DISCRIMINATION AS A ETHICAL CHALLENGE

As most of us understand it, it’s illegal to treat people unfairly based on their
gender or ethnicity. After all, we all have the right to be treated fairly regardless of who we are. I
call this the Impermissibility Account. The Impermissibility Account may seem logical to those
of us with a humanist outlook, but I will demonstrate why it is unjustified. We do not have a
strict right to be discriminated against if the discrimination is well-informed, according to my
argument. Finally, I offer an alternative and more plausible account, which I refer to as the
Fairness and Externalities Account, in which I argue that discrimination is wrong in part because
it is unfair and in part because it creates harmful externalities, like pollution, that we have a
collective responsibility to reduce. Assuming that the Fairness and Externalities Account is valid
and both of these variables are defeasible, discrimination is occasionally permitted.
Unexpectedly, these results suggest that the ethics of discrimination require more attention. They
are alarming. The act of treating someone unfairly because of a seemingly trivial characteristic is
what I consider discrimination. Only when a certain attribute alone justifies unequal treatment,
such as demonstrating a difference in merit or capacity, is a characteristic important. Otherwise,
there’s no point. It is not discriminatory to select members of a sports team based on their
athletic ability, for example. This is because athletic ability is a prerequisite for joining a sports
team. Because ethnicity isn’t a significant attribute, it isn’t possible to do so. Ethnic prejudice is
sometimes unjustified because it relies on misguided assumptions about the value of qualities
like ethnicity, such as the belief that one ethnicity is superior to another in a given environment.
Even if there are no epistemic errors, discrimination can be wrong. It’s possible that a person’s
treatment is based on an inconsequential quality, but there are sound epistemic reasons—such as
statistical evidence—to believe that possessing this trait enhances the likelihood of the same
individual having another relevant attribute. For example, ethnicity has no bearing on one’s
ability to carry out the duties of a standard employment. However, a number of factors, including
ethnicity, can be statistically linked to criminal behavior (e.g., social segregation along ethnic
lines). “Epistemically grounded discrimination” is what I’ll be referring to in this book when it
comes to ethnicity-based discrimination.

There are those of us who believe that even epistemically justified discrimination,
such as police ethnic profiling, can be wrong from time to time. I’m now going to explore how
and when epistemically grounded discrimination is erroneous, and what makes it so. According
to those of us who have a humanist worldview, discrimination is never appropriate in any real-
world contexts. The following is one interpretation of why discrimination is incorrect: If we are
to be judged, we must be evaluated on our own merits and skills, not on the basis of
generalizations about other people’s characteristics. Furthermore, no one is entitled to be treated
differently because of minor differences in merit or capacity (e.g., having committed a crime)
(e.g. athletic ability). In addition, violating someone’s rights is against the law. People’s rights
are violated if they are discriminated against because of their race or gender. Because of this, it is
illegal. Epistemically based discrimination is prohibited by the Impermissibility Account in both
of these instances. Both Harold and Cassandra approach a group of people drastically differently
depending on a trivial feature in their separate settings (being of an ethnic minority and being a
white male respectively). According to their reasoning, the relevant feature (e.g., inability to care
for children) is more likely to be found in people who have the irrelevant attribute (e.g., being a
white guy) than it is in those who don’t have the irrelevant trait.

For the reasons outlined above, the majority of us believe Harold is behaving in an
unacceptable manner. Using ethnicity as an excuse to treat individuals in a discriminatory
manner is a violation of their rights. But a large number of us do not believe in the immorality of
Cassidy’s behavior, thus we will be more sympathetic to her plight. Even though many ads for au
pairs clearly mention that they are searching for females only, the people who place the ads are
almost never suspected of doing anything wrong by law enforcement. Discrimination in any
form would be unlawful under our approach, which shows that it’s overly broad. Even so, we’ll
need to come up with a condition that eliminates hiring in order to rule Harold out of the
running. We could argue that the differences between Hiring and Au pair are discrimination
objectives. In order to embrace this theory, there’s one more condition: In order for
discrimination to be illegal, it must be based on an irrelevant attribute (such as being a white
man). Ethnic minorities and women are examples of groups that are frequently perceived as
being exposed as victims of institutional oppression. While Harold’s actions are geared against
an ethnic minority, Cassandra’s hatred is focused on white men, a group that is not exposed.
Consequently, Harold’s prejudice is legal while Cassandra’s is illegal. Although this condition
adds to the intuition, it is both problematically vague and insufficient. When a trait validates a
person’s membership in an exposed group, it’s problematically unclear (e.g. having one
grandparent of an ethnic minority). I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of it. More crucially,
it is insufficient since, even when directed at a member of an exposed group, discrimination may
look legal, though not morally essential.

