Topics Ethics

Question Suppose I personally disliked people with a certain trait and, as a consequence, choose (perhaps unconsciously) not to become close friends or romantically involved with them. As long as I am still friendly and polite to them, this behaviour as such would not be ethically objectionable as it would just be my personal taste, and I am not morally obliged to be friends with anybody. However, personal tastes are often grounded in cultural norms and fashions that can be pervasive across a society. Then all these individual personal dispositions together will cause systemic discrimination and real suffering amongst the "victims". Examples of this scenario are overweight people, the disabled, or people of certain races. But if all individuals can excuse their behaviour by personal taste, who is to blame, morally?

Accepted:
May 30, 2006

Comments

I'm not so sure I agree with your initial premise. Suppose the trait in question is having red hair. It seems rather irrational of you to dislike people who have red hair, and for that reason there does seem to be something morally suspect about your attitude toward people with red hair. It seems, in particular, very unlikely indeed that your reason for disliking such people is just that they have red hair. It seems much more likely that your reason is that you think people with red hair are all whatever, and you (quite reasonably) dislike people who are whatever. It's the generalization, then, that is objectionable, because it is unfounded. And if we now consider the cases you mention—weight, physical or mental disability, or race—it seems all the more likely that it isn't just the mentioned quality that people dislike: They think people with the mentioned quality have some other sort of failing.

More importantly, however, the kind of discrimation suffered by the kinds of groups you mention doesn't obviously have anything to do with what kinds of friendships people form. It has more to do with how opportunities are systematically denied members of certain groups: Opportunities for housing, education, and employment, for example.