Affirmative Action: does it do ‘justice’ to its intended purpose?

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Harris's claim about the deep interrelation of racial identity and property can be summed up in her narration of her grandmother's account in how “being white automatically ensured higher economic returns in the short run, as well as greater economic, political, and social security in the long run” (1713) However, while Harris provides a brilliant and accurate historical account of white privilege and the “legal protections of the existing hierarchy” (1779), it fails to suggest viable alterations that both, in theory, and de-facto make a more equal and just state of affairs. Even after conceding to the claims made by Harris across chapters I to IV, her case for affirmative action falls apart pretty quickly. Disregarding academics such as Thomas Sowell from the Hoover Institution who empirically nullify the case for affirmative action, Harris’s conceptual claims for affirmative action are crowded with flaws and contradictions.

For example, after claiming that “black identity does not involve the systemic subordination of whites” (1785), Harris proceeds to make the case for the South African conception of affirmative action, which involves “modifying existing distributions of property by rectifying unjust loss and inequality” (1790). While Harris tries to argue, in part B of chapter V, against affirmative action being “ A new form of status property”, her arguments are often shaky and contradictory. She claims affirmative action is “not a matter of implementing systemic disadvantage”, prior to which she argues for compensation and reparations to the black people for the injustices of the past (1781-1782). She also claims that “whites are not an oppressed people and are not at risk of becoming so” (1786), using it as a justification for acts of exploitation, or affirmative action. In zero-sum game scenarios such as college admissions or jobs, it seems to think that affirmative action does not violate Harris’s understanding and definition of exclusion.

In the case of affirmative action, the normative question of, whether we should be “rethinking rights, power and equality” (1779), is very closely tied to the practical question that is, can we constitutionally implement “equal treatment” in a way that does not reverse discriminate?


Comments

  1. HurleyJanuary 26, 2023 at 10:03 AM

    Not seeing contradictions in the claims that you juxtapose. If members of one group, by virtue of that membership, have received by state action an unjust distributive advantage, isn't it incumbent on a just society, when it recognizes its role in creating and perpetuating this injustice, to take steps to restore a just distribution? If I underpayed my taxes through a government error, and you overpayed, doesn't justice require a rebate for you, and an additional tax bill for me, when the error is discovered? And if I protest that I am an innocent person who is being punished (I didn't do anything wrong, and now I have to pay more money!), won't such a complaint miss its mark? I am claiming to be an innocent wronged in efforts to correct a wrong to you, but Harris would take such a claim, like many claims against affirmative action, to be misguided.

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