Discrimination was once a compliment meaning good taste
Calling someone a person of discrimination used to praise their refined judgement. The word, from a Latin root meaning to distinguish, entered English in the early 17th century, and only after the American Civil War did it settle into its modern sense of unjust treatment by race, later widened to any disfavoured group.
Today discrimination means drawing unjustified distinctions between people because of a group they belong to, or are thought to belong to, such as race, gender, religion, age, height or disability, usually denying them rights or opportunities others enjoy. Moral philosophers stress that it is comparative. Someone can be discriminated against without being harmed outright: a donor who gives orphans of one race less out of prejudice still discriminates, even though the recipients gain something. Remedies like quotas exist in some places, and critics sometimes attack them as reverse discrimination.
Age bias may be the most common kind people report. In a University of Kent survey, 29 per cent of respondents said they had experienced it, more than reported gender or racial discrimination, leading psychologist Dominic Abrams to call ageism the most pervasive prejudice in the UK. In the United States, Joanna Lahey found firms were more than 40 per cent likelier to interview a young applicant than an older one. Researchers at Ghent University found Belgian employers penalised older candidates only when their extra years showed inactivity or irrelevant jobs.
Names matter too. Recruiters spend an average of about six seconds on a first pass through a résumé, and the name is among the handful of things they focus on. France bans viewing names during initial shortlisting, and Britain, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands have tried name-blind screening, though some apparent bias may reflect how common a name is. Caste discrimination affects an estimated 250 million people, mainly in parts of Asia and Africa; India counted 200 million Dalits as of 2011.
Ableism works partly through design, as buildings, services and classrooms built for a standard user shut others out. Research links repeated small slights, known as microaggressions, to distress and a weaker sense of belonging among students. Laws push back: the Americans with Disabilities Act requires equal access to buildings and services, and Britain's Equality Act 2010 plays a similar role.
Source: Discrimination
