Preferentialism
By William Wetherall
27 December 2025
Discrimination is a biologically enabled capacity essential to survival. Failure to differentiate poisonous from non-poisonous mushrooms, or between friends and foes, can be fatal. Parents have reasons for teaching children to be cautious of strangers. The problem is, when is it safe to say hello to someone you don't know? And dangerous not to say hello?
Preferences are forms of discrimination. I prefer ice cream to gelato. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had been raised in a family that preferred gelato. But I grew up in California liking ice cream. In fact, I can't recall encountering gelato until coming to Japan.
In Japan, as I did in America, I accept ice milk as the cheaper and often more available alternative to real ice cream. But I prefer real ice cream, even if it costs a little bit more. And I have always liked vanilla more than chocolate, which is not to say that I haven't liked chocolate. In fact, I have a weakness for chocolate cakes and candies.
But when it comes to ice cream, chocolate has always been a second choice. And generally I've eaten strawberry only when there has been no other choice. Mixing the three doesn't appeal to me. If someone today were to offer me only Neapolitan, I'd be inclined to simply forego dessert. Ditto with gelato -- which I don't hate, but simply don't prefer, and would eat only to be polite.
Do I discriminate? Yes. Am I biased? Yes. All preferences are about discrimination and bias. Do I advocate racioethnic preferences of any kind? I question the very notion of classifying people according to their putative race or ethnicity -- especially for the purpose of establishing enrollment, employment, and other such quotas.
A shoe store owner is biased if he or she seeks a clerk who is able to climb a ladder to fetch shoes from stock, and stoop to measure a customer's feet or feel the fit of a shoe. When, if ever, would it be appropriate to prefer a minimum height, or a maximum weight or a sex or an age range, or a race, religion, or political affiliation?
What if an employer was willing to hire any male, of whatever putative race, so long as he were clean shaven and had short hair? Or any female who agreed to wear skirts, heels, and makeup? When do preferences -- all of which are by definition discriminatory -- become unacceptably discriminatory?
Equality and equity
Equality of opportunity, and equity in outcome, are not the same. As preferences, they generally contradict each other. To prefer and achieve equity in outcome, one usually has to disregard inequalities in qualifications.
Take for example jobs that require formal educations in computer science. To guarantee that the sexual breakdown of employees at a large tech company in Silicon Valley reflected the sexual composition of the general population, you'd have to hire every female graduate -- regardless of her performance in college -- and the staff would still be predominately male.
Hire every so-called Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and Multiracial computer science graduate, and Silicon Valley staffs would still be dominated by so-called White and Asian employees. And Asians would still be hugely "over-represented" compared to Whites in terms of their relative populations based on Race boxes in US censuses.
Does being "created equal" mean that everyone has a right, not only to pursue happiness, but also to be happy -- regardless of where their pursuit leads them? Even were governments able to guarantee every pursuer of happiness an equal start, how are they to guarantee that everyone will catch up with happiness?
Do students admitted to elite universities deserve to expect As rather than Bs or Cs, or heaven forbid Ds or Fs -- simply because they were accustomed to straight As in high school, and scored in the top percentiles of achievement and aptitude tests? Should all sprinters who make the final heat in the 100-meter dash be given a gold medal, never mind the order in which they finish?
Is it contradictory for the government or a company to bill itself as an "Equal Opportunity Employer", then allow extra points for military veterans, and more points for veterans with disabilities? Is this not discrimination against disabled conscientious objectors?
And what about the increasing preference, by all manner of companies, for robots and AI agents over human beings?
Last revised 27 December 2025