The Making of a Discriminatory Ism

North Haugh
University of St Andrews
St Andrews KY16 9SX
Fife, Scotland
United Kingdom

Tel: +44(0)1334 46 28 24
E-mail: [email protected]

1
 Abstract

Purpose: The millennia long struggles of various oppressed groups

have over time illuminated widespread social injustices, organically

leading to the recognition of yet further injustices captured by the

umbrella of discriminatory isms, such as racism, sexism, classism,

ableism, anti-Semitism, ageism, heterosexism, and many others. In

recent years, the debate has become increasingly fierce, polarized, and

even physically violent.

Approach: One of the premises of the present work is that in

part, the aforementioned unconstructive behaviours are a result of

the different understandings of what constitutes an ism and the lack

of a thoughtful consideration of this issue in the mainstream social

debate as much as in the academic literature.

Findings: I present evidence for this, and critique the dominant

lines of thought in this realm showing them all to fall short of both

the fundamental philosophical as well practical desiderata in how isms

ought to be understood.

Originality: I propose an alternative which does not suffer from the

same weakness: one based on the denial of equivalence of sentience.

I show how the adoption of this understanding leads to constructive

ways of addressing isms effected injustice.

Keywords: social groups, sexual discrimination, sex and gender issues,

racial discrimination, psychology, individual perception.

2
1 Introduction

Recent decades have seen an unprecedented increase of awareness of and

interest in the concepts of equality and discrimination, reflecting and cor-
roborating Singer’s idea of ‘expanding circles’ of compassion (Singer, 1985).
This trend is observed both in the academic published literature (Ocampo
et al., 2003), as well as in everyday life and popular culture (De Choudhury
et al., 2016). Indeed, hardly a day passes (if any does) without a well-known
person of influence, be it a politician1 , a politician2 , a politician3 , a celebrity,
an academic4 , or an entire institution (Hardeman et al., 2018) being accused
of one discriminative (I use this qualifier to highlight that in the present ar-
ticle I am not talking about artistic movements, say) ism or another: sexism,
antisemitism, ageism, racism, etc. While there is a general consensus that
isms are undesirable — indeed, this is inherent in the nature of the specific
concepts under the ism umbrella (noting that under the notion of isms I sub-
sume their synonyms, such as homophobia as a synonym for heterosexism,
as well as ‘phobias’ without corresponding ism equivalents, such as Russo-
phobia) — such accusations nevertheless almost invariably end up polarizing
the society as there is disagreement whether a specific statement does imply
1
“Most Americans think Trump’s tweets are racist and un-American, poll shows”, The
Independent, 18 Jul 2019
2
“Boris Johnson called a ’racist’ as his past remarks are read out in Commons”, Sky
News, 21 June 2019
3
“Anti-Semitism: May and Corbyn clash over anti-racism records”, BBC News, 17 Jul
2019
4
“Cambridge academic Noah Carl sacked over ‘racist’ study”, The Times, 1 May 2019

3
an ism or not, or indeed whether a particular ism is a meaningful one at all.
In part this disagreement is a consequence of the oft-made implicit assump-
tion that the aforementioned concepts are self-explanatory, and that hence
there has been little in terms of nuanced analysis or what constitutes an ism;
what are the sufficient and what the necessary conditions? In the present
work I challenge the current conceptions and propose a different view which
is philosophically principled and better grounded, and which could facilitate
a more dispassionate and productive debate.

2 Contemporary philosophical stances regard-

ing isms

Considering that the focus of the present article is on the very meaning of
the notion of isms, right at the start I would like to preface my argument
by explaining what I am and what I am not trying to achieve herein. In
particular, I am not arguing that the definition I put forward is the correct
one and that those I challenge are in some sense wrong. Indeed, this would
be a meaningless claim, a contradictio in adjecto, as the central question is
that of defining a notion, and a definition in this context cannot be ‘wrong’;
it is what we agree it to be. Inverting our labels for what we usually refer to
as ‘apples’ and ‘oranges’ would not result in any conflict per se. Rather, it
would be a rather pointless exercise, for there would be no new insight or the
potential of one, and nothing substantial would change. Hence, the question

4
at the crux of the debate is what definition would be instrumentally most
useful rather than ‘correct’.
Defining isms could be reasonably expected to be a straightforward task
considering the swathe of research on sexism, ageism, ableism, racism, etc.,
particularly in recent years (see Figure 1). Yet, this seemingly simple task
itself already presents a problem: much research on various isms does not
even touch upon this issue, others are satisfied with a rather superficial treat-
ment thereof, whereas the rest reveals a remarkable degree of diversity of how
isms are understood (Calder-Dawe and Gavey, 2016; Doane, 2006; Williams,
1985). Moreover, the few authors that do pursue the challenge of under-
standing more precisely what constitutes an ism, do so in an unnecessary
restrictive way by focusing on specific isms, such as Schmid (1996) whose at-
tention is purely on racism. By failing to consider the broader principles that
underlie all isms, analyses of this kind miss on observing certain important
points which I highlight in the present article, and are often drawn towards
superficially attractive but ultimately confounding factors.

