Forum:
This paper was originally a professional publication. It was submitted to
Enlightenment in November, 2000, as an expression of interest in presenting a
paper at, and in partial fulfillment of the requirements for participation in,
the First Annual Enlightenment Meeting.
The renewed debate over affirmative
action programs makes appropriate a re-examination of the philosophical issues
involved in this issue. This paper is
concerned with those affirmative action programs which involve preferential
hiring, promotion, and university admission.
These programs give some degree of preference based on race, gender, or
ethnic background to members of certain historically disadvantaged groups. Such groups include blacks, women, and
Hispanics.
The proposal of such programs is that
selection for desirable jobs not be done on the basis of merit alone, but that
some weight be placed on the racial, sexual, or ethnic characteristics of the
candidates. This means that we should
select the minority candidate or the woman where his or her qualifications are
equal to or only somewhat below those of majority candidates (typically white
males).
The first position I would like to
consider is that preferential treatment is morally required as redress for past injustices. In the past, white males have enjoyed unfair advantages in
employment, promotion, and university admission. Minority members and women have often been denied fair access
simply because of their race, gender, or ethnicity. In order to redress this past injustice, wouldn’t it be fair to
give members of groups previously discriminated against advantages equivalent
to those historically enjoyed by white males, and to impose this cost on white
males, who, as a group, have benefitted unfairly by discriminatory
practices? This would simply serve to
make up for the unjustly produced distribution of benefits in the past.
But of course the problem with this line
of reasoning is that it ignores the fact that the membership of both the
advantaged and disadvantaged groups changes over time. The benefits of such programs do not flow primarily
to those who bore the bulk of previous discrimination. And the cost of such programs does not fall
on those white males who received the primary and most direct benefit from
prior bias, but rather on new entrants into the job or admissions market.
Instead of attempting to justify
preferential programs based on past inequities, perhaps we would do better to
consider affirmative action programs as corrective of and compensatory for present injustices (some of which, of
course, have resulted from past discrimination). It is not because female and minority applicants suffered
discrimination that provides justification for giving preference to current
applicants. Rather, the justification
for present preferences must derive from the claim that women and minority
members suffer present injustice.
It is argued that present injustice takes
several forms. First, it is plausible
that though most overt racial and
sexual discrimination is outlawed, covert and subtle discrimination is still
prevalent. Where selection is not made
on the basis of objective criteria (such as test scores), the conscious and
unconscious biases of the selecting officials may very well give rise to
significant amounts of discrimination.
Affirmative action serves as a counterbalance
to and compensation for this putative tendency to underrate women and minority
members. According to this line of
argument, such programs would not involve any unfairness to white males, for it
would merely deprive them of the relative overrating they tend to receive.
Second, even where rational selection
criteria are applied with scrupulous equality, we might hold that the
selections produced are unjust because minority members and women have been
unfairly disadvantaged in acquiring the qualities that would enable them to
compete effectively with white males.
A disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics are poor, and have
attended worse schools than whites. To
the extent that this relative poverty is a result of racial discrimination, and
to the extent that economic disadvantage makes it more difficult to acquire
traits relevant to job performance, the distribution of benefits (such as jobs
and university admissions) produced by even objective and culturally unbiased
tests is unfair, the argument goes, for the differentials are in part artifacts
produced by unfair discrimination.
Additionally, women and minority members
bear social and psychological costs of discrimination which make them less able
to compete. Racial and sexual
discrimination tend to rob their victims of self-confidence and self-esteem,
and to sap the motivation of those who suffer them. Certainly qualities such as self-confidence, self-esteem, and a
high level of motivation are relevant to one’s ability to compete.
Do these arguments, based on current
discrimination and current effects of past discrimination, give us sufficient
justification for affirmative action programs ? The argument makes use of two central empirical claims: 1.)
Some people are likely to be underrated as a result of bias; and, 2.)
Some people have been denied equal opportunity to acquire those
characteristics which would enable them to compete successfully.
For an affirmative action program to
match the justification given, it would have to, as a minimum, correctly target
those who suffer either of these disadvantages. Obviously, a program which involved giving preference to persons
not disadvantaged in either of those ways could not be justified by appeal to
those disadvantages.
This is not to say that we require a
perfect correlation between those who are in fact disadvantaged (in ways 1 and
2 above), and those who receive the benefits of affirmative action. Practical considerations would make this impossible. But we should require a reasonable
match. We should require that
affirmative action programs not give preference to large numbers of people not
disadvantaged in the ways specified, and that such programs not, in large
numbers of cases, impose costs on those who are not unjustly advantaged.
