Episode 129: Nethanel Lipshitz discusses discrimination
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What is the basic definition of discrimination and why does it matter?
Hi everyone, welcome to Elucidations. I'm Chloe Jiao, second year philosophy and mathematics major at the University of Chicago. In today's episode, we invited Netanel Lipschitz, a law and philosophy fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss discrimination. In our daily life, discrimination is not rare to see. There are countless cases where specific social groups experience relative disadvantage because of their social identity. Examples range from common wage discrimination based on gender to more severe cases of segregation in history. Discrimination is evident when the salent social group experienced relative disadvantage, but consider the case of one man being paid less for doing similar amount of work as others just because his family name starts with a T or his hair is red.
Not being treated differently because he's part of any Salient social group Does he still experience discrimination? Does discrimination happen whenever some act or policy violates the basic norm equality, or does it only count as discrimination when there is commonality behind the reasoning? Netanel Lipchis will discuss what he thinks can be characterized as discrimination. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations. I'm Matt Teigman.
And I am Ben Andrew.
Netanel Ipschitz is Law and Philosophy Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, and he's here to discuss discrimination. Nathan Ellipschitz, welcome. Thank you.
Nice being here. So, Nath L. This is a very cliched way to start this kind of interview, but you're here to talk about discrimination. So what is discrimination? Tell us what it is. Thank you, Van.
Uh this is uh actually uh more complicated question, of course, than we might first think, like all big concepts in political philosophy. There are all kinds of way of approaching this topic. Um one way I find especially helpful and maybe we can use that as our entry point to this conversation, I can read out loud the definition given in the San Francisclopedia of Philosophy to discrimination. And then we can maybe work around that definition and I'll tell you where I my definition of discrimination diverges from that. So according to the to the San Francisco Pedro Philosophy, discrimination can be defined as following. It says we can say that discrimination consists of acts, practices, or policies that impose a relative disadvantage on persons based on their membership in a salient
different social groups.
Blah baby blah baddy blah.
So let's work about l let's see what what this definition consists of. So
wait, just to be clear, can we say what is a relative disadvantage? Yeah.
Right, right. So let's work through the different components of this uh definition. So first of all, uh discrimination consists of acts, practices and policies. So usually we talk about discrimination to assess acts and policies rather than states of affairs. Although this gets complicated when we try to talk about what's called sometimes indirect discrimination or structural discrimination. But the basic uh concept of discrimination is a way of assessing acts and policies. And so
like what would be an example of a discriminatory act? Like I charge you more for cigarettes than I charge somebody else for cigarettes or something like that? Aaron
Ross Powell Could be, but we'll see in a second what else is required for that ac act to count as discrimination. So just in virtue of the fact that you do that, most philosophers uh would say that we cannot yet infer that you've discriminated against me. Aaron Powell
Okay. But that is the kind of thing that gets to be discrimination in principle, maybe.
Could be. Could be. Giving preference. In hiring is an example that people like to give, giving preference in acceptance to schools. Those are the typical examples that we sometimes get in the literature. So that
that's what we mean by like act or policy.
Right. Um of course there are more dramatic examples from history, segregation. And so on. Um we can get to those. So we said that discrimination is a way of assessing acts or policies or practices.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the basic definition of discrimination and why does it matter?
0:00–9:30
2
How does the standard political‑philosophy definition link discrimination to salient social groups?
9:30–21:00
3
Why does Nethanel argue that membership in a salient social group isn’t necessary for wrongful discrimination?
21:00–29:05
4
What do the hat‑and‑cigarette examples reveal about relative disadvantage?
29:05–37:09
5
How do cases like asexual people or a personal religion challenge the group‑based view?
37:09–48:30
6
What is the ‘anti‑caste’ principle and how does it shape the orthodox account of discrimination?
48:30–50:53
Speakers
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