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The Message of Affirmative Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Thomas E. Hill
Thomas E. Hill
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of North Carolina
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Extract

Affirmative action programs remain controversial, I suspect, partly because the familiar arguments for and against them start from significantly different moral perspectives. Thus I want to step back for a while from the details of debate about particular programs and give attention to the moral viewpoints presupposed in different types of argument. My aim, more specifically, is to compare the “messages” expressed when affirmative action is defended from different moral perspectives. Exclusively forward-looking (for example, utilitarian) arguments, I suggest, tend to express the wrong message, but this is also true of exclusively backward-looking (for example, reparation-based) arguments. However, a moral outlook that focuses on cross-temporal narrative values (such as mutually respectful social relations) suggests a more appropriate account of what affirmative action should try to express. Assessment of the message, admittedly, is only one aspect of a complex issue, but it is a relatively neglected one. My discussion takes for granted some common-sense ideas about the communicative function of action, and so I begin with these.

Actions, as the saying goes, often speak louder than words. There are times, too, when only actions can effectively communicate the message we want to convey and times when giving a message is a central part of the purpose of action. What our actions say to others depends largely, though not entirely, upon our avowed reasons for acting; and this is a matter for reflective decision, not something we discover later by looking back at what we did and its effects. The decision is important because “the same act” can have very different consequences, depending upon how we choose to justify it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Spring 1991 , pp. 108 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1991

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References

1 See, for example, the following: John, Arthur, ed., Morality and Moral Controversies, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1986). ch. 11, pp. 305–47Google Scholar; Blackstone, William T. and Heslep, Robert D., eds., Social Justice and Preferential Treatment (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Boxill, Bernard, Blacks and Social Justice (Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984)Google Scholar; Marshall, Cohen, Thomas, Nagel, and Thomas, Scanlon, eds., Equality and Preferential Treatment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Fullinwider, Robert K., The Reverse Discrimination Controversy (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980)Google Scholar; Goldman, Alan H., Justice and Reverse Discrimination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Greenawalt, Kent, Discrimination and Reverse Discrimination (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983).Google ScholarGross, Barry R., ed., Reverse Discrimination (Buffalo: Prometheus Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Mappes, Thomas A. and Zembaty, Jane S., eds., Social Ethics (2nd ed.; New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982), ch. 5, pp. 159–98.Google Scholar

2 See Wasserstrom, Richard, “Racism and Sexism,” “Preferential Treatment” in his Philosophy and Social Issues (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980).Google Scholar

3 Frankena, William K., “The Concept of Social Justice,” in Social Justice, ed. Brandt, Richard B. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), pp. 8–9Google Scholar; Henry, Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907), pp. 379, 386ff.Google Scholar; Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 56–60, 180, 235–239, 504ff.Google Scholar

4 Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke, 98 S.Ct. 2733, 46 L.W. 4896 (1978). Reprinted in Wasserstrom, , ed., Today's Moral Issues, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 149–207, esp. pp. 156–57.Google Scholar

5 Sowell, Thomas, Race and Economics (New York: David McKay Co., 1975)Google Scholar, ch. 6; Markets and Minorities (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1981), pp. 114–15.

6 Ross, W.D., The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930).Google Scholar

7 James Forman was at the time director of international affairs for SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). The “Black Manifesto” stems from an economic development conference sponsored by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations, April 26, 1969, and presented by Forman at the New York Interdominational Riverside Church on May 4, 1969. Later the demand was raised to three billion dollars. See Lecky, Robert S. and Wright, H. Elliot, Black Manifesto (New York: Sheed and Ward Publishers, 1969), pp. vii, 114–26.Google Scholar

8 Boxill, Bernard, “The Morality of Reparation,” Social Theory and Practice, vol. 2, no. 1 (1972), pp. 113–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Blacks and Social Justice, ch. 7.

