This paper develops a precise understanding of the thesis of moral encroachment, which states that the epistemic status of an opinion can depend on its moral features. In addition, I raise objections to existing accounts of moral encroachment. For instance, many accounts fail to give sufficient attention to moral encroachment on credences. Also, many accounts focus on moral features that fail to support standard analogies between pragmatic and moral encroachment. Throughout the paper, I discuss racial profiling as a case study, (...) arguing that moral encroachment can help us identify one respect in which racial profiling is epistemically problematic. (shrink)

This paper tries to explain why racial profiling involves a serious injustice and to do so in a way that avoids the problems of existing philosophical accounts. An initially plausible view maintains that racial profiling is pro tanto wrong in and of itself by violating a constraint on fair treatment that is generally violated by acts of statistical discrimination based on ascribed characteristics. However, consideration of other cases involving statistical discrimination suggests that violating a constraint of this kind may not (...) be an especially serious wrong in and of itself. To fully capture the significant wrong that occurs when racial profiling is targeted at black Americans or other similarly situated groups, it is argued that we should appeal to the idea that this basic injustice is exacerbated when it forms part of a larger pattern of similar actions that collectively realize a state of cumulative injustice. (shrink)

Philosophical reflection on racial profiling tends to take one of two forms. The first sees it as an example of ‘statistical discrimination,’ (SD), raising the question of when, if ever, probabilistic generalisations about group behaviour or characteristics can be used to judge particular individuals.(Applbaum 2014; Harcourt 2004; Hellman, 2014; Risse and Zeckhauser 2004; Risse 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2006; Lippert-Rasmussen 2007; Lippert-Rasmussen 2014) . This approach treats racial profiling as one example amongst many others of a general problem in egalitarian political philosophy, (...) occasioned by the fact that treating people as equals does not always require, or permit, us to treat them the same. The second form is concerned with how racial profiling illuminates the nature, justification, and reproduction of hierarchies of power and privilege based on skin colour and morphology. This form of reflection on racial profiling is therefore less about the justification for judging people based on the characteristics of the group to which they (appear to) belong, and more concerned with the specific ways in which the association of racialized minorities – and, in particular, black people – with crime, contributes to, and reflects, racial inequality, and oppression.(Kennedy 1998; Zack, 2015; Lever, 2005; Lever 2007). Both approaches to profiling have much to recommend them and, taken together, they form an essential component of the political philosophy of race. The statistical approach has the merits of linking racial profiling, as practice, to a body of other practices that generate and justify inequalities based on factors other than race, but it typically offers little by way of insight into the role of racial profiling itself in sustaining racial inequality and injustice. The racial construction approach, for obvious reasons, is rather better at the latter task, but its insights tend to come at the price of a broader understanding of the ways in which inequality is reproduced and justified, or of the ethical dilemmas raised by our competing claims to security. As we will see, insights from both approaches can be synthesized to clarify what, if anything, is wrong with racial profiling and what broader conclusions for equality and security follow from the study of profiling. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars of contemporary issues in African American philosophy and philosophy of race. These original essays encompass the major topics and approaches in this emerging philosophical subfield that supports demographic inclusion and diversity while at the same time strengthening the conceptual arsenal of social and political philosophy. Over the course of the volume's ten topic-based sections, ideas about race held by Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche are (...) supplemented by suppressed thought from the African diaspora, early twentieth-century African American perspectives and Native-, Asian-, and Latin-, American views. The contributors bring philosophical analysis to bear on the status of racial divisions as categories of humanity in the biological sciences, as well as within contemporary criticism and conceptual analysis. Essays present the special applications of American philosophy and continental philosophy to ideas of race as methodological alternatives to more analytic approaches. As a collection of analyses and assessments of 'race' in the real world, the volume pays trenchant and relevant attention to historical and contemporary racism and what it means to say that 'race' and racial identities are socially constructed. The essays analyze contemporary social issues including the importance of racial difference and identity in education, public health, medicine, IQ and other standardized tests, and sports. Additionally, the essays consider the societal limitations and structures provided by public policy and law. As a critical theory, the volume compares the study of race to feminism. Historical and contemporary, academic and popular, racisms pertaining to male and female gender receive special consideration throughout the volume. While this comprehensive collection may have the effect of a textbook, each of the original essays is a fresh and authentic development of important present thought. (shrink)

This paper shows that the problem of treating people as equals in a world marked by deep-seated and, often, recalcitrant inequalities has implications for the way we approach the provision of security and justice. On the one hand, it means that racial profiling will generally be unjustified even when it might promote collective interests in security, on the other, it means that we should strive to create racially mixed juries, even in cases where defendant and alleged-victim are of the same (...) race. The paper examines a recent report on race and jury trials in the United Kingdom and concludes that, despite the author's claims that all-white juries are fair, the data shows the complex ways in which racial differences are translated into unjustified and arbitrary inequalities. Hence, it concludes, racially mixed juries are desirable, and sometimes necessary for justice, though probably not sufficient. (shrink)

