Stereotyping as Discrimination: Why Thoughts Can Be Discriminatory

ABSTRACT

Can we treat people in a discriminatory way in virtue of how we think about them? In this essay, I argue that the answer is yes. According to the constitutive claim, stereotyping constitutes discrimination, either sometimes or always. This essay defends the constitutive claim and explores the deeper justifications for it. I also sketch the constitutive claim’s larger ethical significance. One upshot is that we can wrongfully discriminate against (or in favor of) others in thought, even if we keep our views of others to ourselves. Second, if stereotyping is a form of discrimination, theories of wrongful discrimination bear on the ethical questions associated with stereotyping, including this one: under what conditions is it wrong to stereotype? In closing, I introduce an intriguing possibility, namely, that stereotyping is wrong if and when it constitutes wrongful discrimination.

KEYWORDS:

• Stereotyping
• Discrimination
• Testimonial Injustice
• Ethics of Belief
• Moral Psychology

Acknowledgments

This essay was made possible by support from the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Scholars, IASH at the University of Edinburgh, and the College of Humanities at the University of Utah. I first drafted this essay while serving as the Philip L. Quinn fellow at the NHC in 2017 and revised the essay throughout the 2019-2020 academic year while on fellowships sponsored by the NEH and ACLS. I worked for part of 2020 at IASH at the University of Edinburgh before COVID forced a hasty departure. The University of Utah generously supported these leaves. I have also benefitted from a supportive community of fellow philosophers. I owe special thanks to individuals who gave me crucial feedback, including Joshua Rivkin, Alex Madva, Susanne Sreedhar, Sally Haslanger, Jean Thomas, Aness Webster, Sabine Tsuruda, Ben Eidelson, Larry Blum, Carlos Santana, Elijah Milgram, Alicia Patterson, Saray Ayala-López, Elliot Paul, Jonna Vance, Asia Ferrin, Gabby Johnson, Ásta, Mari Mikkola, Esa Diaz-León, Deborah Hellman, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, and two anonymous reviewers at Social Epistemology. This paper has also been presented a variety of venues, including the MAP Philosophy Conference at Stanford (2017), the University of Oxford (2018), the University of Edinburgh (2018), WOGAP Boston at MIT (2019), Bay Area Feminist Philosophy Workshop at UCSF (2019), Legal Theory Workshop at the University of Surrey (2019), British Society for Ethical Theory Conference at the University of Glasgow (2019), the 44^th Annual Midwest Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Minnesota-Morris (2019), the Moral Psychology Research Group at the University of Utah (2019), Queens University (2019), and the LOGOS group extra talk series at the University of Barcelona (2020). Audiences at these venues provided me with valuable feedback and objections, for which I am very grateful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The claim I defend here is best understood in terms of sufficiency. Stereotyping is sufficient for discrimination, either sometimes or always. The discussion that follows thus sidelines the claim that stereotyping is necessary and sufficient for discrimination. Discrimination can happen even when people are not stereotyping, so not all discrimination involves stereotyping.

2. For a survey of how psychologists define stereotyping, see (Beeghly 2015). I defend a ‘descriptive,’ i.e, non-moralized view of stereotyping that stays neutral on controversial questions about cognitive architecture. For an even more schematic, functionalist account of stereotyping, see (Johnson 2020). According to Johnson, stereotyping is biased thought that takes the form of kind-based induction. Both of us argue that people can be stereotyped on the basis of generics, universal generalizations, or statistical information.

3. For defense of the claim that stereotype-driven biases are heterogeneous in nature, see (Holroyd and Sweetman 2016). The same kind of heterogeneity is found in explicit biases. For claim that stereotypes exist as mental imagery, see (Nanay Forthcoming).

4. For arguments that entail stereotyping can promote knowledge, see (Kahneman 2011; Begby 2013, 2021; Antony 2016).

5. For a definition of ‘social salience,’ see (Lippert-Rasmussen 2014, 30): “A group is socially salient if perceived membership of it is important to the structure of social interactions across a wide range of social contexts.” It should go without saying that social groups can be intersectional in nature (Crenshaw 1989; Garry 2011; Taylor 2017).

6. For exploration of this metaphor and its prominence, see (Beeghly 2020).

7. For contemporary examples, see (Medina 2013).

8. For a telling example, see (Hauser 2018).

9. For more on the notion of orientation, see (Ahmed 2006).

10. In some cases, employers may not even know that they have a discriminatory policy (e.g., a racially motivated double standard for hiring or firing), or have treated employees in a discriminatory way. For examples from case law, see (Krieger 1995).

11. The term ‘putting into effect’ has multiple meanings. ‘To put into effect’ can be to put something into practice via action or speech. For more on how norms can be enacted in speech, see (McGowan 2019; Berstein unpublished manuscript). My point here is that speech and action are not necessary for enacting norms. Norms and rules can be ‘put into effect’ in thought alone. A person might apply a social rule or cultural norm to someone without saying so, for example. In doing so, they activate the norm and apply it to someone, hence ‘putting it into effect.’

12. This kind of uncertainty is characteristic of discriminatory treatment in a wide range of cases, especially those involving ‘microaggressions.’ For examples, see (Rankine 2014; Rini 2020, esp 39–70).

13. For skepticism regarding this point, see (Leslie 2015).

14. One finds a version of this view in (Lindemann 2014). Discussing Carl Elliot’s interpretation of Wittgenstein, Lindemann suggests that to treat someone as a person is a matter of ‘taking up a certain attitude or stance towards her’ (12). Lindemann’s citation here suggests that taking up an attitude towards someone entails treating them in a certain way. For a related view, see (Anderson 1999).

15. Kantian discussions of self-respect emphasize something similar, namely, that treating oneself ‘as an end’ requires properly appreciating your own intrinsic value. See (Stark 1997, 69–70).

16. I keep the terminology general to convey the big-picture idea of the theory; see the citation for the details.

17. Arneson argues that ‘intrinsically wrongful discrimination occurs when an agent treats a person identified as being of a certain type differently than she otherwise would have done because of unwarranted animus or prejudice against persons of that type’ (779). He claims that he is offering a deontological account of wrongful discrimination that articulates an ‘if and only if’ claim as stated above. In other work, he endorses a harm-focused theory of wrongful discrimination. See (Arneson 2017).

18. In her book, Hellman argues that discrimination is wrong if and only if it is demeaning. In her later work on indirect discrimination, she modifies her theory to the disjunctive claim stated above.

19. The same observation applies to theorists working on the ethics of belief. See (Basu 2018; Begby 2018). The constitutive claim licenses such theorists to deploy research on wrongful discrimination to explain why beliefs can be ethically bad or wrong.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Council of Learned Societies [Faculty Fellowship 2019]; National Endowment for the Humanities [FEL-262024-10]; National Humanities Center [Philip L. Quinn Fellowship].

Notes on contributors

Erin Beeghly

Erin Beeghly is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. Her research analyzes stereotyping, discrimination, and group oppression, and their intersections with ethics and epistemology. She and Alex Madva are co-editors of the first philosophical introduction to implicit bias: An Introduction to Implicit Bias: Knowledge, Justice, and the Social Mind (Routledge 2020). Beeghly’s book manuscript What’s Wrong with Stereotyping? is currently under contract with Oxford University Press.