Casting discrimination as pathology evades individual responsibility for acts committed

Evidence

One of the problems with this alternative can be brought to the fore by contrasting the two approaches in the light of Durkheim’s famous argument ( 1950:65-73) that crime is a normal, and not a pathological, social form. Even in a society of saints, he wrote, some forms of behavior would be considered scandalous. There can be no society without norms, and no norms without deviance, so deviance is a normal phenomenon. Racial discrimination is likewise a normal, if deplorable, form of behavior, whereas racism is frequently described as a cancer, a virus, or with the use of some other medical metaphor to make it appear a pathology that would not be found in a healthy society. People are not blamed if they are afflicted by a cancer, but for every act of discrimination someone is responsible and should be brought to account (though, of course, there will be varying degrees of responsibility). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 680

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘discrimination’ (normal, accountable behavior) from ‘racism’ (pathologized, responsibility-evading concept) via Durkheim’s deviance logic.
• XREF: Connects to Durkheim’s thesis on crime as normal social form; also resonates with labeling theory and the sociology of deviance. — connects to: Ethical appeals to individual responsibility let impersonal structures evade accountability — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 139