2.1 Does a lack of knowledge make an ism?

Though his attention is specifically on racism, Schmid’s categorization of dif-

ferent definitions thereof (Schmid, 1996), which, mutatis mutandis, can be
readily extended to apply to all isms, provides a good framework for my crit-
icisms of the existing lines of thought. Schmid (1996) firstly recognizes what
he terms ‘behavioural’ definitions. Consider the following representative and

5
 (a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 1: Number of publications retrieved by PubMed using search terms

(a) ‘racism’, (b) ‘sexism’, (c) ‘ageism’, and (d) ‘ableism’.

6
widely adopted one, in this case referring to sexism specifically:

“Sexism is judging people by their sex when sex doesn’t matter.”,

usually attributed to Caroline Bird who used it in her famous 1968 speech (Bird,
1968), though the definition can be traced further back (Shapiro, 1985)
(equivalent definitions of other isms are also ubiquitous, e.g. of racism (Camp-
bell, 2012) or ageism (Okun and Ayalon, 2022)). It can be expressed in more
general terms as:

“<ATTRIBUTE>ism is judging people by their <ATTRIBUTE>

when <ATTRIBUTE> doesn’t matter.”

where <ATTRIBUTE> is an amoral attribute that can be associated with

a person (sex, age, race, ethnicity, etc.). Bird’s definition is in its essence
identical to another frequently encountered formulation attributed to Singer
(1974) and which can be paraphrased as “the failure to give equal consider-
ation, based on the fact of [OA: e.g.] race.”
The popularity of the behavioural definition witnesses its broad appeal (Frye,
1983; Doane, 2006; Branco et al., 2019; Arandjelović, 2023a) and indeed, I
concede that at first sight it is appealing. However, it does not take much to
see that it suffers from many weaknesses. Schmid criticises it on two grounds.
The first of these is that this kind of “prejudice” may have “an empirical ba-
sis”, i.e. one “need not believe that this [OA: group difference] is due to their
race alone... But so far as ... experience is concerned, race is a valid indica-
tor, and he will continue to operate on the basis of this prejudice, until his

7
experience proves different.” (again, I am asking the reader to abstract the
argument from racism Scmidt focuses on, to isms in general). Note right at
the outset that Schmid is inconsistent: he terms the differential treatment of
two groups as “prejudicial” despite recognizing its empirical basis which is by
its very nature observation and data driven and thus inherently not prejudi-
cial. This is not to say that an empirical observation of this kind is necessarily
correct, far from it. Human handling of statistical information at the crux of
inductive inference is notoriously flawed: it is affected by confounds (Grimes
and Schulz, 2002), it is insufficiently observant of sample sizes (McShane
et al., 2013), it is uncontrolled in terms of sampling (Silverman, 1992), etc.
But apart from his a priori rejection of what could empirically prove to be a
correct basis for discrimination (n.b. herein I use the term in a value neutral
fashion), I am in agreement with Schmid that what the behaviour definition
points to ought not be called racism. To strengthen this argument and set
up ground for subsequent analysis, I will shortly offer an alternative, more
rigorous argument which does not suffer from the flaws I just noted.
Schmid’s second objection to the behavioural definition is that this kind
of “prejudice” may be “based on a feature of human nature which may run
so deep, and be so universal, that to call it ‘racist’ would be to weaken the
moral weight of the word”. This objection I reject strongly. Whether a
particular trait which we can reflect on cognitively and interpret within a
moral framework, is deeply ingrained and universal or not is entirely beside
the point in this context (which is not to say that how we treat the asso-

8
ciated behaviours should not take the potentially neurophysiological innate
predispositions into account; if this is the case and if so how our treatment
of individuals exhibiting an ism may be affected is outside the scope of the
present consideration) (Arandjelović, 2022). Recognizing the possibly deeply
ingrained tendencies that we may have and which we may judge as morally
unacceptable upon such reflection and as our ethical notions evolve, develop,
and change as a consequence, is crucial in combating them. The awareness
of such potential moral stumbling blocks allows us to override them, if not
instinctively, then consciously, and yes, behaviourally. Indeed, Schmidt im-
plicitly recognizes this weakness of his objection when he fails to level the
same criticism against another group of definitions of (rac)ism, namely the
‘cognitive’ one, which he is broadly sympathetic towards (though in the end
he rejects them too). I shall return to this shortly; for now, I wish to tackle
the behavioural definition with more rigour than Schmid.
So, why should we reject the behavioural definition of isms? Consider
Bird’s quote and the use of the word ‘judge’. It is not at all clear what it
means to judge somebody in this context. For example, let us ask if one
is right to ‘judge’ that a man is more likely to be able to lift a 100kg box
off the floor than a woman. If a man’s and a woman’s full allometric and
physiological characteristics are known then their sex indeed does not matter
in this context (Kanehisa et al., 1994; Bishop et al., 1987). In statistical
jargon, there is conditional independence between the ‘successful lift’ and

9
the ‘person’s sex’:

P r(LIFT|SEX, ALLOMETRY) = P r(LIFT|ALLOMETRY) (1)

