Discrimination is a complex concept. It is explosively controversial, highly contested, and context-specific. It is value-laden and moralized to mean “unfair” treatment. Seeing that scholars find it more difficult to justify the morality of discrimination than the legality of discrimination (Banton 1994: 2), this entry separates the moralized meaning of discrimination from its objective, morally neutral meaning. Discrimination in the morally neutral, objective sense is hereinafter referred to as “distinction”(between individuals).
It was US President Andrew Johnson who, in 1866, made the first recorded use of the word “discrimination” in its morally pejorative sense (Banton 1994: 6). From then onwards, most scholars assumed that discrimination falls short of acceptable moral standards and that states must prohibit it (see Altman 2016). Today, virtually all major.
