Making Sense of Affirmative Action

Abstract

Abstract What makes affirmative action morally (un)justified? That is this book’s core question. Its main contribution consists in a meticulous scrutiny of the strength of the six main arguments for—i.e., the compensation, the anti-discrimination, the equality of opportunity, the role model, the diversity, and the integration-based justifications—and the five main objections to affirmative action—i.e., the reverse discrimination, the stigma, the mismatch, the publicity, and the merit-based objections—and of how these arguments relate to one another. The book argues that all of the five main objections to affirmative action are either flawed or quite limited in terms of their implications. With regard to the arguments in favor of affirmative action, the book shows why the anti-discrimination and equality of opportunity-based arguments provide strong justifications for many affirmative action schemes. In light thereof and the fact that the five most influential arguments against affirmative action are all flawed or otherwise weak, the overall claim defended in the book is that many of the schemes that people have in mind when they discuss affirmative action (many of which are presently on the retreat) are justified. However, the book also emphasizes that any definitive answer to the question Is affirmative action morally (un)justified? must rest on a wide range of empirical results in the social sciences etc., e.g., about the likely effects of various affirmative action schemes; and that the question, when posed in such general form (unlike when it is asked about specific schemes of affirmative action), admits of no direct positive or negative answer.