CMV: Country of Birth will go the way of Sexism, Racism, and Homophobia

It sounds a lot like you're just describing racism. Italians didn't used to be considered white until they were. The way you phrase it in your title doesn't make it obvious you're talking about discrimination based on country of origin. But I think that discrimination based on country of origin will phase away long before racism or homophobia.

Let's go back to my Italians didn't used to be white example. People discriminated on them based on their place of origin. We don't do that anymore. When discrimination based on birth country happens, it's more often than not just a proxy for racism. Racism happens against black Americans all the time, but we don't discriminate nearly as harshly against the Polish.

I guess we could boil it down even further and say sex/race/orientation/country of birth discrimination are all really just discrimination against a perceived out-group. But we as a society have made earlier and bigger steps against national origin discrimination than with racism and homophobia.

By the way that is the term for it. National origin discrimination. Not a particularly fun one, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission calls it that. And it is, as you would expect, illegal under the equal Employment opportunity act.

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