This article analyses the moral status of racial profiling from a consequentialist perspective and argues that, contrary to what proponents of racial profiling might assume, there is a prima facie case against racial profiling on consequentialist grounds. To do so it establishes general definitions of police practices and profiling, sketches out the costs and benefits involved in racial profiling in particular and presents three challenges. The foundation challenge suggests that the shifting of burdens onto marginalized minorities may, even when profiling (...) itself is justified, serve to prolong unjustified police practices. The valuation challenge argues that although both costs and benefits are difficult to establish, the benefits of racial profiling are afflicted with greater uncertainty than the costs, and must be comparatively discounted. Finally, the application challenge argues that using racial profiling in practice will be complicated by both cognitive and psychological biases, which together reduce the effectiveness of profiling while still incurring its costs. Jointly, it is concluded, these challenges establish a prima facie case against racial profiling, so that the real challenge consists in helping officers practice the art of the police and not see that which it is useless that they should see. (shrink)

Pre-natal-diagnosis technologies allow parents to discover whether their child is likely to suffer from serious disability. One argument for state funding of access to such technologies is that doing so would be “cost-effective”, in the sense that the expected financial costs of such a programme would be outweighed by expected “benefits”, stemming from the births of fewer children with serious disabilities. This argument is extremely controversial. This paper argues that the argument may not be as unacceptable as is often assumed. (...) In doing so, it sets out a more general framework for assessing the relevance of efficiency calculations to policy-making. The final section also investigates the relationship between the paper’s arguments and claims about parental responsibility for child-bearing and rearing, with reference to Scanlon’s work on “substantive responsibility”. (shrink)

Pre-natal-diagnosis technologies allow parents to discover whether their child is likely to suffer from serious disability. One argument for state funding of access to such technologies is that doing so would be “cost-effective”, in the sense that the expected financial costs of such a programme would be outweighed by expected “benefits”, stemming from the births of fewer children with serious disabilities. This argument is extremely controversial. This paper argues that the argument may not be as unacceptable as is often assumed. (...) In doing so, it sets out a more general framework for assessing the relevance of efficiency calculations to policy-making. The final section also investigates the relationship between the paper’s arguments and claims about parental responsibility for child-bearing and rearing, with reference to Scanlon’s work on “substantive responsibility”. (shrink)

Racial profiling appears to be morally more troubling when the racial group that is the object of the profile suffers from background injustice. This article examines two accounts of this intuition. The responsibility-based account maintains that racial profiling is morally more problematic if the higher offender rate within the profiled group is the result of social injustices for which other groups in society are responsible. The expressive harm based account maintains that racial profiling is more problematic if it makes background (...) injustice vivid and thereby causes the profiled to feel resentment. I raise problems with both accounts and suggest a third account. On the humiliation-based account, individuals who are subjected to racial profiling in a context of background injustice are placed in a situation in which they cannot prevent appearing to onlookers in a demeaning way. (shrink)

Is surveillance that is targeted towards specific individuals easier to justify than surveillance that targets broad categories of people? Untargeted surveillance is routinely accused of treating innocent people as suspects in ways that are unfair and of failing to pursue security effectively. I argue that in a wide range of cases untargeted surveillance treats people less like suspects than more targeted alternatives. I also argue that it often deters unwanted behaviour more effectively than targeted alternatives, including profiling. In practice, untargeted (...) surveillance is likely to be least costly morally and most efficient when used as a means of enforcing the rules of a specific activity or institution. Targeted alternatives are likely to be more appropriate means of law enforcement. (shrink)

Statistical discrimination is a form of discrimination that uses statistical inferences about the groups to which individuals belong as grounds for treating them differently. It remains unclear what, if anything, makes statistical discrimination wrong. My thesis argues that statistical discrimination is wrong because, and insofar as, it contributes to existing social injustice. After an introduction to the issues in section 1, section 2 clarifies the concept of statistical discrimination and its differences with non-statistical discrimination. Section 3 discusses different accounts that (...) seek to explain when and why statistical discrimination is wrong. I examine two approaches, one of which regards the wrong of statistical discrimination as part of discrimination in general, while the other conceives of the wrong as distinctive to statistical discrimination itself. I argue the former approach is better. Among different accounts within the approach, the context-based consequentialist account that explains the wrong in relation to existing social injustice is most promising. Section 4 uses racial profiling as an example to illustrate how the account can help explain this hard case of statistical discrimination, calling upon an argument developed by Benjamin Eidelson. (shrink)

The justice of racial profiling is addressed in the original position first for a society without racism, then for a society marked by racism. In the first case, the practice is argued to be just if carried out respectfully and expeditiously and likely to contribute to effective crime control. Thus it is not intrinsically racist. Addressing the second case, the idea that the harms of racial profiling are modest because expressive is critiqued. The practice is shown to carry the danger (...) of producing rights-violations by increasing the incidence of racist attitudes and practices. It is argued to be just in a society marked by racism if done under special supervision, and only to aid in apprehending dangerous criminals. (shrink)

This paper examines philosophically the nature and possible moral justification of racial profiling in terms of color profiling. Precisely what is such profiling, and can it ever be morally justified? If so, under what conditions is it morally justified?