Unfortunately, affirmative action
programs which use racial, ethnic, and gender distinctions fail in critical
ways to meet this requirement. While it
is true that many women and minority members suffer the effects of
discrimination, it is not the case that all or even almost all do. A significant number of people designated as
disadvantaged by affirmative action programs are not in fact disadvantaged.
This is made critical by the fact that
the proposed preferences accrue disproportionately to just those women and
minority members who are actually advantaged, or who are least
disadvantaged. We relied in part on the
reasonable assumption that there is some correlation between social advantage
and the possession of traits relevant to selection for jobs and university
admissions. Those women and minority
members who received the best educations, who came from the best social
backgrounds, and who suffered the least from discrimination will tend to have
those characteristics which advantage them over the more oppressed members of
the same groups. When we use
preferential hiring to increase the proportion of women and minority members,
we of course choose from among the most able women and minority members we can--that
is, from among those who tend to have the most socially advantaged position
within that group. Notice also that the
costs of affirmative action tend to fall not on the most advantaged white
males, but rather on the lowest ranking white males who would have been
selected if not for affirmative action.
If our assumption that there is a correlation between social advantage
and the possession of desirable competitive traits is correct, the white males displaced by affirmative
action will tend to be those least advantaged among that group.
The problem is that racial, ethnic, and
gender distinctions simply do not correlate sufficiently with the distinction
between those unfairly advantaged and those unfairly disadvantaged. And affirmative action magnifies this lack
of sufficient correlation by its tendency to favor the most advantaged minority
members and women, and to hurt the most disadvantaged white males.
The traits needed to compete successfully
for jobs or university admissions seem much more highly correlated with social
class than with race, ethnicity, or gender.
The poor of any race or ethnicity tend to receive poorer educations,
have less access to cultural enrichment, and have fewer reasons for believing
they can compete successfully. But even
class distinctions fail to correlate adequately with the kinds of advantages
and disadvantages that are relevant to competitive success. Many middle-class and upper-class children
are abused and neglected, for example.
Many suffer misfortunes or injustices quite unrelated to social class,
race, gender, or ethnicity, but which do hinder their development in ways
similar to the ways in which racial or ethnic oppression tends to handicap
their victims.
Far from being required by justice,
affirmative action based on race, gender, or ethnicity does not even seem
consistent with justice. By imposing
costs disproportionately on disadvantaged white males, affirmative action creates precisely the sort of injustice correctly
judged morally repugnant in the case of women and minorities.
Perhaps instead of appealing to standards
of justice, we might instead appeal to considerations of social utility. Perhaps affirmative action could be justified on utilitarian grounds. The failure of affirmative action to meet
the conditions of justice might be outweighed by the important social good it
produces.
What then are the consequences of these
programs? What i wish to suggest is
that the benefits are smaller than anticipated, ant the costs are
excessive. Part of the reason for this
is that many of the most important personal benefits which go with holding a
high-status job or attending a prestigious university can’t be transferred
simply by giving someone a place in the institution. Most social and psychological rewards derive from the perception
that people in such positions have a high degree of relative merit--that they
have earned their positions by talent and achievement. This is certainly true of internal psychic
rewards, such as self-confidence and self-esteem (which having a high-status
position usually brings a person). It
is also true of the respect and status which society confers on people in such
positions.
This suggest that many of the important
social and psychological costs of discrimination born by many women and
minority members cannot be effectively relieved by affirmative action. Women and members of minority groups have
been denied access to appropriate social status and respect, and discrimination
is certainly destructive of self-confidence and self-esteem. Unfortunately, affirmative action is
ill-designed to correct this.
More unfortunately, affirmative action
tends to cause an undervaluation of the genuinely earned achievements of women
and minority members. There is a
tendency for every promotion, hiring, or admission of a woman or a minority
member to become suspect. Neither we
nor the candidate can be certain whether his or her success is the result of
ability and achievement, or is due to preference given because of race or sex.
Not only does this damage high-achieving
women and minority members. It damages
society as a whole. An important
mechanism for reducing racial and sexual bias is the perception by bigots of
examples of high ability and achievement by women and minority members. Awareness of clear-cut cases of achievement
by women and minority members helps undercut traditional biases about the
abilities of women and minorities. By
making us uncertain about whether the successes of women and minority members
are based on merit, affirmative action robs us of the sorts of clear and
manifest evidence of minority ability which could serve to reduce prejudice.
