Episode 129: Nethanel Lipshitz discusses discrimination

Elucidations

This month, Ben Andrew and I are joined by Nethanel Lipshitz (Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University) to talk about discrimination.

If someone treats me unequally--that is, if they give other people a relative advantage but not me--am I the victim of discrimination? Our guest says yes. That is enough for me to count as having been discriminated against, and that is enough for it to be morally wrong.

All fine and dandy. But then what's the big deal? The big deal is that the standard view in political philosophy tells us that discrimination requires more. If a shopkeeper kicks me out of their store merely because they don't like my hat, then according to the definition, I haven't been discriminated against. Why? Because in order for this behavior to count as discrimination, I have to be treated unequally based on my membership in a salient social group. It's maybe a bit tricky to define exactly what a 'salient social group' is, but some familiar examples might include e.g. LGBTQ people, people with a disability, or black people. 'People with a funny looking hat' aren't a salient social group--that's just a random category that popped up in this moment. So although I may have been treated badly, I haven't been discriminated against.

Nethanel Lipshitz doesn't see a good reason for including 'you have to be a member of a salient social group' in the definition of discrimination. Note that this is compatible with saying that being discriminated against qua member of a particular social group is worse than being discriminated against as an individual, maybe as part of a one-off. The idea is just that it still counts as discrimination, and that it's still bad, even if it isn't as bad. Lipshitz' main reason for thinking this is that the 'I got discriminated against because of my hat' situation and the 'I got discriminated against because I'm gay' have a key factor in common: in both situations, the victim is being singled out as someone not worthy of the same moral respect/consideration as everyone else.

It's a fascinating discussion, and I hope you enjoy it. I think Nethanel Lipshitz provides lots of good reasons to rethink some of our contemporary assumptions about what discrimination is and why it's bad.

Matt Teichman

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