Affirmative Action, Justice: We Do What We Owe

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Affirmative action, justice: We do what we owe

Introduction

Affirmative action establishes policies that give a minority a preference situation in access to certain resources or services. Its purpose is to achieve compensation for the damages suffered in the past and this is carried out through administrative mandates or legal provisions, which create controversies and that we will crumble throughout this essay.

Michael Sandel in his work ‘Justice: we do what we owe’ he cites several examples of this philosophical idea and we hesitate with the arguments that are not in their favor. It uses as opposed concepts access to university education, the purchase of housing in an American neighborhood and the auction in access to higher education.

Before doing the analysis of positive discrimination, it should be noted that this political idea has been living in today’s world for many years. Its origin occurs in the United States, where racial discrepancies caused the State to intervene and legislate in favor of minorities. In the nineteenth century this concept reached some success, but it is not until the twentieth century where it was made effective, suppressing the limitation (access) that the black people had to the jobs.

Similarly, American universities began to allow access to their study centers (black people), but with important nuances: a appraised percentage and easy access. As they say, from the United States for the world, this idea has moved to many nations and it is in the first world countries where it has adapted better to its juncture. Leaving aside the brief review of the origin of this philosophical modality, we put the question that began this essay.

Developing

Michael Sandel cites two examples to access the university through affirmative action: the first is the racial issue and the second money. In both cases the criticism is open and we will confront it from the moral point of view.

What is moral? The meaning that is closest to reality is that it is a set of norms that are accepted in a society and serve as a pattern to assess what is right or wrong. Well, we are going to relate this term to affirmative action.

The protagonist is a white test student. He had a good academic average and failed to access the university. The reason: a certain number of vacancies were reserved for black students. What reasons did the university have to accept it? In the first lines of this essay we have given the concept of affirmative action, therefore it is clear that the university favors a minority. However, this attitude discriminates to someone who has made the merits to get the square.

The university criteria are based on affirmative action and what promulgates is that in the states there must be black and Latin race professionals and therefore the higher education centers must contribute to the cause so that they can later live together in thePublic positions local professionals with discriminated ethnic groups.

Now, what moral criteria have led the university to discriminate positively? To understand this issue you have to handle the idea of compensation and diversity. The first is the way to give something or make a benefit for the damage or evil that has been caused and the second is to favor the variety.

We are in parts, first of all, it should be noted that many academics do not agree with this way of doing politics, because compensating someone from past events is not morally correct. And even more, if new generations have not been recipients of negative discrimination, rather, they live in a modern social situation and without prejudice.

Second, the tendency to promote diversity is something that is morally allowed, since, in general, it enriches society. On the other hand, the auction to access the university is another controversial issue. Sandel does not criticize this conception because he considers that he is very seen. He argues stating that if access is auctioned at a university, it is done to finance research programs. Looking at it, it is difficult.

What do liberals think? Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher who has studied Rawls’s liberal concepts. States that the purpose of affirmative action is to incorporate minorities into educational environments, allowing access to be sensitive.

Without a doubt, this idea is linked to the "theory of justice" of Ralws, which despite not implicitly mentioning affirmative action, proposes that inequalities can be favored with the principle of difference, so thatJustice is aimed at correcting the inequalities of the structure of society. Rawls makes two differences in the concept of justice as equity and proposes two principles:

  1. Each person must have a right equal to the most extensive scheme of basic freedoms compatible with a similar scheme of freedom for others.
  2. Social and economic inequalities must be resolved in such a way that:
  • Charges and positions must be open for all people under conditions of equal opportunities (fair equal opportunities).
  • Are in the greatest benefit of the least outstanding members of society (the principle of difference). (Rawls, 1971)

The principle of difference, in a way, is what we know today as affirmative action or positive discrimination. According to Ralws, this axiom is not against inequality when justification is to give an advantage to those who have less. The contradiction comes, in reference to access to the university, when it mentions that equality has to be similar to all. According to this ideal, it is considered that distributive justice is connected to the principle of individual freedoms (defended by Ralws), since it treats the subjects equally depending on their merits.

For Dworkin, the individual rights of citizens are linked to a democratic ideal of political and social equality. Economic development during evolution has not been accompanied by the egalitarian distribution of resources and wealth. This philosopher reasons that the measure of differentiated treatment is justified in decisions that favor collective interest.

‘Compensatory justifications assume that positive discrimination is necessary, as Scalia said, to compensate minorities for the damage inflicted to their race or class in the past. As said judge rightly warned, it constitutes a mistake to think that one breed owes another compensation. However, universities do not use breed -sensitive admission standards to compensate individuals or different groups. Indeed, positive discrimination is a company that looks to the future -not to the past -, and students who are members of the minority groups to those who benefit have not necessarily been victims, as individuals, of some injustice in the past. The most important universities do not hopeU.S.’(Dworkin, 2003)

conclusion

In short, affirmative action is the consequence of the evolution of humanity and the states that in the past have oppressed a minority. Controversy regarding this ideal focuses on practice and result. In practice because negatively discriminates to those who have the necessary merits to access something and in the result because on certain occasions it has the desired success. Is good or bad? We could not affirm another thing, not even Ralws was aware to answer this issue, but we are sure that it has contributed to human development and above all has designed an innovative vision that has become common in time in social policies andeconomic states.

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