At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, discrimination is out in the open — and it’s fine. When you arrive, the sign above the lobby counter indicates that anybody named “Isabella” may enter without charge. I’d never seen anything like it. I smiled.
This is simple discrimination. One group of people, selected by name, receives better treatment than everybody else, even though that characteristic is irrelevant; with all due respect, it is not as if your parents by calling you this or that conferred merit upon you or otherwise rendered you any more qualified to look at paintings than your peers. Yet none of us is likely to be much exercised about this privilege granted to the special few. So many people claim discrimination of some sort, we are compelled to distinguish the profound from the trivial. The Gardner’s gift to Isabellas belongs to a rare category of the delightful.
The namesake of the museum was just the free spirit to celebrate her sisters. She was a patron of the arts. She was born into wealth in 1840, and she married a man even richer. She spent her money well, supporting creative talent in many disciplines. She is said to have scandalised the Brahmin society of New England of her era by, as a woman, frequenting boxing matches, a disreputable pastime for spectators and participants alike. The institution she founded to display her collection is famous for another reason. It was the site one of the greatest heists in American history. In 1990, thieves made off with thirteen canvases valued in the hundreds of millions. The mystery has never been solved (a $10 million reward remains open).
In any event, I visited the Gardner after a conference in the city on law school admissions. The subject that day, a perennial, was how to achieve diversity in the profession. In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had majority support on the Supreme Court for the proposition that the goal could be pursued. In dicta that is not binding, she set a “sunset” period though, and time is running out. Despite progress, there remains rampant prejudice whether blatant or subtle. To take seriously the question of why the Gardner’s joke can be allowed offers an understanding of why invidious discrimination — the type that is illegal, even immoral, thanks to the civil rights movement for Black equality — is essentially different.
We must discriminate among discriminations. Otherwise we miss the point.
Whether the trait is “immutable” turns out not to be especially important. Although a name can be changed albeit not casually, that isn’t the crux of the matter. Whether the people who benefit are a majority or a minority also does not seem to be dispositive. Throughout history, there have been favored majorities as well as favored minorities.
A name is, for most of us, our identity. Nobody lacks a name. The specific word that calls us out might be significant within our culture and it certainly is meaningful to our family. Studies show that some names generate an advantage. A “Black” name attracts attention that is negative.