A woman 185cm tall, with a body mass of 90kg making a successful lift would
be a better bet than a 155cm tall man with a body mass of 55kg. However, if
the question is understood as whether a man or a woman, of whom we known
nothing more than their sex, is more likely to complete the aforementioned
task, it is a simple matter of statistics, physiology, and anatomy to see that
the odds are on the man’s side (Lindle et al., 1997; Kanehisa et al., 1994;
Kent-Braun and Ng, 1999). The correct interpretation of this judgement
is not that one’s bet should be on the man because he is a man per se,
but rather that in this case sex is statistically informative of other personal
characteristics which do inherently affect the odds, i.e. one’s sex allows us to
predict the characteristics which effect relevant differentiation as regards the
person’s suitability for the task. Going back to Bird’s definition of sexism, we
see that although proximally, that is directly, sex ‘does not matter’, distally,
that is indirectly, it does matter. Exempla multiplicanda.
This dispassionate statistical framing of the problem of selecting between
two individuals, can be readily abstracted so that it can be applied more
generally. I would like to tie this with a number of very influential recent
studies, highly cited in the academic literature and widely featured in the
mainstream media, which claim to offer indisputable evidence of widespread

10
isms – sexism, racism, etc. In particular, I am referring to the works such
as those of Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004), and Riach and Rich (2006)
which follow the same methodological theme which can be broadly sum-
marized as follows: potential employers are sent matched CVs of made-up
applicants, identical in all aspects except for one salient piece of information,
explicitly or implicitly suggesting a difference in sex (e.g. the person’s name
being ‘John’ vs ‘Joan’) or ethnicity (e.g. the person’s name being ‘Emily’
vs ‘Lakisha’). The claimed proverbial smoking gun evidence provided by
these studies stems from the systematic differences in the outcomes of such
matched applications5 . Indeed, the title of the article by Bertrand and Mul-
lainathan (2004) makes this point directly and succinctly: “Are Emily and
Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor
market discrimination”.
In light of the previous discussion, the reader may already be able to see
the flaw behind the conclusions drawn here: few, and indeed I would go as far
as to say nobody with any degree of credibility, would disagree that neither
sex nor ethnicity per se affect equally qualified candidates’ ability to perform
jobs of the kind examined in the aforementioned studies. However, this does
5
A personal anecdote will serve to illustrate this point well. Shortly after I joined my
present institution, it welcomed a new vice-chancellor who put “equality and diversity”
at the forefront of her mission, and women’s representation in particular. Hence I had
the opportunity to attend a proselytising talk by a Gent...leman, a true believer in the
vice-chancellor’s vision, who used this body of work, backed by the data from a shampoo
ad like poll of the ”Do you believe that you are treated on par with men” kind, to conclude
that our School continues to be sexist and unwelcoming to female academics. Juvenal will
surely exclaim with me: difficile est satiram non scribere!

11
not mean that these attributes do not allow for a statistical prediction of job
performance. Let us dissect this with more formality, following the approach
I introduced before. At first, consider the situation in which all that is known
about a job applicant is, say, their sex. Somebody claiming that a differential
outcome of job applications in this situation is sexist, is claiming that:

P r(JOB PERFORMANCE|MALE) =

P r(JOB PERFORMANCE|FEMALE) (2)

across the domain of JOB PERFORMANCE. Considering the vast amount

of evidence on the differences between male and female brains (Frederikse
et al., 1999), innate language abilities (Schlaepfer et al., 1995), and, as noted
previously, physical differences which are even more obvious, this would be
a rather nonsensical claim. Existing societal influences which either create
or amplify group differences, add yet further reasons to reject the claim
formalized by Equation (2). This is so even if they are themselves unfair, as
an employer is faced with a choice as it is rather than as it ought to be in
some counterfactual, ideal reality. Lest my point be misunderstood, I will
stress again that, as always, we are talking about population level differences,
i.e. the claim is inherently about the distributions of characteristics over the
relevant populations (Joel, 2011).
An at first sight seemingly promising challenge to this argument may be
seen to lie in the observation that applicants for a specific job are not ran-

12
domly drawn from the respective populations; rather, individuals self-select
and invest their time in applying only when they believe that their compe-
tence level is competitive. However, rather than weakening the argument
I laid out, this restriction only strengthens it: a focus on the high end of
the normal distribution can amplify the statistical difference and in no case
makes it vanish entirely.
I would like to illustrate this with a simple exercise. Consider two nor-
mal distributions, with equal means of 0.0, and variances of 4.0 and 9.0 (i.e.
standard deviations of 2.0 and 3.0): N (0.0, 4.0) and N (0.0, 9.0). These can
be understood as modelling two populations, with the latter exhibiting heav-
ier tails (both in the positive and the negative directions, as often found in
various comparisons of the abilities of the two sexes (Wai et al., 2010; Lakin,
2013)). The probability that a randomly drawn sample from the second
distribution will be greater than a randomly drawn sample from the first
distribution is 0.5. In other words, given no other information that group
membership, there is no reason to prefer a candidate from one group over the
other. Next, let us restrict the random draws to the parts of the distributions
corresponding to above average sample values, which can be understood as
modelling the selection process which admits only above average qualified
candidates. Then, the probability that a randomly drawn sample from the
second distribution will be greater than a randomly drawn sample from the
first distribution becomes ≈ 0.626, increasing the preference odds ratio from
1:1 to 1.67:1. In other words, this preselection creates a rational basis for the

