Affirming What?

What are the philosophical reasons that support the policy of affirmative action?  And what would admissions letters to students look like if they were philosophically consistent with the supporting rationale?

In the next several weeks, the Supreme Court of the United States will issue a decision in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, No. 11-345.  Abigail Fisher sued the university for violating her rights to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment by denying her admission and instead accepting applications from persons with objectively lesser academic credentials because of their racial or ethnic composition.

This case follows in the tradition of the Supreme Court's 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision, which ruled it unconstitutional to use different admissions criteria based solely on race for a small quota of seats in order to provide diversity in the classroom.  Fisher is also closely related to the 1996 Fifth Circuit case of Hopwood v. State of Texas.  Cheryl Hopwood was a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law, but who possessed better academic scores than others of a different race who were admitted.  More recently, the Supreme Court's Grutter v. Bollinger decision in 2003 narrowly reaffirmed Bakke in ruling (thanks to Sandra Day O'Connor's swing vote) that universities may use race as one factor among many others in admissions decisions.  These cases, in other words, are about the constitutionality, if not exactly the morality, of affirmative action.

There seem to be three main reasons for affirmative action and for specifically considering race and ethnicity in admissions.  I borrow here from Michael Sandel's summary in his book Justice:  What's the Right Thing to Do?

1. Corrective: to adjust for the effects of students' apparent unequal preparation and educational disadvantage, or unequal representation relative to the social population.
2. Compensatory: to repay a past injustice (i.e., even if there is no need to correct for an unequal educational system).
3. Common Good (Social Purpose): the idea that the common good for a society is served if there is a racially diversified student body.

All of these reasons distance merit from admission.  The last reason, the argument from social purpose, especially highlights the arbitrariness of admissions criteria, which will fluctuate depending on what an institution at a particular moment believes is socially valuable.

In fact, so the argument from social purpose (or common good) goes, no one deserves to be admitted.  The institution may value different qualities more than others and believe some qualities to promote either the institution's mission in particular or society's mission in general, or both.

The main point is that intellectual or academic worthiness (merit) takes a backseat to, or is relativized by, other variable qualities.  Distributive justice (or admission in this case) is not about merit or desert.  And merit or desert, to say the same thing, is not the basis for distributive justice.  Instead, distributive justice (or admission in this case) is about entitlement.

To illustrate vividly the philosophy motivating this strand of affirmative action -- a strand which explicitly denies that admissions criteria is ultimately based on academic desert -- Michael Sandel presents two hypothetical letters.  These are missives that an applicant to a college might receive: one that rejects, another that accepts.  And they show what sort of communication from a school would be philosophically consistent with a  rationale for affirmative action that sees distributive justice, or admission, as a matter of entitlement within a social system so as to promote the common good.

Philosophically Consistent Rejection Letter

Dear Unsuccessful Applicant,

We regret to inform you that your application for admission has been rejected. It is not your fault that when you came along society happened not to need the qualities you had to offer. Those persons admitted instead of you are not themselves deserving of a place or worthy of praise for the factors that led to their admission. We are, in any case, only using them and you as instruments of a wider social purpose. Better luck next time.

Philosophically Consistent Acceptance Letter

Dear Successful Applicant,

We are pleased to inform you that your application for admission has been accepted. It turns out, lucky for you, that you have the traits that society needs at the moment. So we propose to exploit your assets for society’s advantage. You are to be congratulated, not in the sense that you deserve credit for having the qualities that led to your admission, but only in the sense that the winner of a lottery is to be congratulated. And if you choose to accept our offer, you will ultimately be entitled to the benefits that attach to being used in this way. We look forward to seeing you in the fall.

What this hypothetical rejection and acceptance letter exercise makes clear is the moral framework on which a prominent strand of affirmative action is based.  To point out this moral framework is not necessarily to dismiss the concept or practice of affirmative action.  There is a well-reasoned tradition of distributive justice that emphasizes entitlement over merit.  And adjudicating complex social realities that may affect academic development or representation, not to mention potentially residual effects of past injustice, is a tricky business.  But it is to point out the oddity of this line of thinking when it is applied in a philosophically consistent way to explaining why a student applicant was rejected or accepted.

I dare say that, even for those who support affirmative action, putting the matter of affirmative action in this way -- as a tool in the service of a larger social purpose and denying merit as the (chief) grounds for admission -- strikes one as counterintuitive.  Is this really what one is affirming, or on reflection what one wants to affirm, in supporting affirmative action?