Equality and Transparency A Strategic Perspective on Affirmative Action in American Law

by Sabbagh, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9781403963826
• ISBN10: 1403963827
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-08-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book seeks to develop and analyze in detail a key paradox of affirmative action in higher education, employment, and government contracting. This paradox is that the two chief justifications for affirmative action--compensation for past discrimination and achievement of diversity--each raise difficult problems from the point of view of a coherent, neutral, and universalistic legal determination. In addition, a third possible justification, that of achieving a society that is truly color-blind or without consciousness of race, cannot be achieved by race-based affirmative action policies. As a result of this paradox, it is necessary that the justification of affirmative action policies is not transparent. The process must conceal the way in which it is actually carried out, using means that perhaps violate our common ideas of law based on neutral and universalistic standards, as well as our common commitment to merit-based selection processes.

Author Biography

Daniel Sabbagh is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (CERI-Sciences Po). His current work focuses on antidiscrimination policies and multiculturalism in a comparative perspective, the death penalty in the United States, and US-China relations.  He is the author of L’égalité par le droit: les paradoxes de la discrimination positive aux états-Unis (Paris, économica, 2003 ; « François Furet Book Award 2004 ») – of which Equality and Transparency is a partial and revised translation – and the co-editor (with Patrick Simon) of the symposium « Affirmative Action », International Social Science Journal, 57 (183), March 2005. Along with legal scholar Gwénaële Calvès, he is the coordinator of a research group on antidiscrimination policies at CERI. He has taught at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University and now teaches political science in the graduate school of the Institut d’études politiques de Paris.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Assessing Justifications for Affirmative Action

The Corrective Justice Paradigm

Group-Based Compensation

The Diversity Paradigm

A Strategic and Consequentialist Perspective: Affirmative Action as an Instrument for Deracializing American Society

Interpreting Legitimization Strategies for Affirmative Action

The Negative Side Effects of the Deracialization Argument

The Negative Side Effects of Transparency

Evidence of Dissimulation Strategies

Conclusion Introduction

Assessing Justifications for Affirmative Action

The Corrective Justice Paradigm

Group-Based Compensation

The Diversity Paradigm

A Strategic and Consequentialist Perspective: Affirmative Action as an Instrument for Deracializing American Society

Interpreting Legitimization Strategies for Affirmative Action

The Negative Side Effects of the Deracialization Argument

The Negative Side Effects of Transparency

Evidence of Dissimulation Strategies

Conclusion

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.