According to a psychology class I took in college, overweight/obese people are the most discriminated against group in the US, more so than homosexuals, people of different races or religions, or the elderly. It's harder for obese people to get jobs, get promoted, get a bank loan, and adopt a child. Obese people fare worse in court; they receive subtle discrimination from doctors, and are passed over for college scholarships and letters of recommendation from professors. NOTE: These claims come from social science studies I read during college.
Whether obesity is causing these things or not is debatable. As anyone who has taken a social science class knows, correlation does not equate causation. There might be some third variable, think a personality trait, that people who have a tendency to be overweight share and it is that trait that is leading to the unequal treatment. Or maybe when people are turned down from jobs, it leads to depression which leads to weight gain. Who knows?
It would be nice to see people having a legitimate conversation about these things. Since obesity has been shown to coincide with a myriad of health risks, can the unequal treatment be seen as legitimate? Is it fair for an overweight person to pay more for health insurance? Is that discrimination? Statistics show that overweight people will have more health problems so shouldn't they pay more? Or take another example people talk about a lot. Is it fair to make overweight people pay for 2 seats on a plane? Should airline companies be forced to make bigger seats to accommodate large people? Should the world change to meet the needs of obese people or the other way around?
I personally think it is wrong to assume bad things about a person because he or she is obese, but at the same time, there are legitimate health concerns associated with obesity and I can understand why certain jobs might not want to hire someone for those reasons. (More sick days, more insurance costs, if the job requires physical exertion obese people will be less productive).
It's not really a black and white debate. Any opinions?
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