13
preference for the group with the higher variance, all else being the same.
This trend continues as the preselection process is made more stringent. If
only samples from the parts of the distributions corresponding to sample val-
ues greater than 1.0 (respectively merely one half and one third the standard
deviations above the average for the two groups), the probability is increased
yet further, to ≈ 0.641, i.e. greater stringency of the preselection should in-
crease rather than decrease the preference for the latter group’s candidates
(odds ratio 1:79:1).
One’s performance at a certain prospective task, as something that hap-
pens in the future, is inherently not something that is directly measurable
or knowable with absolutely certainty: it is something that must be induc-
tively and probabilistically inferred. In the job selection process this is done
by means of various measurable proxy variables, such as one’s educational
attainment, prior work experience, references, interview performance, etc.
My analysis provides a more considered, theoretically rigorous basis for the
observation made by Pinker (2005) that:

“Decisions that have to made with finite time and resources, and
which have high costs for certain kinds of errors, must use some
trait as a basis for judging a person. And that necessarily judges
the person according to a stereotype.”

A possible attack on the argument I laid out, which does not deny the
statistical indubitability of the underlying argument itself, is that individuals
exhibiting an ism start from erroneous (a priori ) models of ability, i.e. they

14
may think that, say, groups’ abilities in a certain realm are characterized by
different distributions than they really are. This objection can be rejected
on multiple grounds. Firstly, it raises the question of where this a priori bias
comes from. It too had to be learnt. Hence, the objection does nothing to
challenge the essence of my argument, but merely pushes the question one
step back whereby the a priori bias becomes an a posteriori conclusion (as
before, potentially erroneous) of data and experience driven conclusions. Sec-
ondly, the stated objection implicitly adopts an ethically dangerous stance
for it assumes some higher arbiter imposing oracle like objective knowledge,
taking individuals’ cognitive as well as instrumental agency away from them.
Who should this arbiter be (Gigerenzer, 2018)? Who has the right to de-
cide this? Should individuals be required to keep up to date with the latest
research on the differences between all possible groups (Cooper et al., 2021;
Arandjelović, 2021) and be legally (to say nothing of socially) liable for trans-
gressions from the prescribed ‘truth’, ‘truth’ which is fluid both by virtue of
its empirical nature and sociopolitical influences which themselves suffer from
biases (Gigerenzer, 2018)? What is to be done in cases where no research
on the relevant group differences exist? Basic liberal values speak loudly in
favour of rejecting this option and hence the definition of isms on the basis
of an individual’s knowledge, flawed as this knowledge may be.
The second definition of racism that Schmid (1996) discusses and which
he terms the ‘cognitive approach’, namely:

“unequal consideration, out of a belief in the inferiority of another

15
 race”,

differs little in essence from the behavioural one I have just discussed. It too
focuses on beliefs regarding the superiority of one group with respect to an-
other in terms of objective traits, such as intelligence, morality, etc. (Schmid
gives as an example Aristotle’s belief in certain peoples being ‘natural slaves’,
innately incapable of the normative human life of self-government and ratio-
nal judgement), and the individual’s beliefs’ degree of coherence with the
objective truth concerning these. Hence, argumentum a pari, this definition
too can be rejected on the basis of essentially the same arguments I have laid
out.
The last definition discussed by Schmid (1996), and indeed the one he
endorses, is different in spirit, and I consider it next.

2.2 Does the motive make an ism?

The third and the last basis for a definition of racism (which, as hereto, we
can readily generalize to isms as a whole) considered by Schmid (1996) fo-
cuses not on the external and the observable, but rather on the unobservable
subjective: one’s motivation. Schmid (1996) adopts the words of Carmichael
and Hamilton (1967) according to whom racism is:

“...the infliction of unequal consideration, motivated by the desire

to dominate, based on race alone”.

For my analysis of this definition I find it useful to start with an example

16
given by Schmid (1996) and his reflections on it:

“Even people who are not racists indulge in such actions [OA:
which put down the other race] on occasion:

A white woman, Mrs Smith, has to brake hard for a

black driver who did not put on his turn signal. She
shouts out of her window at him while driving past,
’You damn nigger!’

In using that epithet, Mrs Smith is mentally trying to harm the

other driver, calling him by the very name that most denigrates
him – that implies his innate inferiority – that she believes is most
insulting to his pride. As such it is a paradigmatic racist act: not
the failure to share a good but the deliberate infliction of a harm
(or at least the intent of that) and the intended imposition of
racially-based subordination.”

It is not difficult to see that Schmid (1996) overreaches in his conclusions

here, specifically in the claim of “the intended imposition of racially-based
subordination.” All that one can conclude from the hypothetical example is
given is as follows:

• Mrs Smith is angered by the behaviour of the driver.

• In an attempt to vent out her anger, Mrs Smith desires to punish the
driver by causing him harm.

