How is discrimination wrong

Accordingly, the concept of discrimination has become a useful tool for representing many serious wrongs, while avoiding the implication that these wrongs are ultimately done to the groups as such.

However, this understanding of the significance of the concept of discrimination is challenged by Young, who claims that the concept is inadequate for capturing group-based wrongs. The reason is that wrongs against individuals on account of their group membership, especially when perpetrated by members of dominant groups, are often not aberrant but form broad social patterns. Accordingly, the idea of discrimination can capture the systemic wrongs to which Young refers, while preserving the key moral thought that the wrongs are done to individuals.

Thus, discrimination typically involves exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness and so on, where those wrongs are perpetrated against individuals and, at the same time, track salient social categories.

Yet, Young is right insofar as she is claiming that systemic wrongs can persist even as direct discrimination recedes: indirect discrimination can, as we have seen, amplify and perpetuate the wrongful harms of diminishing direct discrimination.

Additionally, Young correctly suggests that the idea of discrimination is too weak to adequately capture certain sorts of extreme systemic maltreatment and abuse. When disadvantageous treatment exceeds a certain level of severity, it is no longer suitable simply to speak of discrimination. Enslavement and genocide are forms of wrongful discrimination, but because of the extremity of the mistreatment they involve, it would be morally obtuse to characterize them as discrimination and leave the matter at that.

Clear-headed moral thinking demands that their extremity be registered in how they are characterized, and the idea of discrimination is not, by itself, equipped for the task. Intersectionality refers to the fact that one and the same person can belong to several distinct groups, each of whose members are victimized by widespread discrimination. This overlapping membership can generate experiences of discrimination that are very different from those of persons who belong to just one, or the other, of the groups.

And one implication of intersectionality is that the disadvantages suffered by some persons who are discriminated against on account of belonging to a certain group might be offset, partially or fully, by advantages those same persons gain by being discriminated in favor of due to their belonging to other groups. The idea of intersectionality threatens to destabilize the concept of discrimination.

The idea highlights what is problematic about any account of discrimination that abstracts from how different salient identities converge to shape the experiences of persons. But, taken to the hilt, the idea of intersectionality might appear to undermine any feasible account of discrimination.

Any of those additional identities can and do converge with race and gender to form distinctive experiences of discrimination, and so abstracting from those identities seems problematic from the perspective that the idea of intersectionality opens to us. Yet, no feasible treatment can take into account all of those identities and the many more socially salient identities that persons have in contemporary societies. Nonetheless, judgments about discrimination can and do reveal genuine wrongs that persons suffer due to their salient group membership and expose actual patterns of disadvantage and deprivation that amount to systemic injustices against the members of certain salient groups.

It is not necessary to take account of everything relevant to a phenomenon in order to understand and represent important aspects of it. Like the right against discrimination, the right of religious liberty is enshrined in many domestic and international legal documents.

Yet, the two rights often seem to be in conflict with each other. For claims of religious liberty are frequently made by persons who wish to engage in activities that appear to amount to discrimination. Of particular importance are cases in which religious institutions and religiously-motivated individuals claim to be exempt from the requirements of antidiscrimination laws.

Claims of religious exemption to antidiscrimination laws have recently become the center of political and legal controversy in the U. However, questions regarding the legal and moral validity of religious exemptions to such laws extend well beyond the issue of same-sex marriage. Moreover, many liberal thinkers who support antidiscrimination laws balk at the idea that the laws ought to be applied willy-nilly to all religious institutions and religiously-motivated persons Barry —76; Eisgruber and Sager 65; Greenawalt ; Nussbaum ; Galston ; Laborde — In the Hosanna-Tabor case , the U.

The exception applies in the paradigmatic case to employees who perform religious functions, such as ministers and priests, but the Court in Hosanna-Tabor ruled that the exception also applied in the case of a church employee whose job was the teaching of secular subjects. The employee had brought her lawsuit under a statute prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of disability. The Court held that the church was immune to the suit.

Chambers rejects the ministerial exception, even when it is limited to employees who perform spiritual functions. Laborde adds that any group claiming an exemption from antidiscrimination law can be legitimately required to openly profess the discriminatory doctrine that is the basis for its claim. At the same time, Laborde rejects the scope of the ministerial exception as presented in Hosanna-Tabor.

Contra the ruling, Laborde does not think that the claim holds against the teachers of secular subjects at church schools or any other employees whose jobs do not consist in religious work. Claims for religious exemptions from antidiscrimination laws have also been made, not just by organizations, but by individuals acting on the basis of their faith. Watson and Hartley consider a case in which a wedding vendor refuses her services to same-sex couples, invoking her religious belief that same-sex relationships are inherently sinful cf.