A second important cost is the creation
of racial and gender resentment among which males who feel unjustly treated by
affirmative action. In fact, the resentment
produced seems disproportionately large relative to the actual levels of
discriminatory effect against white males.
For, many white males who would not have succeeded anyway blame their
failure on affirmative action. Insofar
as the advancement of minority interests depends upon the goodwill of the
majority, this backlash resentment constitutes an important cost of affirmative
action.
There is one final difficulty I wish to
consider. A fundamental presumption of
affirmative action is that it is desirable to increase the representation of
women and minority members in desirable occupations and institutions. But how large should this increase be? What percentage of engineers, physicians, or
philosophy professors should be women or black? We need at least an answer in principle. We need some general guideline in order to
tell where affirmative action is needed and to tell us when such programs are
no longer needed.
One frequently mentioned standard is that
minorities and women should have the same percentage of desirable positions as
the percentage of the population they comprise. It is this standard I shall directly criticize, though I will
show that objections to it apply to any similar numerical standard. We need some standard to serve as a
yardstick; yet, any such standard seems arbitrary.
The problem is this: the motivation for affirmative action
derives from a desire to eliminate imbalances in occupational distribution due
to discrimination. But not all differences
in occupational distribution are caused by discrimination. Some are the result of different
distributions of career preferences among people of different cultural
backgrounds.
Given that minority members come from
cultures and social backgrounds which differ from those of the majority
population, we should expect these cultural and social differences to be
reflected in different distributions of career interests. Why would we assume, for example, that if
two percent of white males want to be biochemists that the came percentage of
blacks, women, or Hispanics would also prefer that profession?
To use straight proportional
representation as our standard is to be insensitive to the sociological fact
that distribution of career interests varies by cultural background and socio-economic
group. The standard puts pressure on
minorities, in the form of economic and social incentives, to alter career
preferences to match those of the majority.
It seeks a cultural homogenization of occupational preference. It aims at changing
the interests of women and minority members, not just at promoting them.
There is no inherent undesirability or
injustice in the fact that different groups are disproportionately represented
in various occupations or institutions.
Only such distributions as result from arbitrary discrimination (or some
other artificial impediment) are objectionable. Affirmative action tends to
treat all differences in
occupation distributions (at least in “high status” occupations) as
objectionable.
It is not only that there is no
compelling reason to seek a homogenized pattern of career distribution. Because career distribution withing a
cultural group depends in part on the values embodied in that culture, the
attempt to get proportional representation (or any other particular pattern) is
an unwarranted imposition of majority (or male) values on minorities and
women. It is an insensitive
intrusion. To use a standard of
desirable occupation distribution for women and minority members which is
derivative from the pattern of white males commits us to the implicit claim
that the career distribution among white men is somehow better than alternative
distributions. This assumption is simply unfounded, and
is disrespectful of cultural differences which manifest themselves in different
patterns of career preference.
The problem is not that there are “too
few of group X represented in profession y”.
The problem, insofar as there is a problem, is that some people are
denied appropriate access to certain professions or to the resources necessary
to enable them to compete successfully for positions in those professions,
because of their racial or gender characteristics. And the problem for affirmative action programs is that they are
incapable of distinguishing between differences in occupational distribution
due to discrimination and those which derive from different patterns of career
preference among members of different groups.
This problem for affirmative action
programs is not solved by changing the numerical standard (representation by
population percentage) to some other standard.
Whatever standard we
choose embodies a claim about what the occupational distribution among women
and minority members ought to be.
But how could we know this? I
assume the standard we would want is one which would produce just the
occupational distribution which would have existed if racial and sexual
discrimination did not (and had not) existed.
But what would that distribution be?
Any actual occupational distribution is a function of a wide variety of
factors, including shifting economic and social conditions, perceived
opportunity of access, and other psychological and cultural factors which enter
into the decisions by individuals to pursue or not pursue a given career. These factors seem quite resistant to any
adequate prediction.
There is just no reliable way of
determining in advance what the occupational distribution in a
non-discriminatory environment would look like. Unfortunately, affirmative action programs involve the imposition
of some standard of what such a distribution should
look like, and in doing so have the effect of rewarding women and minority
members for altering their preferences to match whatever standard of adequate
representation is used. This is, I take
it, an illegitimate goal (if intended), and an undesirable consequence (if
unintended) of affirmative action.
Given these considerations, I cannot see
that affirmative action is productive.
And if it can’t be justified on utilitarian grounds, and if it also can’t
be justified by appeal to justice, then how could it be justified?