17
 • Believing that the driver will be emotionally harmed by a racial slur,
she calls him a nigger.

While not admirable, all of the actions by Mrs Smith are entirely rational
and well-founded, and none imply her belief in any form of racial superiority.
The insult chosen may not in the least be based on her beliefs about race,
but rather her judgement about the cognitive and psychological responses of
the person she intends to harm. Interestingly, this flaw of his argument is
implicitly recognized by Schmid (1996) who prefaces the example by stating
that “Even people who are not racists indulge in such actions on occasion”.
If this is his definition of racism then how can somebody whose behaviour
conforms to it not be racist? Clearly, this is inconsistent.
What the definition of Carmichael and Hamilton (1967) conceals is the
fundamental competitiveness of living organisms (or rather, the genes they
carry, which is what gives rise to reciprocal or altruistic behaviour on the
level of individuals (Dawkins and Davis, 2017)). In humans, owing to their
intelligence and their highly social nature, this competitiveness exhibits it-
self in most varied and complex ways, though in the end it comes down to
sexual competition, that is the competition to propagate genes. To see why
the definition of racism as “the desire to dominate, based on race alone” is
little more than a superficially appealing red herring, consider the following
example:

Imagine a white person who grew up without exposure to hu-

mans (one may recall the case of Marina Chapman (Chapman

18
 and James, 2013)) and who thus has no understanding of the
notion of race. Next, imagine telling that person that she can
gain a competitive edge in the highly competitive modern society
over certain individuals, individuals with darker skin (which she
is told means that they are of a different ‘race’), by making them
feel bad about themselves through the use of the word ‘nigger’.
While this may not be an admirable thing, hurting others, the
person does so.

Clearly, the situation satisfies the conditions set out by Carmichael and
Hamilton (1967), of domination based on race alone. Yet, it is difficult
to justify how this person could be called racist; she has no beliefs about
race whatsoever. Rather, this behaviour can be readily understood as a form
of hypostatizing Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ (‘Wille zur Macht’), no differ-
ent from the demand for equality taken as a foundational principle (Köllen,
2020).

2.3 Summary

Fundamentally, the mistake that Schmid and many others commit in their
analysis lies in the formulation of the central question thereof as ‘what is
racism?’, treating (rac)ism as objective, intelligible, and existent in what
could be described as virtually neo-Platonic sense, rather than as ‘what ought
to be understood as (rac)ism?’, i.e. acknowledging that the notion is a human

19
construct and that we are at liberty to delineate, define, and redefine it using
reason and reflection, with certain value based desiderata in mind; this I
addressed earlier in more detail in the present section.

3 So, what is an ism?

At this point the reader, hopefully following the discussion presented in the
previous section persuaded of my argument, could be forgiven for thinking
that if none of the behaviours described before constitute an ism, I must be
denying the meaningfulness, that is the very existence, of the concept of an
ism itself. I would like to reassure such a reader that this is not the case.
Rather, I am suggesting that an ism should be constituted not with reference
to one’s beliefs regarding the observable, material reality but rather with a
focus on extra-scientific, philosophical attitudes as I shall explain shortly.
Even if my formal argument of the previous section is put aside, that
one’s knowledge, that is the correctness of one’s beliefs as regards the reality,
presumed objective, is not a sound basis for the constitution of an ism should
be relatively obvious. It is hardly an ambitious claim that no individual’s
beliefs (my own included, it goes without saying) regarding reality can be
fully correct. Does that mean that we are all ists of some form or another?
Let me take this a step further and give a poignant example. Leaving aside
my own judgement of the issue, there is little doubt that there is a substantial
body of evidence suggesting that the intelligence of Jews is higher than that

20
of other peoples (Lynn and Kanazawa, 2008; Lynn, 2004; Lynn and Longley,
2006). Whether this be correct or not, if it is, does that mean that the swathe
of individuals who presently argue that there is no difference in intelligence
across different races, and who consider themselves not merely not racist
but rather anti-racist, are actually racist themselves, falsely lowering the
intellectual virtue of the Jewish community? I would suggest that this would
be a rather bizarre claim.
To leave the reader in no doubt, let me list a few examples, many of which
may be found offensive or otherwise objectionable by many, before I return
to the main thread of my argument. I am indeed arguing that none of the
following claims should be seen as racist, sexist, etc., per se:

• Women are less intelligent than men.

• Black people are less intelligent than white people.

• Homosexuals are likely to be child predators too.

• Disabled people make for a miserable company.

• Working class people are lazy and unintelligent.

