On moral discrimination

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asked 9 years ago

Hi Rabbi Michi, I wanted to ask what you think about a short article I wrote:

Moral discrimination
I entered into a discussion last week regarding a claim of a particular discrimination, and there I argued, to my surprise, that this concept does not exist. That is, that there is no category of immoral actions called discrimination. There are indeed cases in which discrimination is immoral, but discrimination is only the manner in which the action is done, and not the reason for moral condemnation.
I will try to show this by dividing discrimination into three cases:
The discriminator has no reason or purpose to discriminate – in this case, the action he is taking may be considered strange, and we should indeed act against pointless actions that may cause harm, but that is certainly not what we mean when we accuse him of discrimination. Immoral discrimination does not mean an action that is done randomly and arbitrarily and may cause harm. There is another category for such actions, although I believe they are too rare to be given one.
A discriminator has a reason or motive for discriminating, but they are not related to dividing into groups – for example, an official who is responsible for a certain scholarship, and decides to distribute it only to poor blacks because that way he can disguise giving the money to his family and friends. Here too, I believe that we do not call this action discrimination. In this case, the category is embezzlement of public funds, the discrimination is only the manner in which it is done, but not the cause of moral condemnation.
He has a reason or motive related to the division into groups – in such a case, if the reason or motive is justified, then there is no immoral action at all. Therefore, we must say that the person has a reason or motive, but he is wrong. But if this is the case, the action belongs to another category of immoral actions, of wrongdoing following a mistake, which also includes the conviction of a person by a judge who erred in his judgment, for example. This is not the category we are referring to when we talk about discrimination.
I will take the example of the slavery of blacks in the US, and show that the manner of the immoral action is discrimination, but the action itself belongs to a different category. The white man believed that the African man was inferior, and therefore deprived of rights, and could be treated as the white man wished. This belief is no different from the belief of the people of Sodom, who believed that charity to the poor was a sin, and therefore killed a woman who did so. It is also no different from the belief of the Aztec pagans who sacrificed people to their gods. The difference is only in content; in each case, the basis of the immoral action was a false belief. The reason slavery ceased is the same reason the Aztecs stopped sacrificing people to their gods. Humanity simply abandoned these beliefs.
So where did the social norm that there is a category of immoral actions called discrimination really come from, and that we can condemn certain actions as discriminatory? It seems to me that this stems from a postmodern assumption that dividing people into groups is wrong in the first place, and that we should always judge each person on their own merits, regardless of religion, race, or gender. This is also the meaning of the English expression prejudice , which translates as “prejudice.” pre , meaning before, prior, and judice , from the word “judgment.” I judge a person before the time is truly right for it. The postmodern assumption is that any division of people into groups is necessarily premature judgment, and therefore the act of discrimination is a name for itself. I believe that there is indeed a category of immoral actions of the type “prejudice,” but it is not related to discrimination. Just as there may be prejudices (i.e. premature judgment) about a person, so there may be prejudices about a group. And just as I judge a person in the present based on his actions in the past, and rightly fear that he will do so in the future (i.e. fair judgment, not premature), so I judge a person based on the actions of his people, and rightly fear that he will behave in a similar way. Due to the postmodern assumption that division into groups is fundamentally wrong, the injustices done to certain groups in human history have been interpreted as racism, religious intolerance, and chauvinism. Or, collectively, discrimination.

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מיכי Staff answered 9 years ago

