Discrimination

Must Behavior Be Unjustified?

As Michael Banton (1994) notes, “One analytical tradition excludes considerations of immorality and illegality altogether for the sake of conceptual clarity and to avoid contradicting opinions about their justification” (p. 1). But politicians argue that the definition should serve the purpose of identifying a social problem and thus restrict the term to unjustified behavior.

Are There Legitimate Exceptions?

Should references to legitimate exceptions be included? Many scientific and political definitions of discrimination contain conditions under which differential treatment is deemed undue versus those under which it is deemed admissible. Discrimination here relates only to unequal treatment that is based on criteria lacking objective or rational justification. Aaron Antonovsky (1960), for example, speaks of “effective injurious treatment of persons on grounds rationally irrelevant to the situation” (p. 81). The weakness of this definition lies in its assumption that rationality in the Weberian sense can define uniform collective goals that should override the legitimacy of egotistic, individual claims that run counter to them. Conflicts over protectionist discrimination against foreign companies illustrate that competitors, consumers, state economic planners, environmentalists, and Third World and workers' rights activists may have conflicting particular interests precluding a single universal rationality. What can be said is that discrimination is seen to exist when reasons for actions are perceived as illegitimate by relevant groups. But concepts of legitimacy vary between and within societies and change over time. Barring women from the ballot was long considered to be justified, and even in Western democracies, full formal economic rights for women were established only in the course of the 20th century. In feudal societies, it was generally accepted that access to positions of leadership was made difficult for, or denied to, persons of lowly origin, regardless of their ability or merit. Only in the modern age did the bourgeois classes question the nobility's inherited privileges. Since modern societies consider themselves universalistic in the sense that only merit shall determine social positions, a convergence of public opinion has occurred to exclude ascriptive (hereditary, unchosen, and unchangeable) criteria in favor of achievement only.

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