A Defense of Diversity Affirmative Action
It is certain that there has been racial discrimination in the United States, and some minority groups are still disadvantaged. Affirmative action has striven to alleviate this problem, but it has met with objections. In the article, “A Defense of Diversity Affirmative Action,” the author James P. Sterba (2003) has entered the controversy, and holds that there should be more affirmative action. This paper argues that while Sterba has made some valid points, many of his points can be challenged, and his argument is narrowly focused on the sole issue of racial inequity and the sole solution of affirmative action in university admissions, with the result that it ignores many business ethics issues and broader social interests and solutions.
Sterba has made some claims and then presented his recommendations. It is logical to first lay out the claims, and then the recommendations that flow from the claims. Sterba makes the claim that society in the United States is “far from being color-blind (racially just) or gender-free (sexually just)” (p. 217). He states that there is considerable discrimination in hiring. For example, among men who had participated in job training programs, the jobless rate for whites, light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks were 14.5%, 11.1% and 26.8% respectively (p. 218). Sterba also claims that universities do not voluntarily follow the policy of attempting to obtain a student body that reflects the ethnic make-up of the entire population. They follow such a policy only when the law forces affirmative action upon them. For instance, when Proposition 209 took effect in California (ending affirmative action enforced by law), the universities took in dramatically lower numbers of Hispanics, African-Americans and American Indians.
Turning to the recommendations of Sterba, his overall