The Impermissibility Account may come as a surprise to some. However, this does not
always mean that discrimination on the basis of epistemological grounds is always, or even
frequently, permitted; it is not. There are times when epistemically grounded discrimination can
be erroneous, and we need to know why this is the case. Having said that, we’d like such an
approach to take into consideration changes in discrimination’s wrongness dependent on its
targets. I feel that the Fairness and Externalities Account of discrimination’s wrongness is
superior to the Impermissibility Account, and should be favored over the latter. Fairness implies
that one is treated in accordance with one’s desert, need, and capacity4. Because they have the
same drive, need, and ability to perform the work as other applicants but are passed over for a
position because of their ethnicity, it is unfair. They are both being unjust to their respective
applications as a result. The right to be treated fairly is not unalienable, and we are permitted to
treat someone unfairly when it is required for other reasons. Disciplinary measures may include a
platoon’s punishment for an individual’s misdeeds. When there is no compelling reason to treat
others unfairly, it is unacceptable. No matter where we come from or what our background may
be, we can all agree that it is wrong when someone acts differently from us because of some
insignificant attribute of ours. I believe the fairness condition captures this basic wrongness. As
long as there aren’t any big stakes, it’s possible to make the case that treating someone unfairly is
bad. Discrimination in general, and Cassandra’s particular example in particular, appears to be at
least partly incorrect due to this circumstance, it would seem. The fact that we automatically
view prejudice against some individuals and groups as far worse than discrimination against
others, for example, why Harold’s act of discrimination looks to be substantially worse than
Cassandra’s, is left unanswered by this theory. As a result, the second condition must be
considered. In the case of a Harold applicant who is truly destitute and in in need of
employment, discrimination can be disastrous. It’s possible to make the case that Harold’s acts
are worse than Cassandra’s since the harm done to those who are discriminated against is larger
in Hiring. Even though there is a wide range of harm done to the victim of discrimination, this
does not account for the wide range of wrongdoing we see depending on the target of prejudice.
Some of Harold’s applications may be extremely affluent, in which case they would not be
subject to any form of prejudice. There appears to be something inherently wrong about race-
based discrimination, regardless of the suffering it inflicts on the targeted individual. A negative
externality may explain this, I believe. This includes, but is not limited to, the harm done to the
discriminatory target, which is referred to as a “externality.” For example, discrimination can
limit opportunities, reinforce prejudices, and exacerbate ethnic isolation for those who have the
same feature as the person being discriminated against. Other employers are less likely to hire
people of colour because of Harold’s dismissiveness toward an exposed group, which sends a
message that this group is untrustworthy. As a result, minorities are more likely to be
unemployed and more likely to be isolated, which is detrimental to their well-being.
Alternatively, the harm produced by discrimination may extend to individuals who share her
features.

It is my judgment that the Fairness and Externalities Account captures both the reasons why
we believe that discrimination is always wrong and the reasons why the wrongness may vary
depending on the object of the discrimination. Some unanticipated effects would result from
accepting the account: Starting with the fact that many people are involved in the production of
externalities like pollution, externalities frequently have a large impact on a large population. All
of us share the responsibility for not producing these externalities, and any individual
responsibility is part of it. For the Fairness and Externalities Account, this suggests that prejudice
is mostly caused by people failing to fulfil their part in the community responsibility, such as
avoiding promoting alienating beliefs about other people. Compared to, instance, white males,
the marginal contribution to negative externalities for that group completely covers any
additional wrongdoing in discriminating against an exposed group. Discrimination, like driving a
car with excessively high emissions, is seen as wronging someone, not as contributing to the
development of adverse effects for a group. As in pollution, there may be compelling reasons to
avoid collective accountability when the marginal harm created is overshadowed by the harm
caused by other activities. Whenever tourists’ safety and well-being trump the pain of those
living in alley A, this is what happens. Because both Fairness and Harmful Externalities are
unfeasible, discrimination is permitted when independent considerations outweigh the unfairness
and harmful externalities. White male applicants may be unfairly and harmfully penalized if the
likelihood of a white male applicant being good with children is significantly lower than the
likelihood of other candidates. To be fair, it appears that Harold could be allowed to discriminate
against people of certain ethnicities if his company was particularly sensitive to criminality and
the correlation between ethnicity and criminality was significant enough, which is
counterintuitive. This, I believe, explains events like the hiring of an au pair. When it comes to
white men, for example, I would suggest that Cassandra has done more harm than good by
limiting their possibilities to improve their child-rearing skills. He may be contributing to a far
more serious problem, though, which is ethnic segregation in society. This condition can explain
why Harold’s acts are bad but Cassandra’s are plausible justifiable since discriminating against
an ethnic minority creates larger adverse externalities than discriminating against white males.
Discrimination is wrong because it is unfair and has negative externalities, which can be
explained by the Fairness and Externalities Account rather than by unalienable rights. I have
shown that the Impermissibility Account is implausible. if this is the case, it means that the
wrongness of discrimination should be judged as primarily a failure of collective accountability
and that we should investigate whether there are sufficient separate grounds to make
discrimination legal in each instance.

REFFERENCES: [Link]
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