Affirmative Action, Discrimination, and Equality

            In June 2023, right-wing influences on the Supreme Court weakened affirmative action, and so I am thinking about under what conditions discrimination is justified. Discrimination can be used in a couple senses. In the first sense, there’s discrimination in the sense of finding some group or quality less valuable than another group or quality. In previous centuries, only white men were educated. Now women and people who are not white can also receive education. Previously, women and people who are not white were discriminated against in education, meaning they were found less valuable or unable to be educated.

In the second sense, there’s discrimination merely differentiating between two things, with no claim in difference of value. I can divide all quarters into those minted before 1979, or those minted in 1979 or later, but they are all still worth 25 cents.

Only one person can be President, and we try to choose them carefully. So in some sense we discriminate between people to determine who the President should be. Or the NBA discriminates against people, because the average height of an NBA player is six feet and six inches, so they discriminate against shorter people. A lion tries to hunt a sickly or elderly gazelle, so in some sense the lion is discriminating against gazelles. When people decide who to marry, they look for certain characteristics, so they discriminate among people to find a partner who they prefer. A Fortune 500 company hires a CEO with certain characteristics, probably with an MBA from an Ivy League school.

Discrimination means finding something inferior that is not grounded in both reason and morals. Women and people of color didn’t receive education because they weren’t thought to be able to be educated, now, however, we know that women and people of color can be educated. So we learned that gender and race discrimination in education wasn't grounded in reason. We discriminate against people to determine who the President is, and fairness doesn’t dictate that we let anyone be President, but that we re-evaluate the qualities we look for in a President periodically to make sure they’re grounded in reason and morality. If someone wants to be a CEO of a large company, or in a position of authority, or a political leader in some way, fairness and non-discrimination doesn’t mandate that we let anyone who wants to be in those positions, but that we make sure that the qualities we look for are grounded in reason and morality.

Before President Kennedy, there had never been a President who was Catholic. Before President Obama, there had never been a President who was African American. There has never been a President who is a woman. It’s not that Catholics, African-Americans, or women can never be Presidents, it’s that usually, for a number of reasons, due to lack of opportunity or other barriers, due to implicit or explicit discrimination in the career paths to becoming a Fortune 500 CEO, or President, or other role, that they aren’t put in the position to achieve those things. Equality of opportunity is a goal worth striving for, and if groups of people (whether by race, gender, or income) aren't meeting the characteristics of leaders we look for, we should ask ourselves why. 

            I will further clarify some ideas about people and equality. When I use the word, “person,” or “people,” I am referring exclusively to human people and not to corporations. Certain legal theories view corporations as people. If corporations are people, and corporations can be bought or sold, then people can be bought and sold. But slavery has been abolished. Since slavery has been abolished, people cannot be owned, and therefore neither bought nor sold. To say that people are equal, does not mean that people are all the same, because clearly people have differences. People have different characteristics, such as religious, racial, physical characteristics, abilities, disabilities, wealth, and political power. These differences in attributes of people do not mean that the people themselves are not equal.

Even with affirmative action, there is a smaller percentage of African Americans at Ivy League colleges than college-age Americans. So moving back further, and asking why aren't more African Americans getting the chance to go to the Ivy League? And the answer is probably not great K-12 education, or housing or food insecurity. Despite some right-wing influences on the Supreme Court weakening anti-discrimination protection and expanding notions of corporate personhood, people can still working to prevent discrimination, and as Vice President Harris says, create an opportunity economy.

 

 

A paragraph of this writing was used in an assignment for one of my classes in Fall 2024. I wrote most of this post a while ago, but here are some sources that I used on the homework assignment on a related topic.

Raj, Chetty; Deming, David; Friedman, John. (2023). Diversifying Society’s Leaders: the Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Colleges. https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Paper.pdf

Sandel, Michael. (2020). The Tyranny of Merit.

Wilkerson, Isabel. (2020). Caste.