"Any discrimination, like sharp turns in a road, becomes critical because of the tremendous speed at which we are traveling into the high-tech world of a service economy"
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Thomas frames discrimination as an old hazard made newly lethal by modern velocity. The metaphor does a lot of quiet ideological work: “sharp turns in a road” suggests something predictable, even natural, not a moral rupture but a condition of travel. In that framing, discrimination isn’t primarily an expression of power; it’s an obstacle that becomes “critical” when society accelerates. The urgency comes not from justice but from efficiency and risk management.
The phrase “tremendous speed” is key. It smuggles in a technocratic argument: in a high-tech, service-driven economy, small inequities compound quickly. Careers are built on networks, credential signals, and customer-facing trust; a slight tilt in access can cascade into lifelong disadvantage. By tying discrimination to economic modernization, Thomas sidesteps the emotive register of civil-rights rhetoric and instead speaks the language of competitiveness and institutional performance.
Context matters: Thomas’s public philosophy is often skeptical of certain remedies for discrimination, particularly race-conscious policies. Read that way, the line can be heard as a caution against letting any form of discrimination harden into systemic drag just as the economy demands flexibility. But the subtext also casts “the high-tech world” as the neutral destination we’re all hurtling toward, implying that the marketplace will punish bias because it’s inefficient, not because it’s wrong. It’s a moral claim disguised as a traffic report: discrimination becomes intolerable when it slows the machine.
The phrase “tremendous speed” is key. It smuggles in a technocratic argument: in a high-tech, service-driven economy, small inequities compound quickly. Careers are built on networks, credential signals, and customer-facing trust; a slight tilt in access can cascade into lifelong disadvantage. By tying discrimination to economic modernization, Thomas sidesteps the emotive register of civil-rights rhetoric and instead speaks the language of competitiveness and institutional performance.
Context matters: Thomas’s public philosophy is often skeptical of certain remedies for discrimination, particularly race-conscious policies. Read that way, the line can be heard as a caution against letting any form of discrimination harden into systemic drag just as the economy demands flexibility. But the subtext also casts “the high-tech world” as the neutral destination we’re all hurtling toward, implying that the marketplace will punish bias because it’s inefficient, not because it’s wrong. It’s a moral claim disguised as a traffic report: discrimination becomes intolerable when it slows the machine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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