Masterpiece Cakeshop : The vendor claims an exemption from a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Watson and Hartley argue that such an exemption is illegitimate, even if same-sex couples can avail themselves of the services of other vendors in the area. In the view of Watson and Hartley, the claim to an exemption rests on the premise that same-sex relationships are inherently inferior to heterosexual ones. They argue that such a premise is not admissible as a valid reason for the policies of government, which, as a matter of justice, must justify its actions to all its citizens in a way that respects their equality.

And it is not reasonable to think that anyone in a same-sex relationship can accept the premise of inferiority. Vallier develops an approach that is more accommodating of religious exemptions. Vallier explains that the bakers have a reason, from their point of view, to oppose an antidiscrimination law that protects same-sex couples.

It would seem that the stigma amounts to a stamp of inferiority, publicly-enacted through exclusionary actions and affixed to persons in same-sex partnerships, regardless of the availability to them of alternative venues. Watson and Hartley regard the bake shop and all other commercial enterprises that offer goods and services to the general public as belonging to the public sphere, and they contend that the denial of services on grounds of sexual orientation violates what citizens owe one another in that sphere, because such a denial constitutes treating citizens in same-sex partnerships as inferior to citizens in heterosexual ones.

But Vallier does not appear to embrace that aspect of the traditional liberal views, instead arguing that the disparaging treatment of gays by the bakers is made permissible in part by the fact that gays can receive service at other bake shops. The underlying premise appears to be that it is not really a duty of citizens to treat one another as equals, even in the public sphere. For if the bakers did have a duty to treat all of their fellow citizens, including gays, as equals in that sphere, then the bakers could not be relieved of the duty on the ground that there were other citizen-bakers who did treat gays as equals.

I am not morally licensed to treat you with disrespect if only there are many others who treat you respectfully. The concept of discrimination provides a way of thinking about a certain kind of wrong that can be found in virtually every society and era.

The wrong involves a group-based structure that works in combination with relative deprivations built around the structure. The deprivations are wrongful because they treat persons as having a degraded moral status, but also because the deprivations tend to make members of the group in question vulnerable to domination and oppression at the hands of those who occupy positions of relative advantage.

It is true that there has been confusion attending the concept of discrimination, and there will long be debates about the best way to understand and apply it. However, the concept has proved to be a useful one for representing in thought and combating in action a kind of wrong that is deeply entrenched in human social relations.

The Concept of Discrimination 1. Types of Discrimination in its Moralized Sense 2. Challenging the Concept of Indirect Discrimination 3. Why Is Discrimination Wrong? Which Groups Count? What Good is the Concept of Discrimination? Intersectionality 8. Religious Liberty and Antidiscrimination Laws 9. The Concept of Discrimination What is discrimination? Types of Discrimination in its Moralized Sense Legal thinkers and legal systems have distinguished among a bewildering array of types of discrimination: direct and indirect, disparate treatment and disparate impact, intentional and institutional, individual and structural.

Challenging the Concept of Indirect Discrimination The distinction between direct and indirect discrimination plays a central role in contemporary thinking about discrimination. Religious Liberty and Antidiscrimination Laws Like the right against discrimination, the right of religious liberty is enshrined in many domestic and international legal documents. Conclusion The concept of discrimination provides a way of thinking about a certain kind of wrong that can be found in virtually every society and era.

Bibliography Legal Cases and Documents Abdulaziz et al. European Court of Human Rights, App. Clayton County, No. Board of Education U. Duke Power U. EEOC U. Hodges U. Virginia U. Anderson, Ryan T. Anderson, and Sherif Girgis eds. Arneson, Richard, Barry, Brian, Beeghly, Erin, Brownstein, Michael and Jennifer Saul eds. Boxill, Bernard, Cavanagh, Matt, Corvino, John, Corvino, R. Anderson and S. Girgis eds. Cotter, Anne-Marie Mooney, Dworkin, Ronald, Eidelson, Benjamin, Eisgruber, Christopher L.

Sager, Ely, John Hart, Epstein, Richard, Finnis, John, Fiss, Owen, Galston, William, Gardner, John, Goldman, Alan, Greenawalt, Kent, Hellman, Deborah, When is Discrimination Wrong? Hellman, Deborah and Sophia Moreau eds. Holroyd, Jules, Hook, Sidney, Jones, Peter, Jost, John T. Rudman, Irene V. Blair, Dana R. Hardin, Kahlenberg, Richard, Kekes, John, Lemkin, Raphael, []. Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper, Born Free and Equal?

Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper ed. Macedo, Stephen, George ed. MacKinnon, Catharine, Mikkola, Mari, Moreau, Sophia, Moucheboeuf, Alcidia, Nussbaum, Martha, Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Osin, Nina and Dina Porat eds. Payne, B. Keith and C.

Daryl Cameron, Keith Payne eds. Pincus, Fred L. Pincus and Howard J. Ehrlich eds. Pogge, Thomas, World Poverty and Human Rights , second edition. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Rawls, John, Scanlon, Thomas, Schauer, Frederick, Shin, Patrick, Sunstein, Cass, Ture, Kwame and Charles V. Hamilton, []. Vallier, Kevin, Vandenhole, Wouter, Article PDF first page preview. Issue Section:.

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Sign in via your Institution Sign in. Purchase Subscription prices and ordering for this journal Short-term Access To purchase short term access, please sign in to your Oxford Academic account above. This article is also available for rental through DeepDyve. View Metrics. Email alerts Article activity alert. Advance article alerts. For example, choosing members of a sports team based on athletic ability is not an instance of discrimination, because athletic ability is a relevant trait for being a member of a sports team.

Doing the same on the basis of ethnicity is however, because ethnicity is not a relevant trait 1. Discrimination caused by bigotry such as racism is often indefensible simply because it rests on ungrounded beliefs about the relevance of traits such as ethnicity, such as the belief that a given ethnicity is relevantly superior in some normal situation.

Discrimination can be wrong even if it does not suffer from epistemic problems however. This is when different treatment is based on an irrelevant trait, but there are good epistemic reasons—such as statistical evidence—to believe that holding this trait makes it more likely that the same person holds another relevant trait.

For example, ethnicity is not a relevant trait for performing a normal job. Criminality is however, and for various reasons e. Many of us believe that even epistemically grounded discrimination is sometimes wrong, such as in some cases of ethnic targeting by police.

I will now progress to consider an account of under what conditions an instance of epistemically grounded discrimination is wrong, and what it is that makes it so. Those of us with a humanist outlook often have a prima facie intuition that discrimination is always wrong in any realistic scenario. Here is an account of the wrongness of discrimination which corresponds to this intuition: We have the right to be judged based on individual merit and capacity rather than generalizations over traits for which we are not responsible.

Specifically, all individuals have a right not to be judged or treated differently based on traits which do not constitute a relevant difference in merit e. Discriminating based on e. For this reason it is impermissible. Let us call this the Impermissibility Account. As mentioned, I believe the Impermissibility Account is at least prima facie intuitive to many of us. This makes it worth studying in more detail. Let us test the suggestion by considering the following two examples:.

Hiring: Harold is considering applicants for a position at his company. He knows that being a member of an ethnic minority strongly correlates with frequency of crime. Because of this he chooses not to consider applicants belonging to an ethnic minority. Au Pair: Cassandra is considering hiring an au pair to take care of her children. She knows that being white and male strongly correlates with being inept at taking care of children.

Because of this she chooses not to consider white male candidates. These are both instances of epistemically grounded discrimination, and impermissible according to the Impermissibility Account.

In their respective examples Harold and Cassandra both treat some group of individuals very differently based on an irrelevant trait being of an ethnic minority and being a white male respectively.

They do however have good reason to believe that these traits correlate with a relevant trait criminality and child-caring respectively , and that therefore—ceteris paribus—someone with the irrelevant trait e.

Most of us believe that Harold is acting impermissibly, and plausibly for the reasons above. He is treating individuals in a way which they have a right not to be treated by discriminating based on ethnicity. In fact many ads for au pairs specify that they only consider females, and the owners of the ad are rarely considered to be doing something impermissible.

This would suggest that our suggestion is too inclusive, making too many acts of discrimination impermissible. We might suggest that the relevant difference between Hiring and Au Pair are the objects of discrimination. Here is a further condition attempting to accommodate this suggestion: Discrimination is only impermissible when the irrelevant trait e.

Adding this condition to the Impermissibility Account captures a further intuition, but the condition is both problematically vague and insufficient. It is problematically vague because there are cases in which it is not clear whether a trait should warrant membership in an exposed group or not e. I will not elaborate on this issue. More relevantly it is insufficient because sometimes it seems permissible, and even morally required, to discriminate even when the object of discrimination is a member of an exposed group.

Consider the following example:. Alley: In order to get to the other side of town one needs to pass through either alley A or alley B. A tourist, who is internationally famous for spreading money around everywhere he goes, needs to get to the other side of town, and asks Pasha how to get there. Pasha knows only the following: a Passing through A is slightly quicker than B, b A is mainly populated with members of an ethnic minority and B by non-minorities and c being a member of the ethnic minority statistically correlates strongly with high frequency of violent crime, while there is no such correlation for non-minorities.