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2/26/2003 03:47:00 PM | Timothy Equal Opportunity, Historical Injustices to Groups, and Radical Egalitarianism "After all, the object here is to close all socioeconomic gaps between the races....There will always be differences in the abilities and achievements of individuals, but achievement differences correlate with race must never be tolerated. That gap must be fully closed." -Randall Robinson, The Debt "for the purposes of distributive justice, groups don't matter and the past doesn't matter. Justice is concerned with living individuals and with future individuals. The view that groups don't matter I call ethical individualsim. The view that the past doesn't matter I call ethical presentism." -Jon Elster, "Ethical Individualism and Presentism" Robinson says the gap between the races is traceable to legacy of slavery. Elster says we shouldn't be concerned about the past unless it leaves morally relevant traces on the present. Is group inequality, as oppossed to individual inequality a morally relevant trace? Even if some people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, why don't Blacks and whites succeed in equal numbers? Is this prima facie evidnece there in bot really equal opportunity for all individuals in America? And if there isn't, how do you correct for it or do you leave it alone? Mark van Roojen notes that if slavery and discrimination had not occurred, whites who are 'victims' of affirmative action would likely not be as rich as they are today, and would have to compete with more minorities: so they do not 'deserve' a job they would not have gotten in a world in which past (and present) discrimination had not occurred. (Of course, the problem is there certainly will some, if not as many, whites who would considered victims under this standard, is it fair to give a great number of Blacks something approaching equal opportunity at the expense of a few's equal opportunity? Is there something special about the status quo or are we as a society responsible for correcting the past and/or ensuring a fair future? If one white's rights are hurt to give rights to 1000 blacks is that unjust? This requires a non-consequentialist argument that correcting for wrong is unjust if it hurts others: specifically we cannot take race into account and help the victims of racism because of the past bad uses of race (hmmmm, anyone see a problem here?) Keep in mind that the argument against affirmative action partly depends on a notion that you are helping the disadvantaged (Blacks) at the expense of the possibly more disadvantaged (poor whites), but I don't see how you could indict Michigan's policy on this basis.) George Sher notes that all pro-affimative action arguments based on diversity must rely on an idea of what groups should be considered to add diversity, and usually the groups singled out have suffered from historical discrimination. I support rectifying past discrimination. Can one rely just on 'diversity' and foward looking considerations to support affirmative action? But if you are not an egalitarian and believe in the crucial importance of inheritance and property rights, then don't you have to be historical? Robert Nozick, libertarian of the Gods, argues any pattern of distribution, however unequal, is just if it resuted from just (freely consented) transfers of property. But this is only true for Nozick if the intital appropriation of property is just. So why don't conservatives who respect property rights support reparations for unpaid slave wages, and possibly giving losts of wrongly stolen land back to Native Americans? (Nozick, by the way, allows rectification to take place based on rules of thumb if we don't have perfect information about how exactly rectify past injustices.) So conservatives, why don't you support repartions? Conservative Charles Krauthammer argues that we should give repartions for slavery so we don't have to have affirmative action. Jeremy Waldron says that property rights must change with circumstances, and we must take into account people's needs today. But he notes this only applies if people are honestly willing to look foward and envision more just distributions. I can see why radical egalitarians could be against reparations and (some) Native American land claims. But conservatives who point out egalitarians like rawls ignore history, and where goods and property come from, cannot themselves claim that history never matters. Food for thought. perma link |
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