In comparative examples, the same of course holds true if the two groups
in a relation are swapped one for another (i.e. ‘Men are less intelligent than
women.’, etc.).
Rather than rooting isms on epistemological or cognitive grounds, the
origins of which do not inherently have a moral nature (rather, their moral

21
significance emerges distally, from the consequences of actions they effect),
or indeed motivational ones, wherein discriminative behaviour has an instru-
mental role being a means to an end rather than an end in its own right, I
argue that the basis of isms should instead be sought in the denial of equiv-
alence of sentience. As I have argued previously, adopting the tenets which
were in their rough form already recognized by Epicureans (Annas, 1987)
and refined my many others subsequently, such as by Existentialists (Aho,
2014) amongst others (Frey, 1987; Arandjelović, 2023b), but extending it far
further so as to exclude the previously necessary mystical, dogmatic, and
heteronomous elements, the basis of our ethical reasoning should rest on the
experience of sentient beings, that is, their ability to experience pleasure on
the one hand and suffering on the other. To concretize this in the context
of the problem considered herein, I argue that we should define an ism as
the denial of the value of the sentient experience, or indeed of the experience
itself, of a particular sentient group. Note that I do not say “of a particular
human group”, for this would be a needless restriction; as it stands, the def-
inition I propose readily encompasses isms which extend to sentiences other
than human, e.g. animal, extraterrestrial, or, in principle, artificially created
ones. In this, the foundational principles underlying my proposal share much
with those passionately and persuasively advocated by Schopenhauer (2009)
whose morality too focuses on sentient experience and sympathy, and thus
‘loving-kindness’.
With reference to the desiderata underlying our choice of a suitable defi-

22
nition of an ism I discussed in Section 2, the fundamental differences between
the definition I advocate and those which pervade the existing academic lit-
erature can start to be appreciated by considering the practical consequences
of their adoption. In contrast to cognitive and knowledge based definitions
which in and of themselves are amoral in nature and which can be addressed
by equally amoral means — through education, the correction of various
sources of bias in one’s experiences or reasoning, etc. — my sentience based
definition puts in the spotlight a much more sinister and less tangible, as
well as inherently ethically committal belief; while the motivation based def-
inition is also inherently ethically committal, as explained in Section 2.2 the
specific ism which emerges from it is incidental to it, as is, further to the-
oretical arguments, evidenced by a large body of empirical evidence on the
co-occurrence of different isms (Sidanius, 1993).
An example will serve well to illustrate how isms as understood this way
are exhibited, and an insightful one is to be found in sports, specifically re-
garding historical racist attitudes in boxing. Following the Industrial Revolu-
tion and consequent to the seismic social shifts that it brought, the Victorian
Era witnessed a landmark increase in leisure time and the manner this time
is utilized. Sport in particular became not only a popular pastime among
the imperial nations’ elites, but also an essential part of a gentleman’s edu-
cation (Mallea, 1975). Sport and athleticism were seen not merely as healthy
pursuits, but also a reflection of civilization and innately superior character.
As Cook (1927) put it in his book “Character and Sportsmanship”:

23
 “...the most deep-seated instinct of the English race” are “the
instincts of sportsmanship and fair-play.” [OA: all emphasis
mine]

Hence, the racist views at the time initially all but entirely prohibited the
engagement of blacks in sport. As the emancipation movement strength-
ened, black athletes slowly started making inroads in a variety of sports and,
bluntly, giving the white aristocracy a run for their money (Brill, 2007). In-
stead of relinquishing the bizarre superiority belief, the response of the white
aristocracy was to find refuge in the few sports where white supremacy was
maintained by virtue of unequal opportunity (such as polo, boxing, cricket,
etc.), but which was rather rationalized as being a consequence of the nobility
of these sports — nobility of character which, of course, was innately beyond
the reach of the ‘inferior blacks’. Black athletes were dismissed as infantile,
submissive, prone to cowardice, and lacking in the high-mindedness of spirit.
Many challenges of blacks to the white boxers were summarily rejected on
these grounds (Obi, 2009). Yet, when these barriers too started falling (usu-
ally by virtue of ill-thought-through attempts at proving white superiority
once and for all) and black athletes started dominating the previously un-
challenged whites (Headon, 2009), racism still refused to retreat: the success
of the blacks was now marginalized by the rationalization that is a result of
blacks’ savagery, physical brutality, animal like instincts, etc. For example,
following Jack Johnson’s (black) 1910 overwhelming victory over Jim Jeffries
(white), the Los Angeles Daily Times editorial read:

24
 “The white man’s mental supremacy is fully established, and for
the present cannot be taken from him... His superiority does not
rest on any huge bulk of muscle, but on brain development that
has weighed worlds and charmed the most subtle secrets from the
heart of nature.”

I would like to draw the reader’s attention to a few important facets

brought to light by the example I just gave. Firstly, note that although
at a point in time the racism displayed may appear as conforming to be-
havioural definition of racism discussed by Schmid (1996), considering that
black athletes were largely dismissed on the grounds of objective traits (e.g.
cowardice, submissiveness, etc.), that the nature of the phenomenon is differ-
ent can be appreciated by the ever-shifting goalposts: as soon as evidence to
the contrary is provided, the reasons given for racial supremacy are changed.
This shows that these reasons are not the true reasons for the discriminatory
behaviour at display, but are rather given as a pretence of a rational basis
which is in fact left wanting. The true reasons lie in the intangible beliefs
that my definition of isms brings to the fore; the blacks are simply seen as
inherently undeserving of the joys of victory, of competition and excitement,
of opportunity, of recognition, of success, of reward; their sentient experience
is marginalized. The elusiveness of racism as understood in this way is also
clear, for it is not rooted in a belief which can be challenged by objective
facts, this being inherent in the nature of the said belief. Rather, it is a be-
lief that has to be fought by philosophical arguments, by means of coherent

25
and well-founded moral frameworks. Yet, as observed in previous work, with
the rise of scientific thinking and the abandonment of religiosity, serious phi-
losophy has been largely marginalized in the public discourse (Arandjelović,
2021).

