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The "very clear language" you speak of actually created gaps in the law which ostensibly still abided by the letter. For instance, the SEP article on affirmativ
by claudiawerner 8y ago
The "very clear language" you speak of actually created gaps in the law which ostensibly still abided by the letter. For instance, the SEP article on affirmative action[0] notes that employers, faced with the new act, would remove the pipeline which funneled black people into maintenance jobs but add a requirement such that anyone over a certain number of years at the company would not be allowed to transfer to another department. While seeming fair in according to 'race, color, religion, sex or national origin' its intent and effect was to trap the older black workers (who were of course all hired into maintenance divisions) in their current job and stop them from moving up.
>Thus, preferential affirmative action in the workplace served the same rationale as the non-preferential sort. Its purpose was not to compensate for past wrongs, offset unfair advantage, appropriately reward the deserving, or yield a variety of social goods; its purpose was to change institutions so they could comply with the nondiscrimination mandate of the Civil Rights Act.
In fact, some philosophers have argued that merely receiving the fruits produced by injustice is enough to make one personally liable to compensate a victim for the injustice.
[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/affirmative-action/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/affirmative-action/
- manfredo 8y agoThere's a lot of holes in this logic. For one Asians are hit hardest by affirmative action, but we're historically victims of racism themselves. Not to mention this had a big risk of empowering people to act in what many would probably consider a bigoted manner. Many whites feel that they face injustice due to their race [1]. Under your proposed moral framework many whites would be justified in discriminating in favor of other whites. Remember, you don't have a monopoly over other people's ideas of who is and isn't benefitting from injustice. 1. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-americans-think-theyre-discriminated-against https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-a...
- claudiawerner 8y ago>Under your proposed moral framework many whites would be justified in discriminating in favor of other whites. I haven't proposed any moral framework, I only wanted to elucidate the positions on affirmative action and that it's not nearly as simple as the law itself being twisted to bad ends, but that it comes from a set of difficulties introduced as a result of the law being introduced. When I said "some philosophers", I meant it. If you'd like to read the paper I'm referring to in particular, it's Boxill (1972)[0]. >“We know that all blacks, lower class, middle class, and upper class, have been wronged by racial injustice” (Boxill 1984, 164). In Boxill 1978, 251, he argues that the correlation between “preferences received” and “compensation deserved,” though not perfect, is very high. A recent piece by D. W. Haslett (2002) also conceives of affirmative action as a way to neutralize “tainted” advantages enjoyed by whites, although he concedes that the neutralization is “extremely rough” (83). James Sterba carries on the tradition, striving to refute the claim that affirmative action distributes its benefits and burdens in an up-side down way, rewarding well–off blacks and placing the costs on unoffending whites. Well–off blacks are no less victims of discrimination, he insists, and nearly every white has unjustly benefited from racial discrimination (Sterba 2009, 89–90. Fiscus 1992 echoes Justice Brennan’s argument and generalizes it. [0] https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_1972_0002_0001_0000_0000f https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_1...
- manfredo 8y agoEdit: "we're historically victims" -> "were historically victims". I am not Asian, I hope this typo did not unintentionally deceive readers.