The implications of racial or ethnic discrimination and its historical link to sexual discrimination

Abstract

Starting from the idea that discrimination is one of the most important manifestations of equality, and that the eradication of the one is a necessary condition for the effectiveness of the other, the author gives a brief overview of the history of racial discrimination, highlighting its similarities with sexual discrimination. She explains how these forms of discrimination have underpinned all means of production and all forms of political organization, but have so far not been taken seriously vis-à-vis the construction of a more egalitarian society. This overview begins by considering the discrimination that underpinned the Ancient Greek idea of equality, and ends with the emergence of the concept of equality during the Enlightenment, when there was an increased preoccupation with the «rights of the individual». The author ends her historical explanation at that particular historical moment because it was during the Age of Enlightenment that a critical theory first emerged, demanding universal equality, rejecting formality, and denouncing the defects of reason for being loaded with prejudice. It was feminist theory that first proposed the eradication of prejudice concerning race and sex. The coherence of its approach to the eradication of prejudice by including both men and women in its concept of equality has not been considered by constitutional law, for which reason the author proposes that possible solutions to the problem of racial discrimination may come from the application of contributions to antidiscrimination law aimed at eradicating sexual discrimination, the result of the influence of feminist theory on the law.

Keywords

• historia
• discriminación racial
• discriminación étnica
• discriminación por sexo
• género