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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Affirmative Action: Diversity vs. Compensatory Justice?

Brian Leiter

That's the issue raised, I take it, in this opinion piece by Senator Webb of Virginia, a white quasi-populist Democrat.  He ignores the possibility that affirmative action may sometimes operate as a remedy, or prophylactic, against current, conscious or unconscious discrimination.  But putting that to one side, it is interesting that the compensatory justice rationale for affirmative action (to compensate the victims of de jure and de facto discrimination, including the descendants of those victims) which loomed large in the 1960s and 1970s has, ever since the Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Bakke, given way to the "diversity" rationale, one that always seemed to me far less compelling and plausible.  In any case, what do readers think about the issues raised by Webb's piece?  Signed comments will be strongly preferred, but any submitted comment must have a valid e-mail address.   Comments will be moderated and/or edited for substance and relevance.

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16 responses to “Affirmative Action: Diversity vs. Compensatory Justice?”

  1. Joseph Garvin, UCD Masters Student

    Well, it seems from a brief glance over it it seems that Webb is arguing for a class-based Affirmative Action, rather than the current race based one – something I can understand. It would still help a greater proportion of black and Hispanic young people than white ones, but would also help some of the poor white population who are, pretty consistently, doing worse than their fathers or grandfathers due to stagnation of real wages and the like…

    However, I think he's making much the same mistakes made, more offensively, by Ross Douthat in the New York Times when he claimed that Harvard and the other Ivy League institutions furthered divisions in the US by being prejudiced against white Christians. In the comments on that article, it was extensively pointed out that offering more Ivy League places to poor Christian whites would not necessarily change anything, as many would prefer not to take those places, for reasons varying from family requirements to cost of living to a desire not to have their beliefs challenged.

    Changing from race-based Affirmative Action to a wealth based system, combined with careful examination of different universities recruiting policies, could be a good idea, but I don't think it will solve the problem of low participation in various groups by poor white Christians, as many do not see that as a problem, but the existence of these un-participated-in groups as the problem…

    I think I wandered there a lot.

    Ref – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19douthat.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss I recommend reading the Highlight comments especially.

    Reply
  2. Paul Schofield

    I have some degree of sympathy with Webb's point– whites are not a monolithic group. I will say, though, that I have taught a couple of courses in which issues of race were discussed, and I think in those instances "diversity" had some value. Usually proponents of diversity emphasize that people of different races are likely to have different experiences, and so to be sensitive to different considerations. I think that was certainly true when discussing affirmative action and racial profiling in class. This isn't to say that minorities all have the same view on the topics– they don't. But they were clearly likely to have thought about the issues in a different way than white students. And, I think the white students appreciated being able to have a frank discussion about sensitive issues with members of different races.

    But, I am not sure how far my experience generalizes. Having a diverse biology class might be totally worthless.

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  3. Columbia Undergrad

    Professor Schofield,
    I think that your point does generalize quite well. At Columbia we are required to take a course on "Contemporary Civilization" that, while it starts with Plato, Aristotle, etc. also includes more contemporary issues of race as discussed in Frederick Douglass, DuBois and Fanon. I think that the variety of backgrounds present, which included Americans of different races, different locations in the country as well as from outside of the US, made the discussions far more interesting than they had been in, for example, my virtually all-white suburban high school classes.

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  4. prasad

    The disciplines in college where minorities are most underrepresented – science and engineering – are also those where the diversity rationale makes least sense. The affirmative argument/justice argument meanwhile seems to always work to the extent it does.

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  5. J.C. Berendzen

    The primary reaction I have to Senator Webb's piece is that whatever one makes of in-principle arguments about diversity or reverse discrimination, more substantial empirical evidence is needed to support his claims (and to illuminate the issue in general). I am reminded of Ronald Dworkin's review of _The Shape of the River_, where he claims that any new arguments about affirmative action need to match the level of sophistication found in Bowen and Bok's work. Of course, Senator Webb can't be expected to provide that in a WSJ opinion piece. And he does provide some minor empirical data to try to support his point–but he is really just supporting the fairly weak claim that the white "race" isn't monolithic, and doesn't seem to me to support at all the stronger claims that current affirmative action policies actually hurt poor whites, and don't really help blacks. Social scientific research is need a bit more than philosophical argument in this case, I think.