4 Conclusions

Despite the millennia of thought, debate, and struggle concerning the various
forms of unfair discrimination, as well as the undoubtable progress made, the
debate of various isms — racism, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-Semitism,
ageism, heterosexism, and seemingly innumerable others — is not only not
abating, but has in recent years only intensified. Despite this, a careful con-
sideration of what actually constitutes an ism is woefully lacking, even in the
published academic literature. My aim with the present article was to rem-
edy this. In particular, I started out by clarifying the challenge itself (often
poorly done in the existing literature), namely that it is not to seek the ‘cor-
rect’ definition of isms, which I explained would be but a nonsensical goal,
a contradictio in adjecto, but rather to formulate a definition which is most
insightful and instrumentally most useful in addressing the consequent ethi-
cal wrongs. From here, I turned my critique to the contemporary ways isms
are understood, and in particular the discussion of these provided by Schmid
(1996), whose work is one of the few to give this topic its due attention. My
analysis explicated the weaknesses of the accepted thought and the existing

26
definitions of isms which when examined carefully rest upon an amoral basis
and fail to capture that which is the truly troubling source of the aforemen-
tioned world views. Hence, I proposed an alternative which draws from the
sentientist tradition and which sees the truly troubling aspect of isms as the
diminishment, or even an outright denial, of the value of the sentient expe-
rience of certain groups. I further discussed the practical consequences of
the proposed understanding and show how its adoption helps direct efforts
in combating isms effected social injustice. In closing, my work motivates
and calls for greater efforts by academics to explain and promote philosoph-
ical thought and education as a practically invaluable cognitive tool in the
modern world, thus overturning its image as an impractical entertainment
for the self-selected intellectual classes.

Declarations

Funding: No funding to declare.

Ethical approval: N/A

Informed consent: N/A

Author’s contribution: The entire article is the work of a single author.

Conflict of interest: None to declare.

27
Data availability statement: N/A

Research involving human participants and/or animals: N/A

References

Aho, K. (2014). Existentialism: an introduction. John Wiley & Sons.

Annas, J. (1987). Epicurus on pleasure and happiness. Philosophical Topics,

15(2):5–21.

Arandjelović, O. (2021). AI, democracy, and the importance of asking the

right questions. AI & Ethics Journal, 2(1):2.

Arandjelović, O. (2022). On the value of life. International Journal of Applied

Philosophy, 35(2):227–241.

Arandjelović, O. (2023a). A modest proposal for preventing the votes of

people with short life expectancy from being a long-term burden to their
country. Social Sciences.

Arandjelović, O. (2023b). On the subjective value of life. Philosophies,

8(2):23.

Bertrand, M. and Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg more em-
ployable than Lakisha and Jamal? a field experiment on labor market
discrimination. American Economic Review, 94(4):991–1013.

28
Bird, C. (1968). On being born female. Vital Speeches of the Day, 25(3):88–
91.

Bishop, P., Cureton, K., and Collins, M. (1987). Sex difference in muscular
strength in equally-trained men and women. Ergonomics, 30(4):675–687.

Branco, C., Ramos, M. R., and Hewstone, M. (2019). The association of

group-based discrimination with health and well-being: A comparison of
ableism with other “isms”. Journal of Social Issues, 75(3):814–846.

Brill, M. T. (2007). Marshall” Major” Taylor: World Champion Bicyclist,

1899-191. Twenty-First Century Books.

Calder-Dawe, O. and Gavey, N. (2016). Making sense of everyday sexism:

Young people and the gendered contours of sexism. In Women’s Studies
International Forum, volume 55, pages 1–9. Elsevier.

Campbell, D. G. (2012). The cultivation of racism. Academic Questions,

25(3):389–393.

Carmichael, S. and Hamilton, C. V. (1967). Black Power: The Politics of

Liberation. Random House, 1st edition.

Chapman, M. and James, V. (2013). The Girl with No Name: The Incredible
True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys. Random House.

Cook, T. A. (1927). Character and sportsmanship. Williams and Norgate.

29
Cooper, J., Dimitriou, N., and Arandjelović, O. (2021). How good is the
science that informs government policy? A lesson from the UK’s response
to 2020 CoV-2 outbreak. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 18(4):561–568.

Dawkins, R. and Davis, N. (2017). The selfish gene. Macat Library.

De Choudhury, M., Jhaver, S., Sugar, B., and Weber, I. (2016). Social
media participation in an activist movement for racial equality. In AAAI
Conference on Web and Social Media.

Doane, A. (2006). What is racism? Racial discourse and racial politics.

Critical Sociology, 32(2-3):255–274.

Frederikse, M. E., Lu, A., Aylward, E., Barta, P., and Pearlson, G. (1999).
Sex differences in the inferior parietal lobule. Cerebral Cortex, 9(8):896–
901.

