Discrimination

Discrimination Definition

Discrimination is the differential, and often unequal, treatment of people because of their membership of a socially defined group. In everyday speech it means simply treating someone unfairly, usually on the basis of a negative view of some of their characteristics; sociologically it denotes a social practice through which prejudicial attitudes are organized into the formal or informal exclusion of stigmatized groups. Discrimination is experienced across many spheres of life by groups identified by race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, class, age, disability, nationality, religion, or language.

Meaning and Scope

Taken literally, to discriminate is merely to tell one thing from another — to make choices or have preferences; the earliest English use referred to discrimination in the sense of cultural taste, as in Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979). In casual modern usage and in public policy, however, the word is always an abbreviation for “improper” discrimination. The nature of that impropriety can be clarified by example. In appointing a postal worker it would be proper to reject an applicant who could not read, since that plainly bears on the job. It would be improper to reject a woman, because gender is a group characteristic the applicant cannot help and which is irrelevant to the work. Rejecting a red-haired man is improper for a different, idiosyncratic reason — few people are disadvantaged by such a trait — while rejecting every third candidate is not really discrimination at all, because the reason is impersonal and everyone faces an equal chance of rejection. The typical case, then, involves an irrelevant group characteristic that the individual cannot change.

Categorical and Statistical Discrimination

A distinction is often drawn between categorical and statistical discrimination. Categorical discrimination is the unfavorable treatment of all persons assigned to a particular social category, because the discriminator believes that such treatment is required by their own social group. Statistical discrimination refers to the less favorable treatment of individuals on the belief that their membership of a group makes it probable that they possess less desirable characteristics.

Sociological Theories

The concept occurs most commonly in theories of ethnic and race relations. Early sociologists such as William G. Sumner and Franklin H. Giddings viewed discrimination as an expression of ethnocentrism — a cultural “dislike of the unlike” — an interpretation consistent with studies of stereotyping, which show how relations between groups are shaped by the socially derived beliefs each holds about the other. Most later analyses, however, concentrate on patterns of dominance and oppression, understanding discrimination as an expression of the struggle for power and privilege. There is considerable disagreement about the structural sources of these struggles. Marxists argue that capitalist societies generate racialism to assist exploitation, and a related argument treats discrimination as a product of internal colonialism. Theories of segmented or split labor markets suggest that capitalists benefit by dividing cheap, insecure labor from higher-paid, secure labor, and that it is often convenient to draw these categories from different ethnic or racial groups. Others locate discrimination in tendencies toward authoritarianism among the poorer sections of a population. In recent decades the concept has been applied widely to relations between the sexes, with parallel arguments — for instance that women are concentrated in the secondary sector of split labor markets and may form an industrial reserve army — and to discrimination against the elderly (ageism) and people with disabilities.

The Legal Framework

In the United Kingdom, the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) and the Race Relations Act (1976) address discrimination in law. Both make “direct” discrimination illegal, so that a person may not be treated less favorably than another on grounds of gender, color, ethnicity, or race. The Race Relations Act also tackles “indirect” discrimination — treatment that is formally equal between groups but discriminatory in effect. Indirect discrimination arises from applying conditions or requirements such that the proportion of a racial group who can comply is considerably smaller than the proportion outside that group who can comply, to the detriment of those who cannot comply, and which cannot be justified irrespective of race or ethnic origin. In the United States, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, though directed primarily at racial discrimination, was broadly framed to end discrimination on grounds of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. At the international level, article 55 of the United Nations Charter committed the UN to promote human rights “without distinction as to race, sex, language, and religion,” and the 1958 additions to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights extended the grounds to include color, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, and other status.

Forms and Severity

Because differential treatment is a general feature of social life — Banton (1994) notes that the family, the ethnic group, and the state are all founded on acts of discrimination, from the differing roles of husband and wife to states distinguishing citizens from non-citizens — sociologists must consider its full range. Although discrimination is often an individual act, it is also a social pattern of aggregate behavior through which structures of inequality are reproduced across generations, denying people opportunities and resources for reasons unrelated to their merits. Marger (2000) describes a “spectrum of discrimination” with three broad categories. The most severe involves mass societal aggression — the annihilation of native peoples in North America, South Africa, and Australia, the Nazi Holocaust, plantation slavery, and more recent massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia, alongside violent racism and domestic violence. A second form is the denial of access to opportunities and rewards in employment, education, housing, health, and justice. A third, lesser form comprises derogatory and abusive language, racist jokes, Nazi insignia, and unwitting stereotyping. Explaining discrimination requires complex accounts embracing micro-psychological processes, individual and group experience, competition and socialization, and structural power relations within a globalizing world.

Contemporary Approaches

Feminist scholarship on anti-discrimination law has challenged its underlying assumptions, criticizing the invisible construction of white male norms in law, public policy, and sociology as the benchmark against which discrimination is measured, and proposing instead an assessment of material position against indicators of human needs and rights (Law 1996). Poststructuralist and postmodernist theory has encouraged attention to the complex interactions between different forms of discrimination, and a critique of the “conceptual inflation” of racism warns against labeling institutional practices as racist when their exclusionary effects fall on other groups. This shift is mirrored in policy by the creation of general equality commissions in the UK and Europe and the dismantling of bodies concerned with single forms of discrimination such as race or disability. The United Nations World Conference against Racism in Durban (2001) affirmed the importance of implementing the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, identifying lack of political will, weak legislation, and poor implementation as the major obstacles, and acknowledged the key role of non-governmental organizations in campaigning for change. Future research is likely to focus on the interactions between different structures of discrimination. The concept is closely related to prejudice, sexism, and ageism.