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  6. Secondary Teacher

    What bothers me about the diversity rationale for race-based AA is that it isn't clear to me that race confers as much diversity as does class and culture.

    I'm a teacher in a public high school in a very high poverty, black majority area of the deep south. While about 95% of the students in my district are black (white students here overwhelmingly attend private schools), it bothers me that one of the few white students in the district could be passed up for AA-based benefits on diversity grounds in favor of an upper middle class black student whose parents are professionals and who grew up in a nice suburb somewhere. It seems like in such a case the white student would add more diversity value than the black student, even if we think of diversity in terms of ability to contribute diversity to discussions about race.

    So if we accept the diversity rationale for AA, I think class- and culture-based AA makes more sense than race-based AA. That said, I don't think the diversity rationale is the best justification for AA.

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  7. Nathan Howard

    "I am reminded of Ronald Dworkin's review of _The Shape of the River_, where he claims that any new arguments about affirmative action need to match the level of sophistication found in Bowen and Bok's work".

    What work is this? (genuine curiosity, not mere pedantry)

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  8. J. Edward Hackett

    Webb does not support what specific gains are made by minorities at the behest of Whites, nor does he provide any real concrete example of a program he has in mind in the piece. Why is this piece published in the WSJ if no concrete facts are provided specifically about those programs Webb has a problem with. Certainly, a Senator can muster up a concrete example. He's probably voted on the issue and similar programs before.

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  9. Richard Baron

    I take the view that the aim should be to benefit individuals. I can see no merit in benefiting groups, except as a way to benefit individuals. If certain disadvantages of individuals are well-correlated with membership of a group, that might justify affirmative action on the basis of that membership. But even then, action on a group basis would be justified on pragmatic grounds: it would be impractical to identify disadvantaged individuals one by one, and action on a group basis would produce something that was near enough to the desired result. Action to benefit a group might also be justified if future members of the group would benefit, for example if the action would end the correlation between group membership and disadvantage.

    Then, if one accepts the case for affirmative action (a big “if”), the question becomes an empirical one. Can we identify appropriate groups, and take effective action in relation to those groups?

    One’s view on whether there is a case in principle for affirmative action can of course be heavily influenced by taking the line that the aim should be to benefit individuals. One may have a more general position on whether benefits to individuals should be conferred by law or by executive action of the state.

    A focus on benefit to disadvantaged individuals does not accommodate a diversity rationale. But then, I find it hard to see why diversity should in itself be a virtue. It also does not accommodate action that is based on disadvantage to ancestors, although it does accommodate action that is based on disadvantage to living individuals that happens to be a consequence of disadvantage to ancestors.

    I live in England, so I may well have missed the nuances of the American debate on this issue.

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  10. J.C. Berendzen

    @Nathan Howard, the book is called _The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions_. My point wasn't really to say anything about their specific data or arguments–I just thought of it in the context of Webb needing more empirical support.

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  11. seth edenbaum

    Looking at this from a distance, if not "objectively", the debate over affirmative action ties into the debate over judicial review and to other arguments that swing from one pole to another over time, such as those over government intervention in the economy.

    Civil right leaders began to rely on the courts in a period when a certain section of the elite were more likely to help them. Now things are moving in the opposite direction, not just because of excesses but because the original rulings changed people's lives enough to change opinion. Notwithstanding the Walker decision, the growing acceptance of homosexuality is a good example of this, as was Obama's election.

    Affirmative action was and perhaps is necessary, but it's also strictly speaking unfair, so the debate was always a political and ideological one. In many cases what begins as something founded on data develops an inertia and becomes self-supporting even as the original logic fades in relevance. The transition from strong arguments for compensatory justice to weaker ones for diversity would follow from this view. And that's not to say that diversity isn't an important goal. There's also the question raised by Derrick Bell's recent "dissent" in Brown v Board of Education, which would have left politics and social life at the center of the debate, by arguing that equality finally be enforced with the same rigor as separation. His argument may go against the original decision, made by a white elite looking for a quick fix, but would push against the diversity argument even more. However it could also function as an argument for diversity since one could argue that Bell's realism is the realism formed from his experience as a black man.

