have "internal prejudices" or "internal biases," and what the hell are the going to do about it anyway? The only business of the law should be very specific, well-defined acts that cross a clearly articulated line. Don't deny entrance to someone because of race or religion, for example; you do, you get punished. Don't hire or fire because of, oh, gender, or you'll pay a big fine. Trying to figure out what unconscious prejudices might have spurred some questionable activity goes even beyond "disparate impact" as bogus proof of discrimination.

Perhaps this is where the agency leaves its law enforcement function behind and concetrates on that "education and outreach." Hard to tackle the problem one person at a time, though, since everybody has a hidden prejudice or two. Oh, I know. They can build camps for us.