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Is Affirmative Action
Wrong?
II
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Robert Simon: “Preferential Hiring: A Reply to
Judith Jarvis Thomson”
Simon’s Central Argument
• Thomson’s analysis of the issues bearing on preferential hiring
is “seriously incomplete”.
 Granting Thomson’s claim that compensation is due victims
of social injustice, preferential hiring is a questionable
method of distributing such compensation.
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Recall Thomson’s Argument
• Thomson proposes that, in a case of choosing between
candidates for an academic post, where all candidates are
equally qualified, the hiring officer does no injustice to the
white male candidate by choosing straightway for the black
or female candidate.
 The groups composed of blacks and women have been the
victims of social injustices.
 Members of the white male community have benefited from
social injustices brought on groups of blacks and women.
 White male candidates for a job have no right to the job.
 But blacks and women are owed some form of
compensation for the social injustices brought upon them,
where white males are owed no such compensation.
 Therefore, equally qualified white male candidates have no
rights violated when jobs are given to black and female
candidates straightway.
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Groups and Individuals
• Objection to Preferential Hiring: If special treatment for blacks
and women is justified, then other victims of injustice and
misfortune should also receive special treatment.
• Thomson denies that, where distribution of compensation is
concerned, other such victims of injustice and misfortune
should automatically have priority over blacks and women.
 Thomson argues that blacks and women belong to certain
groups that have been treated unjustly, and so, as
members of those groups, are owed a debt.
 As such, even where some individual within that group has
not himself been treated unjustly, Thomson’s proposed
policy can justify giving him preferential treatment.
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Groups and Individuals (cont’d)
• However, on such a policy, a white male who is nevertheless
a victim of injustice and misfortune, is not a candidate
recipient for special treatment.
• Thomson compares the plight of the black or female job
candidate with that of the veteran job candidate: each
belongs to a group that is owed a debt.
 However, where the group of veterans consists in those
who fought for the country (and, so, each is owed a debt),
the groups of blacks and women does not consist of those
who were treated unjustly by society.
 “[I]f the reason for giving preference to a black person or to
a woman is that the recipient has been injured due to an
unjust practice, then preference must be given to anyone
who has been similarly injured.” (389)
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Groups and Individuals (cont’d)
 The only possible group to single out is the group made up
of those and only those who have been injured or
victimized.
 Thomson claims that all blacks and women belong to this
group, and deserve compensation qua victim, and not qua
black or woman.
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Groups and Individuals (cont’d)
• Possible Reply #1: Anyone injured in the same way as blacks
or women ought to receive compensation.
 The problem, here, is that “same way” seems so narrowly
defined that it applies only to blacks and women.
 Such a policy implies that a nonblack male who has been
terribly injured by social injustice has less of a claim to
compensation than a black or woman who has only been
minimally injured.
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Groups and Individuals (cont’d)
• Possible Reply #2: Compensation is not owed to individuals
per se, but to a group, and anyone who belongs to a
victimized group ought to receive compensation.
 Surely we can accept that the groups made up of blacks
and of women have among the strongest claims for
compensation.
 However: “What should be noted is that the conclusion of
concern here—that preferential hiring policies are
acceptable instruments for compensating groups—does not
directly follow.” (389)
 That is, it does not follow from the fact that some group
members are compensated that the group as a whole is
compensated.
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Groups and Individuals (cont’d)
 What is required are additional, plausible premises showing
how the award of jobs to particular members of a group
qualifies as collective compensation to the group.
 Thomson provides no such premises. Indeed, it seems that
Thomson’s policy of preferential hiring is at odds with
collective compensation, for preferential hiring awards
compensation to an arbitrary segment of a group, not to the
group as a whole.
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Groups and Individuals (cont’d)
• The proponent of preferential hiring faces the following
dilemma:
 Either (a) compensation is made on an individual basis, or
(b) it is made on a group basis.
 If (a), then whether one is black or female is irrelevant to
whether one ought to receive special treatment.
 If (b), then it is far from clear how preferential hiring policies
are acceptable compensatory instruments.
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Arbitrariness in Distribution
• Further questions arise as to how satisfactorily preferential
hiring treatments would honor entitlements to those
deserving of compensation.
• Proportionality Principle (PP): The strength of one’s
compensatory claim, and the quantity of compensation one is
entitled to is, ceteris paribus, proportional to the degree of
injury suffered.
 If X and Y were both injured to the same extent, and both
deserve compensation for their injury, then, ceteris paribus,
each has a compensatory claim of equal strength and is
entitled to equal compensation.
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Arbitrariness in Distribution (cont’d)
• A hiring policy that gives preference to blacks and women is
unlikely to satisfy the PP because of the arbitrariness in the
search for candidates on the open market.
 “[W]hile the market place is used to distributed
compensation, distribution will be by market principles, and
hence only accidentally will be fitting in view of the injury
suffered and compensation provided for others.” (390)
 Preferential hiring policies arbitrarily discriminate in favor of
some victims of past injustice and against others: the basis
on which compensation is awarded is independent of the
basis on which it is owed, so compensation is made on
irrelevant grounds.
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Arbitrariness in Cost Assessment
• Standard argument against preferential hiring: the burden of
compensation is unfairly placed on young men entering the
job market—unfairly because (i) there is no special reason
for placing the burden on this group, and (ii) many members
of this group are not responsible for the injury done to blacks
and women.
 Thomson responds to (i): those white men who already
hold jobs as professors should be expected to make some
form of return to the young white men who bear the cost.
 Thomson responds to (ii): many young white men have
nevertheless profited by the wrongs inflicted on others, so it
is not unfitting that they should make sacrifices now.
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Arbitrariness in Cost Assessment
• But singling out white male professors in addition to the
young while men applying for jobs still does not seem to
properly capture the group owing compensation. Rather, it
seems, the debt is owed by society as a whole.
 Paul Taylor: “The obligation to offer such benefits to (the
previously victimized) group…is an obligation that falls on
society in general, not on any particular person. For it is the
society in general that, through its established
(discriminatory) social practice, brought upon itself the
obligation.” (391)
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Arbitrariness in Cost Assessment
 It is questionable whether all members of nonpreferred
groups are equally liable (or liable at all) for giving
compensation, especially where members of the
nonpreferred group have been unjustly victimized to a
greater extent than an individual from the preferred group.
 Even if all members of the nonpreferred groups have
profited from discrimination against the preferred groups, it
does not follow that all such members are equally liable for
providing compensation.
 Insofar as preferential hiring policies cannot account for
this, they arbitrarily assess the costs of compensation.