330. How to discriminate

Discrimination happens all the time. Some people get better jobs than others, more reward for the same job, more civil rights, and rewards while not doing anything for it. Discrimination has a bad name, but in some cases it is defensible, even laudable. What is what here?

When defensible it is better called distinction. One gets more according to clear criteria, such as accomplishment, as in winning a prize, or in selection based on talent. How about looks? Why not, if there is selection according to height or strength?

Looks and talent are based on luck, a draw in the lotteries of genes and location of birth. Accomplishment also requires courage, commitment, endurance, sacrifice, resilience, and absorbing pain. Mere looks do not.  

When, then, does distinction switch into discrimination? Looks may not require effort but are at least individual. Discrimination arises, I think, when distinction is based on mere membership of a group, according to race, religion, ideology, gender, or age, regardless of individual characteristics or actions.

Is that always to be condemned? What about membership of the Ku Klux Klan, a fascist or a terrorist group? Usually, discrimination is considered all right when politically correct, in a certain community. Its moral acceptability depends on what form it takes. It is wrong when resulting in unequal civil rights, such as refusing fascists the rights to a fair trial, or freedom of expression short of inciting violence or hatred. It is not necessarily wrong if n those rights are maintained and, again, people are treated as individuals, not merely as members of a group.

Is profiling all right then, according to race, for example, where group membership is not used by itself, for judgement, let alone conviction, but only as a trigger for attention, based on crime statistics, say, for further investigation of individual conduct,?

In this blog I have argued for virtues far beyond economic merits of efficiency or utility, but efficiency is still one of many considerations. There is an argument of efficiency here: given the statistics and scarce resources of control, it is efficient to focus on certain groups. But is that the practice? What if people were profiled as bankers, say, for further investigation of ethical conduct, given the experience of unethical banking? Or are statistics used selectively as an excuse for unethical, discriminatory profiling?