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In "Discrimination and Disidentification: The Fair-Start Defense of Affirmative Action," I argued that affirmative action preferences are justified as a means of restoring the conditions of a fair start by negating an unfair competitive disadvantage caused by institutional racism and sexism. The argument draws on the work of Claude M. Steele, who has shown that the stereotypes about intellectual ability supporting structures of institutional discrimination cause blacks and women to disidentify with academic pursuits and hence to underperform relative to their skills and ability. As a result, white males receive an unfair head start in the competition for the best jobs. Race- and sex-based preferences are morally permissible, then, as a means of restoring the conditions of a fair start. I called this defense the Fair-Start Defense (FSD).
Lisa Newton, the author of "Reverse Discrimination as Unjustified," perhaps the most influential paper written on affirmative action, was kind enough to respond to my argument. In "A Fair Defense of a False Start," she outlines five problems with FSD that she believes defeat the argument. In this brief essay, I would like to defend FSD against Newton's criticisms.
At the outset, it is worth noting that the conclusion Newton reached in "Reverse Discrimination as Unjustified" sets a threshold task for any argument purporting to justify affirmative action preferences. In that seminal essay, Newton argues that affirmative action preferences constitute a form of reverse discrimination and thereby violate a moral right on the part of white males not to be discriminated against. If affirmative action preferences violate a right, she concludes, they are morally wrong no matter how much good they might do. To make out a case that affirmative action preferences are permissible, then, it is necessary to argue that they do not, in principle, violate a moral right.
In "Discrimination and Disidentification," I argued that there is no general right not to be discriminated against on the basis of race or sex; each person has, at most, a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of stereotypes relating to race and sex. Moreover, I argued that the most qualified applicant does not have a right to the position; one person cannot acquire a property right in another person's property simply by having certain...