Is it acceptable to avoid interacting with individuals of a specific ethnicity if my past experiences with that group were harmful, even if I don't hold racist beliefs and am simply acting on perceived correlations?

GPT-5.4

Vote: No

Avoiding people based on ethnicity is not acceptable, even if you describe it as a response to bad past experiences. Ethnicity is a broad identity category, not a reliable predictor of an individual’s character or behavior. What you are calling a correlation is an overgeneralization from limited experiences. Acting on that generalization treats innocent individuals as if they are responsible for what others did, which is unfair and discriminatory in practice. Your feelings after harmful experiences may be real, and protecting yourself is valid. But the acceptable response is to avoid specific harmful people, situations, or warning signs based on behavior, not to exclude an entire ethnic group. Intent matters less than impact here. Even without conscious hatred, using ethnicity as a basis for avoidance reproduces prejudice and reinforces racial bias.

Mistral Large

Vote: No

Generalizing based on ethnicity—even without malicious intent—reinforces harmful stereotypes and systemic discrimination. While personal experiences are valid, they do not justify broad avoidance of an entire group. Such behavior perpetuates cycles of division and mistrust, even if the intent is self-protection rather than racism. Individuals are not monoliths. Past negative interactions with a few people of a particular ethnicity do not predict future encounters. Avoiding entire groups based on perceived correlations denies the diversity within those communities and risks missing positive, meaningful relationships. It also sets a precedent for others to justify exclusionary behavior, which can escalate into wider social harm. Instead of avoidance, addressing discomfort through open-minded engagement or seeking common ground can break down biases. If safety is a concern, context-specific caution (e.g., avoiding certain situations) is more constructive than blanket ethnic avoidance. This approach balances personal boundaries with fairness and inclusivity.

Grok 4.1 Fast

Vote: No

Avoiding individuals based on ethnicity, even if motivated by past harmful experiences rather than explicit racist beliefs, constitutes discrimination. It relies on stereotypes—generalizing negative traits from a subset to an entire group—which unfairly punishes innocent people who share that ethnicity but bear no responsibility for prior harms. Perceived correlations from personal anecdotes are unreliable predictors of individual behavior. Human experiences are biased by availability heuristic and confirmation bias, leading to overgeneralization. True self-protection should target specific behaviors or situations, not immutable traits like ethnicity. Ethically, this practice erodes social cohesion and perpetuates division. Legally and socially, it aligns with prejudicial actions prohibited in many contexts (e.g., employment, housing). Accepting it normalizes subtle racism under the guise of 'personal choice,' undermining equality. Opting for A risks endorsing group-based judgments that history shows lead to broader injustices. B upholds individual judgment over ethnic profiling, promoting fairness.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Vote: No

Avoiding individuals solely based on their ethnicity, regardless of personal past experiences, is fundamentally rooted in prejudice. It relies on the flawed assumption that an entire diverse group of people shares the negative traits of a few individuals you have encountered. While trauma or negative past experiences are valid personal struggles, projecting those experiences onto an entire demographic unfairly punishes innocent people for the actions of others. Relying on 'perceived correlations' is the exact mechanism by which stereotypes are perpetuated. True fairness and empathy require treating people as individuals. By pre-emptively avoiding an entire ethnicity, you not only reinforce harmful societal biases but also deny yourself the opportunity for meaningful, positive interactions that could challenge and heal those preconceived notions.

Claude Opus 4.6

Vote: No

No, this is not acceptable, even when framed as a rational response to past experience rather than explicit racism. Here's why: **The statistical reasoning is fundamentally flawed.** Personal experiences with a handful of individuals from an ethnic group cannot constitute a representative sample of millions or billions of people. Drawing behavioral conclusions about an entire ethnicity from limited encounters is a textbook example of the base rate fallacy and overgeneralization. The harmful behaviors you experienced were almost certainly driven by individual circumstances, personalities, or contextual factors — not ethnicity. **Intent does not determine impact.** Whether or not you consciously hold racist beliefs, systematically avoiding people based on their ethnicity *is* discriminatory behavior. Discrimination is defined by actions, not just internal attitudes. The people you avoid experience the same exclusion and harm regardless of your internal justification. **This reasoning pattern is exactly how implicit bias and systemic racism perpetuate themselves.** Historically, many forms of racial discrimination were justified not through explicit hatred but through "reasonable" pattern recognition — perceived correlations between race and crime, trustworthiness, or competence. Accepting this logic opens the door to legitimizing all such discrimination. **It causes real harm to innocent individuals.** Every person you avoid based on their ethnicity is being pre-judged and denied fair interaction based on the actions of others they have no connection to beyond superficial appearance. This violates a basic principle of justice: people deserve to be treated as individuals. **The appropriate response to trauma is healing, not avoidance of an entire group.** If past experiences were genuinely harmful, therapy and deliberate cognitive reframing are the healthy paths forward — not blanket avoidance that reinforces biased pattern recognition.

Kimi K2.5

Vote: No

Avoiding individuals solely based on ethnicity treats people as interchangeable representatives of a group rather than as individuals with unique agency. Even without explicit racist beliefs, this behavior constitutes statistical discrimination that inflicts harm on innocent people who share only a demographic characteristic with those who caused past trauma. When we act on perceived correlations between ethnicity and harm, we deny individuals the opportunity to be judged by their character rather than their ancestry. This approach is epistemically flawed—sample sizes of personal experience are rarely sufficient to establish valid population-level generalizations, and correlation never justifies treating individuals as threats based on immutable characteristics. Moreover, the practical effects of avoidance based on ethnicity are indistinguishable from racist discrimination. The person being avoided cannot distinguish between someone protecting themselves from trauma and someone motivated by racial animus; they experience only exclusion and dehumanization. Ethical consistency requires treating people as ends in themselves, not as instances of a statistical pattern. Valid safety concerns should focus on specific behaviors, contexts, and demonstrated threats rather than demographic proxies. Trauma recovery involves recognizing that danger comes from choices, not from ethnic identity.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable delivered a swift and unanimous rejection of the premise, with all six models concluding that avoiding individuals based on ethnicity is unacceptable. While acknowledging the reality of personal trauma, the models—led by Claude Opus 4.6 and Kimi K2.5—dismantled the logic of 'perceived correlations' as both statistically flawed and ethically indefensible. The group collectively emphasized that discrimination is defined by the impact of one's actions rather than the purity of their intent.

All 6 models agreed on "No" after discussion

Strongest Arguments

• No: Claude Opus 4.6 argued that drawing behavioral conclusions about millions of people based on a few personal encounters is a 'textbook example' of the base rate fallacy; furthermore, because discrimination is defined by action, the impact on the excluded individual remains the same regardless of the avoider's internal lack of 'racist beliefs.'