Discrimination per se is absolutely vital to a functioning world. If you don’t discriminate between baby milk and mercury, you poison your baby.

Unfortunately, lazy language has made this argument harder to be clear about. First of all we can easily oppose unfair discrimination on the basis of race or gender. There are two important ideas here though:

• unfair
• on the basis of

Actually, we could oppose all unfair discrimination, e.g. “I will not give you the accountant’s job, because you wore a green top at the interview and I hate people who wear green tops”. But it’s not likely that many others would back up the discriminator on this decision — i.e. very few people are troubled by green tops, whereas there are entrenched attitudes towards, e.g. foreigners or the opposite sex.  In other, more rational cases, the person being scrutinized gets to modify his or her appearance or behaviour so as to be more acceptable. If I don’t think I’ll get the programmer’s job going to the interview wearing only spats and a dog-leash, then I’ll wear a suit instead. (Note: these are not the only two choices of outfit in my life.)

The other interesting idea above was on the basis of. If I were interviewing for a nursery school helper and discriminated against a black person because he or she is on the sex offenders list, this should not cause an outcry. I am not discriminating on the basis of his or her race, but on a factor that is extremely pertinent to the job I’m offering.

When discrimination means denying something to a person because of something beyond their control, then it becomes unjust. Hence anti discrimination laws regarding race and gender. But there’s a sliding scale - to what degree does one “choose” to be a crook, a scumbag and a drain on society? Tough call.

Should we discriminate against University applicants on the basis of their academic performance?  You bet!  Against rich people when it comes to claiming benefit?  I reckon.  Should we discriminate between fact and fantasy when choosing a medical product?  Probably also a good idea.