    I'm not trying to say where we are on this curve, though not as far as some would hope, but I think more and more the responsibility for normalization is moving to the social sphere, which includes direct politics, and away from the rarified politics of the courts. The significance of this argument is that it moves us away from issues of right and wrong, or correct and incorrect, and towards discsussion of our collective definitions of those terms. In retrospect it makes sense that questions of affirmative action would be moving now towards discussion of class, just as it's predictable that arguments against judicial review would be appearing.

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  12. Mark Silcox

    I'm 100% in favor of gradually replacing race-based affirmative action with class-based programs. But I'm frankly amazed that nobody has brought up the element of vile pandering that's manifest in Webb's rhetorical style. Consider the following direct quotation:

    "Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America."

    I think that his use of this unbelievably inappropriate metaphor should leave the reader with very little doubt about which elements of his constituency he's really trying to appeal to, here.

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  13. Blinn Combs

    This is a bit off the cuff, but it seems to me that Webb is blurring the distinction b/w (1) geographical disparities of wealth and educational opportunities and (2) racial disparities in educational or economic achievement. So for example, he compares the education of "white Baptists nationwide" with blacks–not, apparently, black Baptists nationwide, but blacks as a whole, before noting that the white Baptist education level is far below that of the white national average–the only figure that should technically be put head-to-head for a comparison to the black national average if our concern is institutionalized racism.

    The problem for his position, though, is that there's no clear path between scrapping affirmative action policies and getting rid of (1), while there is (granting that this is a matter of practical dispute) a clear path between keeping affirmative action policies while helping to alleviate the effects of (2), or alternatively, jettisoning affirmative action policies while leaving (1) largely intact and considerably worsening (2).

    Webb also creates the impression that all non-white groups are handled identically by affirmative action programs, which is plainly false, as even Douthat's column notes.

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  14. Jeremy Pierce

    There's a practical problem here, though. Those who think affirmative action is justified by anything other than promoting diversity, whether compensatory justice or remedy for past or current discrimination, are in the same position as those who think abortion should be outlawed. The Supreme Court has dictated that promoting diversity is the only constitutional justification for affirmative action, at least in education.

    They were careful, if I remember correctly, to state that they weren't sure the same considerations would apply in cases of hiring or other arenas of affirmative action (and affirmative action based on something other than race, e.g. sex, gender, sexuality would also involve separate issues). Nonetheless, any public institution (and perhaps this applies to institutions receiving public funding, but I'm not sure) is violating the constitutional rights of over-represented groups (i.e. whites and Asians) by implementing an affirmative action policy that isn't based on the promotion of diversity, according to Supreme Court precedent as crafted by (mainly) Justices O'Connor and Breyer.

    It would take a Supreme Court decision overriding the Michigan cases for any other legal justification to count as constitutional. We aren't usually in the business of overriding public university policies on the basis that they have a bad motive in engaging in them, but it makes me wonder if any institution using affirmative action and publicly stating rationales other than diversity-promotion could be sued for a violation of constitutional rights and succeed according to current Supreme Court precedent. I've never seen this question raised, but it seems to me that this is what those opinions say.

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  15. ravi

    While there seems to be some consensus that a "class based" system of affirmative action is both more discerning and broader in reach, I worry that class fails to capture historical privileges and advantages that might counter current status. Perhaps this concern is applicable not so much to admission processes but to advancement, since the former employs more quantifiable selection criteria. The glass ceiling is characterised by softer criteria, such as "connections" or pedigree, accents and appearance, and so on.

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  16. Mark Engleson

    Some of Webb's concerns are already addressed, albeit in a blunt manner. The PSAT scored required to become a National Merit scholar, for example, varies by state. One has score higher to in Mass. or NY than in Arkansas or Alabama. Many schools also take into account "geographic diversity." State schools often give some favor to applicants from underrepresented counties; private schools from underrepresented states. College applications also typically ask about the educational level achieved by parents.

    As I said, these are not precise responses to Webb's concerns. But they do go at least some of the way to addressing them.

    Reply

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