The Disposition to Discriminate: A Relational Egalitarian Approach to the Wrongness of Discrimination

Diana Popescu

The ALEF research group (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) announces an online talk by Diana Popescu (Universit of Edinburgh) entitled ""The Disposition to Discriminate: A Relational Egalitarian Approach to the Wrongness of Discrimination". The talk is part of the group's regular seminar and takes place on Friday, JULY 1, 18.00 EEST. Please write to [email protected] or check our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ALEF-100692348488914) if you want to participate. For more information about ALEF, as well as the schedule for the seminar in the 2021-2022 spring semester, please visit https://sites.google.com/view/alefgroupcluj.

Here is the abstract of the talk:

Theories of discrimination often claim that what differentiates genuine discrimination from other forms of differential treatment is the widespread and habitual nature of discrimination. Unlike differential disadvantageous treatment against someone because they have green eyes, discriminating against them because they have dark skin is, unfortunately, a more regular occurrence, which those appearing to be members of ethnic or racial minorities based on the colour of their skin are sadly subjected to frequently and across domains. My paper aims to establish, first, what it means to say genuine discrimination is characterised by regularities in behaviour, and, second, to establish what follows from taking such regularities as defining for discrimination for the question of what makes discrimination morally wrong. In pursuing the first aim I rely on the notion of dispositional properties from the philosophy of science and propose viewing the grounds of discrimination as dispositional properties to capture the regularity of discriminatory behaviour. Building on the significance of the dispositions shared by relevant members of society, I then argue violations of relational equality are a distinct wrong-making feature of cases of (genuine) discrimination.