Affirmative Action

• Describe Louis Pojman.

  • Louis Pojman takes the position against affirmative action.
  • Says that the situation is tragic but feels that affirmative action is not a legitimate situation because it is unjust reverse discrimination, particularly against young white males.
• Define Weak Affirmative Action.

  Policies that will increase the opportunities of disadvantaged people to attain social goods and offices bringing equal opportunity to compete, not equal results (equity of opportunity).
• What does Weak Affirmative Action include?

  • Dismantling segregated institutions.
  • Widespread advertising to the underrepresented.
  • Special scholarships for the poor regardless of race or gender.
  • Using diversity as tiebreaker when candidates are relatively equal.
• Define Strong Affirmative Action.

  Preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender discriminating in favor of underrepresented groups, while aiming at equal results (equity of outcome).

  • Weak Affirmative Action has considerable moral weight, but the focus of the critique is Strong Affirmative Action (AA).
• More thoughts on AA, according to Pojman.

  • It is right to allow small injustices of equality in order to make up for larger injustices of equality?
  • Though well intentioned, AA advocates reverse discrimination and is morally heinous, asserting, by implication that two wrongs make a right.
• What can Affirmative Action include?

  • Preferential hiring
  • Non-traditional casting
  • Quotas
  • "Goals and timetables"
  • Minority scholarships
  • Reverse discrimination
  • Employment of members of underutilized groups
• More thoughts on AA, according to Pojman (Part 2).

  • AA has been the dominant form in college admissions and university hiring.
  • It creates a new hierarchy of oppression.
• What are Pojman's 4 negative arguments from AA?

  • Role models don't need to be one's "own types" as long as they are good people of any type.
  • It is doubtful that the compensation argument is sufficient to justify preferential treatment.
  • Being the lucky beneficiary of wrongdoing is not good reason to engage in preferential treatment.
  • Diversity is valuable, but does not override the moral requirement to treat each person with moral respect.
• What are Pojman's 3 positive arguments from AA?

  • AA requires racial profiling and discrimination against a different group.
  • AA encourages mediocrity and incompetence.
  • A meritocracy fosters excellence and benefits society.
• Describe Luke Charles Harris and Uma Narayan.

  • Luke Charles Harris and Uma Narayan support affirmative action.
  • Affirmative action is not preferential treatment.
  • It should be understood as attempts to equalize opportunity for groups of people who confront ongoing forms of institutional discrimination and a lack or equal opportunity.
• Describe thoughts about Affirmative Action from Harris and Narayan.

  • Affirmative Action is often misrepresented and misunderstood.
  • It is not strictly a race-based policies or oriented towards benefitting only African Americans.
  • Affirmative action policies are both race-based and class-based focusing on many ethnicities as well as the economically unprivileged.
  • It is not a form of compensation.
• Describe thoughts about Affirmative Action from Harris and Narayan (Part 2).

  • Affirmative action is not intended to promote diversity and other long-term goals; therefore, it doesn't provide justifiable "preferences" to beneficiaries.
  • Prestigious institutions were once almost exclusively the enclave of upper-class white men.
  • Affirmative action doesn't bestow preferences, rather they under the effects of institutional practices and criteria that effectively give preferential treatment to whites.
  • This is why affirmative action promotes equal opportunity.