More on discrimination

Deborah Hellman began a series of guest posts on Balkinization today, on the subject of what discrimination means and when it is wrong. It seems a fitting thing to highlight here, since we’ve touched on those issues a couple times already (see this post on civil unions and this one on religion).

Lots of policies can be accurately described as “discrimination,” and it’s easy — if careless — to assume the normative implication from that description (that is, to assume that any differentiating between people is an immoral action). Hellman argues that the normative use of the word requires a much more specific definition than the descriptive use, specifically that “discrimination is wrong when it is demeaning and not wrong when it is not demeaning.” She goes on to explain that this definition does not exclude individuals who did not intend their discriminatory actions to be demeaning, nor does it except cases in which the affected person does not happen to personally feel demeaned or stigmatized.

I’m not sure I agree entirely with this standard Hellman lays out, but she’s not done explaining it yet. I’m looking forward to her subsequent posts elaborating on her position, and later, dissecting alternative constructions. Hopefully those will include a discussion of using as a criterion the relevance of the attribute being used for differentiation — the subject of my religious tolerance post. Discrimination on the basis of religion may be perceived as categorically demeaning, so I wonder if she would rule it immoral even in cases where it is arguably a relevant consideration.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this reminder from Tom Stoppard that sometimes differentiating between people is the only reasonable thing to do:

Guildenstern: Rosencrantz?
Rosencrantz: What?
Guildenstern: Guildenstern?
Rosencrantz: What?
Guildenstern: Don’t you discriminate at all?!

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June 20, 2008 · Written by
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