Affirmative Action at TPM

The Philosophers' Magazine has an interesting and well-argued article up on the topic of affirmative action, written by our very own Simon Clarke. Go read it!

After rejecting three common justifications for affirmative action, Simon offers a variant of the 'role-model' argument:

Racial minorities should be given some advantages, even if the beneficiaries of those policies come from the wealthy middle class and even if they are not the ones who can specifically be said to have suffered racial discrimination in the past. They should receive such advantages in order to achieve the conditions for real equality of opportunity. People need to know that they can achieve goals in society. Sending that message helps encourage the belief that opportunities really are open to them, that the rooms that may have once held them captive have been unlocked. It helps bring about real equality of opportunity.

I very much agree with Simon about the importance of people recognizing that opportunities are available to them. When a teacher at Aranui high school asked a student where he thought he'd be in five years time, the student answered, straightforwardly, "Prison." That's where all his older male relatives were, so he didn't see any other options as being genuinely open to him. These social circumstances are tragic, and it would certainly be desirable to change them.

But would Simon's idea really help? It assumes that impoverished Maori will identify with wealthy and successful people of the same race. But is this assumption true? Will seeing the success of upper-class Maori really make the Maori in Aranui think such options are open to them, so long as the real circumstances of the people they know are unchanged? It strikes me as pretty implausible to think that seeing a bunch of rich strangers - even Maori rich strangers - is going to have that sort of impact. We need more widespread, low-level, local reforms to the social structure. Of course, I haven't a clue how to achieve that, or whether it's even possible to achieve through outside intervention. If affirmative action could be shown to have this sort of impact, then that could provide a solid justification for it. But until then, I'm skeptical.