Prejudice and the Problem of Statistical Stereotyping

Abstract This chapter explores prejudice-focused objections to stereotyping in the testimonies of American AIDS activists in the 1980s and 1990s. It begins with classic prejudicial stereotyping, a flagrant form of wrongful stereotyping that involves false morally vicious attitudes. I then examine a putative limitation of prejudice-focused critiques. Not all discriminators—and not all people who stereotype—have vicious attitudes. Statistical stereotyping is a case in point. Exploring a realistic example of medical statistical stereotyping critiqued by feminist AIDS activists, the chapter highlights the philosophical limits of prejudice-focused critiques. At the same time, it contends that any theory of wrongful stereotyping that ignores prejudice will be both incomplete and misleading. Though prejudice may not always explain what’s morally wrong with stereotyping, it sometimes does, revealing a distinctive way in which acts of stereotyping can wrong individuals, and the groups to which they belong, by disrespecting them.