I dislike touchscreens, iPads, and the like. Part of that is that, while my muscular gross motor control is good to excellent, I don’t do as well with fine motor control, one of the reasons why I gave up trying to be an artist, although I actually won a scholastic art show in high school.

The other reason is that I have flat oblong fingertips, which means that it’s a bitch to compose anything on my iPhone. That’s why I use a mouse on my surface pro when I travel. For me, precision is far easier and quicker with a full-sized keyboard and a mouse. As for signing anything electronically, on those occasions, my barely legible signature turns into abstract art.

In a way, I could claim that iPads and touchscreens are discriminatory against people with large hands and broad or fat fingers, but then, if we really look at the physical world, every device and structure could be said to be discriminatory against someone. In fact, even the environment discriminates.

The sun blisters fair-skinned people in tropical climes and induces vitamin D deficiencies in dark-skinned people living in arctic areas (unless they take vitamins or watch their diet carefully).

Genetics discriminate, because some people are born more intelligent or stronger or faster or more coordinated than others.

Societies and governments usually discriminate in various ways, sometimes for the public good, as in locking up lawbreakers and forbidding children to drive some killing machines (i.e., automobiles) while often allowing young teenagers to drive smaller killing machines (i.e., ATVs). Often, societies discriminate on the basis of appearance, skin color, gender, and age, or religious faith or the lack thereof, and the culture/society into which one is born determines the degree of discrimination and challenges faced.

We all can cite blatant and obvious cases of discrimination such as slavery and lack of civil rights for African Americans in the U.S.; the holocaust in Germany; the Armenian Genocide in Turkey – and that list is long. But moving away from the blatant and obvious, “discrimination” isn’t always so easy to define or remedy.

Recent studies show that family backgrounds, especially their degree of prosperity, have a great impact on children’s futures. So does the physical environment. But to what degree should governments address the conditions that disadvantage children?

Both the right and the left have been debating and fighting over this question for generations, and while conditions have improved in the U.S., in many areas, obvious discrimination still exists. At the same time, some groups have filed lawsuits against governments and universities claiming that certain anti-discrimination measures discriminate against them.

But how much discrimination is structural? How much can be addressed by laws? And how much is chance?

I have no sense of pitch or rhythm, and I’m extremely fortunate to have been born into a culture that doesn’t require a high degree of linguistic inflection and pitch change, because I’m fairly certain that I’d be at a great disadvantage in China, Japan, or Vietnam. I couldn’t even hear the changes in inflection and pitch in Vietnamese when I was being prepared to be sent to Vietnam as a junior Navy officer.

All of which illustrates, in an odd way, why dealing with “discrimination” can be fraught with pitfalls. Even laws requiring perfect equality of opportunity wouldn’t make touchscreens any easier for me or allow me to sing professionally.

And while that seems far-fetched, how far can we take “anti-discrimination?”