Daily Inspiration Quote by Joseph Stiglitz

Stiglitz frames discrimination not as a problem of a few bad actors, but as a durable feature of systems that can run smoothly even when many of the people inside them mean well. The line is deceptively plain, but it carries a core institutionalist move: separating individual prejudice (attitude) from discrimination (outcome). That distinction matters because it blocks a comforting escape hatch in American life - the idea that if enough people claim to be personally fair, the problem is basically solved.

The phrasing also signals an economist's bias toward structure and incentives. "I knew" reads like an empirical awakening: not a moral epiphany, but a recognition that the data of lived experience doesn't match the story society tells itself. "Even though" does the heavy lifting. It marks the tension between a liberal self-image ("most people aren't prejudiced") and persistent disparities in hiring, housing, credit, schooling, and policing. Stiglitz is pointing at the machinery: networks, rules, risk models, legacy advantages, and institutional habits that reproduce unequal outcomes without requiring explicit animus from every participant.

Contextually, this sits comfortably in Stiglitz's broader critique of market fundamentalism. Markets don't magically wash away bias; they can encode it, price it, and rationalize it as efficiency. The quote's quiet force is its refusal to personalize the issue. It implies responsibility still exists, but it's located where reform is hardest: in policies, metrics, and defaults that let discrimination survive the moral progress of individuals.