Frey, R. G. (1987). Autonomy and the value of animal life. The Monist,
70(1):50–63.

Frye, M. (1983). Sexism. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory,

pages 17–40.

Gigerenzer, G. (2018). The bias bias in behavioral economics. Review of

Behavioral Economics, 5(3-4):303–336.

Grimes, D. A. and Schulz, K. F. (2002). Bias and causal associations in

observational research. The Lancet, 359(9302):248–252.

30
Hardeman, R. R., Murphy, K. A., Karbeah, J., and Kozhimannil, K. B.
(2018). Naming institutionalized racism in the public health literature: a
systematic literature review. Public Health Reports, 133(3):240–249.

Headon, D. (2009). ’World’s fistanic history’, Sydney 1908 Flash Jack John-
son ’vs’ Sinking Tommy Burns’. Sporting Traditions, 26(2):1–14.

Joel, D. (2011). Male or female? Brains are intersex. Frontiers in Integrative

Neuroscience, 5:57.

Kanehisa, H., Ikegawa, S., and Fukunaga, T. (1994). Comparison of mus-

cle cross-sectional area and strength between untrained women and men.
European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology,
68(2):148–154.

Kent-Braun, J. A. and Ng, A. V. (1999). Specific strength and voluntary

muscle activation in young and elderly women and men. Journal of Applied
Physiology, 87(1):22–29.

Köllen, T. (2020). Worshipping equality as organizational idolatry? A Ni-

etzschean view of the normative foundations of the diversity management
paradigm. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 36(2):101108.

Lakin, J. M. (2013). Sex differences in reasoning abilities: surprising evi-

dence that male–female ratios in the tails of the quantitative reasoning
distribution have increased. Intelligence, 41(4):263–274.

31
Lindle, R., Metter, E., Lynch, N., Fleg, J. v., Fozard, J., Tobin, J., Roy, T.,
and Hurley, B. (1997). Age and gender comparisons of muscle strength
in 654 women and men aged 20–93 yr. Journal of Applied Physiology,
83(5):1581–1587.

Lynn, R. (2004). The intelligence of American Jews. Personality and Indi-

vidual Differences, 36(1):201–206.

Lynn, R. and Kanazawa, S. (2008). How to explain high Jewish achievement:

The role of intelligence and values. Personality and Individual Differences,
44(4):801–808.

Lynn, R. and Longley, D. (2006). On the high intelligence and cognitive

achievements of Jews in Britain. Intelligence, 34(6):541–547.

Mallea, J. R. (1975). The Victorian sporting legacy. McGill Journal of

Education/Revue des Sciences de l’Éducation de McGill, 10(002).

McShane, M., Nirenburg, S., and Jarrell, B. (2013). Modeling decision-

making biases. Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, 3:39–50.

Obi, T. D. (2009). Black terror: Bill Richmond’s revolutionary boxing. Jour-

nal of Sport History, pages 99–114.

Ocampo, C., Prieto, L. R., Whittlesey, V., Connor, J., Janco-Gidley, J., Man-
nix, S., and Sare, K. (2003). Diversity research in teaching of psychology:
Summary and recommendations. Teaching of Psychology, 30(1):5–18.

32
Okun, S. and Ayalon, L. (2022). Ageism: the importance of the linguistic
concept for the construction of the experience. Ageing & Society, pages
1–15.

Pinker, S. (2005). The Blank Slate. Southern Utah University Cedar City,
UT.

Riach, P. A. and Rich, J. (2006). An experimental investigation of sexual

discrimination in hiring in the English labor market. Advances in Economic
Analysis & Policy, 5(2).

Schlaepfer, T. E., Harris, G. J., Tien, A. Y., Peng, L., Lee, S., and Pearlson,
G. D. (1995). Structural differences in the cerebral cortex of healthy fe-
male and male subjects: a magnetic resonance imaging study. Psychiatry
Research: Neuroimaging, 61(3):129–135.

Schmid, W. T. (1996). The definition of racism. Journal of Applied Philos-

ophy, 13(1):31–40.

Schopenhauer, A. (2009). The two fundamental problems of ethics. Cam-

bridge University Press.

Shapiro, F. R. (1985). Historical notes on the vocabulary of the women’s

movement. American Speech, 60(1):3–16.

Sidanius, J. (1993). The interface between racism and sexism. The Journal
of Psychology, 127(3):311–322.

33
Silverman, B. G. (1992). Modeling and critiquing the confirmation bias in
human reasoning. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics,
22(5):972–982.

Singer, P. (1974). All animals are equal. Political Theory and Animal Rights,
pages 162–167.

Singer, P. (1985). Ethics and the new animal liberation movement. In Defense
of Animals, pages 1–10.

Wai, J., Cacchio, M., Putallaz, M., and Makel, M. C. (2010). Sex differences
in the right tail of cognitive abilities: A 30 year examination. Intelligence,
38(4):412–423.

Williams, J. (1985). Redefining institutional racism. Ethnic and Racial Stud-

ies, 8(3):323–348.

34