The New Civil Rights

“Beauty may only be skin deep, but that’s plenty deep enough to cost you a job, a promotion, or the training to get one.” Is discrimination based on looks the next civil rights battle? “Prejudice based on looks rather than performance violates principles of equal opportunity and social justice that this nation has fought hard to establish,” says Deborah Rhode at The Boston Globe. “Beauty bias is the last frontier of acceptable bigotry. Except in a few localities, it is now perfectly legal. That needs to change. In schools and workplaces, people should be judged on how they perform, not how they look. All too often, discrimination based on appearance, like other forms of bias, rests on inaccurate stereotypes.”