There is something to this argument, but it seems to me that discrimination is usually a situation in which a person reaches a mistake based on problematic considerations. For example, when a person determines that a black person is inferior and therefore deprived of rights, this is usually not an innocent mistake. There are problematic presuppositions behind it, and the lawsuit against you is because of them. Beyond that, even if it is an innocent mistake, the fact that you do not deal with them and do not bother to check whether you have a mistake is discrimination itself. You simply do not care about a certain population. Alternatively, when you act in a discriminatory manner because you hate or despise a certain group (even if the hatred/disdain is justified but your behavior does not require them), this is discrimination. You are right that there is inflation in the use of the term discrimination and racism because of postmodernism. But I still think there is content in it. ——————– Asks: I thought about it and indeed the argument was not accurate at all. I managed to formulate something much more accurate in my opinion: There are various categories of immoral acts in the law and Torah. For example, murder falls under the law of persons, while robbery falls under the law of property. We understand very well that there is a fundamental difference between murder and robbery, and it is appropriate not to include both in a general category of unjustified acts. Discrimination is defined on Wikipedia as “unjustified distinction.” That is, if murder is an unjustified taking of life, and what distinguishes it from other immoral acts is the taking of life, what distinguishes discrimination is the very distinction. And the question arises, why? The importance of the value of life or the value of property ownership is clear to us, enough so that an action that acts against them would be worthy of a name, but why is it precisely the distinction in acts that are defined as discriminatory, such as racism, that justifies the separation of these acts into a category of their own? I believe that behind this separation lies an assumption that unjustified discrimination is an action that violates the value of equality. The examples that appear on Wikipedia are, for example, racism and giving favors to close associates. The interpretive assumption inherent in the concept of “discrimination” assumes that the value that is violated by racism is equality between people, and so is the case with giving favors to close associates. In my opinion, equality is not a value. It is a default course of action. When I have no reason or purpose to differentiate between people on a particular issue, the default is to treat everyone equally. Equality is not a value in itself. A practical implication of this is that when I do have a reason to treat differently, I can apply it without fear, since it does not conflict with any value. The default disappears when there is another choice. I believe that the cultural phenomenon of treating equality as a value is a postmodern tendency to transform the defaults caused by postmodern emptiness into a positive value with independent content. There is a human tendency to fill a value vacuum with values, even if it is less rational. Does racism still have a name for itself? I believe it does, but it is not related to equality and its violation. I believe that racism is “the unjustified taking of the title of human from a human being.” The main crime of racism is the claim that blacks are closer to animals, or Jews to parasites, and therefore human rights are denied to them. Admittedly, “discriminating” is intrinsically intertwined with racism. It’s hard for me to think of an example of denying the title of human being from a human being, without somehow claiming that he belongs to another species, i.e., discrimination. But discrimination is only the manner in which the unjustified act is done, and does not justify a separate category for racism, but rather, as I argued, the denial of the title of human being from someone who deserves it. Compared to racism, I don’t believe that giving favors to those close to you is a name for itself. It’s no different from theft, or embezzlement if you want to use the modern sense. “Discrimination” against the disabled in certain places also falls into the category of lack of kindness and help for the weak. This has nothing to do with racism, and the similarity between them is only superficial. It’s like claiming that demanding payment is discrimination against the poor (socialism?). But as mentioned, the concept of discrimination unites all these different concepts together under the assumption that in all of them the value that is violated is the value of equality, which was invented by postmodernism. ———————- Rabbi: 1. I think there is definitely value in equality. It’s not just a default. 2. And yet, even in my opinion, when you have reason to treat differently, there really is no dilemma as you wrote. The reason is that here there is no equality and therefore no equal treatment is required (here the value of equality does not exist at all). It is “permitted” and not “rejected.” 3. Beyond that, even if there is no value in equality, there may be a negative value in inequality. Take as an example the value of owning money. There is no (ethical) value in owning money, but it is ethically forbidden to steal or damage the property of others. Incidentally, this is the mistake of those who see freedom as a value, and this is probably because its (unjustified) denial is a prohibition. In my opinion, there is no value in freedom, because freedom is an asset, like money, and not a value. And yet its denial is a negative value (the correct value is liberty, but I have elaborated on this elsewhere). 4. I don’t think you’ll always be able to map unequal treatment to theft or some other value. Just an example that I thought of now: When you entrust a public position to an Ashkenazi without checking whether he is more suitable, it’s not necessarily theft. In practice, he may actually be suitable and there is still discrimination here.

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