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The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series presents

Erin Beeghly
The University of Utah

Stereotyping and Discrimination: Their Relationship and Why It Matters

Thursday, November 14, 2019

4:00 pm

Watson Hall, Room 517

To stereotype someone is to judge that person by real or perceived group membership. When and why is stereotyping wrong? In this chapter, I introduce a tool that could make this question easier to answer: the constitutive claim. According to the constitutive claim, stereotyping constitutes a form of discriminatory treatment. This non-moralized claim about the nature of stereotyping has the potential to yield rich normative resources. Notably, it reveals that theorists looking to understand why and when stereotyping is wrong ought to study theories of wrongful discrimination. If stereotyping constitutes a form of discriminatory treatment, it could be that stereotyping is wrong for the same reasons and under the same conditions that discriminatory treatment in general is wrong. I end by introducing two hypotheses, which require further testing. One hypothesis—normative symmetry—says that the wrongs of stereotyping and discrimination are identical. A second hypothesis—called normative asymmetry—says that wrongful stereotyping has a distinctive normative profile.

EVERYONE WELCOME 

Accessibility requirements? sheena.wilkinson@queensu.ca