9 In the article cited above, Boxill calls what is owed “reparation,” but in the book (above) he calls it “compensation.” The latter term, preferred by many, is used more broadly to cover not only restitution for wrongdoing but also “making up” for deficiencies and losses that are not anyone's fault (for example, naturally caused physical handicaps, or damages unavoidably resulting from legitimate and necessary activities). We could describe the backward-looking arguments presented here as demands for “compensation” rather than “reparation,” so long as we keep in mind that the compensation is supposed to be due as the morally appropriate response to past wrongdoing.

10 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, tr. Thomson, A. K. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1955), bk. V, esp. pp. 143–55.Google Scholar

11 See Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, pp. 132ff., and Dworkin, Ronald, “Reverse Discrimination,” in Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 231ff.Google Scholar

12 See, for example, Macintyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1981).Google Scholar Similar themes are found in Gilligan, CarolIn A Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar and in Blum, Lawrence, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980).Google Scholar

13 Regarding cultural and moral relativism see, for example, Wong, David B., Moral Relativity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar, with an excellent bibliography, and Brandt, Richard B., Ethical Theory (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959), ch. 11, pp. 271–94.Google Scholar Versions of particularism are presented in Oldenquist, Andrew, “Loyalties,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79 (1982), pp. 173–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lawrence Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality; and Williams, Bernard, “Persons, Character and Morality” in Moral Luck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Moore, G.E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), pp. 27ff.Google Scholar

15 That is, the evaluation is independent of the past in the sense that the past makes no intrinsic difference to the final judgment and the future is not evaluated as a part of a temporal whole including the past. As noted, however, consequentialists will still look to the past for lessons and clues about how to bring about the best future.

16 For an interesting illustration of reciprocal desires (e.g., A wanting B, B wanting A, A wanting B to want A, B wanting A to want B, A wanting B to want A to want B, etc.), see Nagel, Thomas, “Sexual Perversion,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 66 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Racism and sexism present significantly different problems, but I shall not try to analyze the differences here. For the most part (and especially in the analogy to follow) my primary focus is on racism, but the relevance of the general type of moral thinking considered here to the problems of sexism should nonetheless be evident.

18 How severe these drawbacks are will, of course, depend upon the particular means of affirmative action that are selected and how appropriate these are for the situation. For example, if, to meet mandated quotas, highly-ranked colleges and universities offer special admission to students not expected to succeed, then they may well be misleading those students into a wasteful and humiliating experience when those students could have thrived at lower-ranked educational institutions. This practice was explicitly rejected in the policies at Pomona College and at U.C.L.A. described in Section I, but William Allen (a contributor to this volume) suggested to me in discussion that, in his opinion, the practice is quite common. The practice, I think, is unconscionable, and my argument in no way supports it.

Geoffrey Miller, another contributor to this volume, described in discussion another possible affirmative action program that would be quite inappropriate to the circumstances but is again not supported by the line of argument I have suggested. He asks us to imagine a “permanent underclass” of immigrants who are “genetically or culturally deficient” and as a result fail to succeed. Since we do not share a common social and cultural history of injustice resulting in their condition, the historical dimension of my case for affirmative action is missing. And since they are a “permanent” underclass, and thus the “genetic or cultural deficiencies” that result in their failure cannot be altered, one cannot argue that universities can help them or even can sincerely give them an encouraging “message” through affirmative action. This does not mean, however, that there are not other reasons for society to extend appropriate help. Also, any suggestion that certain urban populations that are now called a “permanent underclass” are accurately and fairly described by the “fictional” example is politically charged and needs careful examination.

19 Although my aim in this paper has been to survey general types of arguments for thinking that some sort of affirmative action is needed, rather than to argue for any particular program, one cannot reasonably implement the general idea without considering many contextual factors that I have set aside here. Thus, though the moral perspective suggested here seems to favor the second method described in Section I (recruitment, special funds, accountability) over the first method (proportionality, given a fixed lower standard), the need for more detailed discussion is obvious.