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Affirmative Action: Social Justice or Reverse Discrimination?
What is our equal opportunity or equality of result? The debate rages on.The November 5, 1996 decision by voters in California to eliminate most forms of state sanctioned affirmative action ignited a civil rights debate that sent shock waves across the country. The vote had critics celebrating the dawn of a new era of equal rights, while opponents warned of school and workplace discrimination without the protective blanket of affirmative action.The question of racial equality has inspired new debate today, reminiscent of the conflicts of the 1960s. Again we ask Is affirmative action necessary to maintain equal labor practices, school desegregation plans, and broad social standards of racial equality? Does affirmative action or laws to roll it back go against the idea of equality itself? Should race play an important role in college admissions and corporate hiring? Is affirmative action a poison instead of a cure? For some, it depends on how the term is defined.These and other questions are debated in this highly charged collection of essays by a distinguished group of politicians, philosophers, educators, and others including Tom Beauchamp, Ward Connerly, Ronald Dworkin, Stanley Fish, Lyndon Johnson, Nicholas LeMann, Louis Pojman, George Sher, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Richard Wasserstrom, Cornell West, and Steven Yates. Included also are important legal decisions bearing on affirmative action.
250 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1997
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May 20, 2024
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS FROM ‘BOTH SIDES’ OF THE ISSUE
Editors Francis J. Beckwith and Todd E. Jones wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “In this book we divide the debate over affirmative action into two general categories: Part One: The Public Policy Debate Over Affirmative Action, and Part Two: Philosophical discussions Of Affirmative Action. Although the issues discussed in the essays in each category certainly overlap, there is a difference between the public policy debate and the philosophical debate. First, the philosophical justification of affirmative action is logically prior to the public policy justification… Second, even though philosophical justification is logically prior to public policy justification, inquiry into philosophical justification may lead to one of three conclusions about the policy in question: (1) the policy is impermissible, (2) the policy is permissible (but not obligatory), of (3) the policy is obligatory… The editors of this text each take different positions on the issue of affirmative action. Although we disagree, we are friends who have respect for each other… we believe this collection of essays satisfies a real need for a book which deals with the more serous philosophical and public policy defenses and critiques of affirmative action as well as providing a hearing for nuanced positions which don’t fit very well into the two polarized camps often portrayed in the popular media.”
Nicholas Lehmann states, “If hiring and admission are done purely on the basis of test scores, the black presence will be a fraction of what it is in the population, and bringing it higher requires rejecting some whites who scored better than the blacks who were hired or admitted.” (Pg. 44)
He continues, “down through the decades, the muscles that liberals would have used to make a public case for affirmative action atrophied---and the conservatives were becoming magnificently buffed and toned. What’s good about the current crisis for affirmative action is that is means a debate will take place that should have taken place long ago; if it had, affirmative action wouldn’t be so vulnerable now.” (Pg. 51)
President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Commencement Address at Howard University observes, “freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” (Pg. 57)
Frederick R. Lynch says, “Since there have been few female, black, or Hispanic Ph.D.s in the high-demand fields of physical science business, engineering, and math, most female, non-Asian minority faculty were likely to be hired in education and in the glutted, low-demand humanities and social sciences. It is reasonable to assume that administrative prompting to hire females and minorities created pressures---however subtle---against hiring white males.” (Pg. 97-98)
Shelby Steele notes, “Affirmative Action … tells us that racial preferences can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The corruption here is in the hidden incentive NOT to do what we believe preferences will do. this is an incentive to be reliant on others just as we are struggling for self-reliance. And it keeps alive the illusion that we can find some deliverance in repayment. The hardest thing for any sufferer to accept is that his suffering excuses him from very little and never has enough currency to restore him. To think otherwise is to prolong the suffering.” (Pg. 138)
Stanley Fish states, “So here is the great SAT test, devised by a racist in order to confirm racist assumptions, measuring not native ability but cultural advantage, an uncertain indicator of performance, an indicator of very little except what money and social privilege can buy. And it is in the name of this mechanism that we are asked to reject affirmative action and reaffirm ‘the importance of merit criteria in admissions.’” (Pg. 146)
Louis J. Pojman points out, “note, no one is calling for quotas or proportional representation of UNDERUTILIZED groups in the National Basketball Association where blacks make up 80 percent of the players. But if merit and merit alone reigns in sports, should it not be valued at least as much in education and industry.” (Pg. 192)
This book will be of interest to those seriously studying Affirmative Action, and related issues.
Editors Francis J. Beckwith and Todd E. Jones wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “In this book we divide the debate over affirmative action into two general categories: Part One: The Public Policy Debate Over Affirmative Action, and Part Two: Philosophical discussions Of Affirmative Action. Although the issues discussed in the essays in each category certainly overlap, there is a difference between the public policy debate and the philosophical debate. First, the philosophical justification of affirmative action is logically prior to the public policy justification… Second, even though philosophical justification is logically prior to public policy justification, inquiry into philosophical justification may lead to one of three conclusions about the policy in question: (1) the policy is impermissible, (2) the policy is permissible (but not obligatory), of (3) the policy is obligatory… The editors of this text each take different positions on the issue of affirmative action. Although we disagree, we are friends who have respect for each other… we believe this collection of essays satisfies a real need for a book which deals with the more serous philosophical and public policy defenses and critiques of affirmative action as well as providing a hearing for nuanced positions which don’t fit very well into the two polarized camps often portrayed in the popular media.”
Nicholas Lehmann states, “If hiring and admission are done purely on the basis of test scores, the black presence will be a fraction of what it is in the population, and bringing it higher requires rejecting some whites who scored better than the blacks who were hired or admitted.” (Pg. 44)
He continues, “down through the decades, the muscles that liberals would have used to make a public case for affirmative action atrophied---and the conservatives were becoming magnificently buffed and toned. What’s good about the current crisis for affirmative action is that is means a debate will take place that should have taken place long ago; if it had, affirmative action wouldn’t be so vulnerable now.” (Pg. 51)
President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Commencement Address at Howard University observes, “freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” (Pg. 57)
Frederick R. Lynch says, “Since there have been few female, black, or Hispanic Ph.D.s in the high-demand fields of physical science business, engineering, and math, most female, non-Asian minority faculty were likely to be hired in education and in the glutted, low-demand humanities and social sciences. It is reasonable to assume that administrative prompting to hire females and minorities created pressures---however subtle---against hiring white males.” (Pg. 97-98)
Shelby Steele notes, “Affirmative Action … tells us that racial preferences can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The corruption here is in the hidden incentive NOT to do what we believe preferences will do. this is an incentive to be reliant on others just as we are struggling for self-reliance. And it keeps alive the illusion that we can find some deliverance in repayment. The hardest thing for any sufferer to accept is that his suffering excuses him from very little and never has enough currency to restore him. To think otherwise is to prolong the suffering.” (Pg. 138)
Stanley Fish states, “So here is the great SAT test, devised by a racist in order to confirm racist assumptions, measuring not native ability but cultural advantage, an uncertain indicator of performance, an indicator of very little except what money and social privilege can buy. And it is in the name of this mechanism that we are asked to reject affirmative action and reaffirm ‘the importance of merit criteria in admissions.’” (Pg. 146)
Louis J. Pojman points out, “note, no one is calling for quotas or proportional representation of UNDERUTILIZED groups in the National Basketball Association where blacks make up 80 percent of the players. But if merit and merit alone reigns in sports, should it not be valued at least as much in education and industry.” (Pg. 192)
This book will be of interest to those seriously studying Affirmative Action, and related issues.
Displaying 1 of 1 review