Reverse Discrimination: Yet Un-Noticed
KIIT School of Law, India
Volume III, Issue IV, 2020
Contemporary American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson suggested this rule of thumb:
Discrimination that favors a historically underprivileged class is more likely to be acceptable than discrimination that favors a historically privileged class. The reasoning is that those who have historically been denied privilege could use the advantage even if those disadvantages are not currently being imposed on them, a little special treatment is okay.
However is it really okay? There is history behind the oppression. Agreed. Still that doesn’t make the discrimination against majority any less wrong. Affirmative action is more like a temporary compensation for the past injustice rather than promoting common good. Nevertheless what happened in the past has no bearing on what happens today. Many specific factors which have caused discrimination against minorities are the same factors which are now causing discrimination against both minorities and non-minorities. Minorities perceive this as continued discrimination while Majorities view it as reverse discrimination. The fact is that there are some forms of discrimination that are more accepted, more prevailing than others but irrespective of whether or not these forms of discrimination will cause oppression of a certain group, its still wrong. Its equally wrong. It is simply discrimination.
We are not going to justify what is right and what is wrong rather we will give an insight on reverse discrimination, that might give an helping hand to people to form their own trail of thought regarding reverse discrimination. This research paper explores the existence of reverse discrimination with a special reference to countries like United States of America and India.
Keywords: Discrimination, Reverse discrimination, Affirmative action, minority, non-minority.