Why is discrimination morally wrong

Syntax Advanced Search. What Makes Discrimination Morally Wrong? Shu Ishida. Theoria 87 2 Shu Ishida University of Tokyo.

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From the Publisher via CrossRef no proxy onlinelibrary. Configure custom resolver. Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame. Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time. John Broome - - Wiley-Blackwell. Facts and Values.

Peter Railton - - Philosophical Topics 14 2 Google Scholar. Cite Cite Paul Woodruff, What's wrong with discrimination? Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. Article PDF first page preview. Issue Section:. You do not currently have access to this article. Download all slides. Sign in Don't already have an Oxford Academic account? You could not be signed in. Sign In Forgot password? Don't have an account? 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.

I then propose an alternative and more plausible account which I call the Fairness and Externalities Account, arguing that acts of discrimination are wrong partly because they are unfair and partly because they create harmful externalities which—analogously to pollution—there is a collective responsibility to minimize.

Both of these factors are however defeasible, meaning that if the Fairness and Externalities Account is correct, then discrimination is sometimes permissible.

These results are counterintuitive, and suggest that the ethics of discrimination requires further attention. I take discrimination to be to treat someone very differently in an unfavourable way based on an irrelevant trait. A trait is relevant if and only if the possession of it by itself provides reasons for different treatment in some instance, such as constituting a difference in merit or capacity.

Otherwise it is irrelevant. 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.