What if we take affirmative action to its logical conclusion?

The problem with affirmative action is that you can define an almost unlimited number of intersectional categories.

Written by Noah Carl.

Following the announcement of Justice Breyer’s retirement from the US Supreme Court, President Biden said the following as regards his replacement:

While I’ve been studying candidates backgrounds and writings, I’ve made no decision except one. The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. And that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

Think about what an odd statement this is. Biden didn’t name the individual or individuals he was considering for his nominee, nor what legal tradition he wanted them to represent. Rather, he specified the race and gender of his preferred candidate, thereby foreclosing the possibility of selecting anyone who didn’t have those characteristics. “I’m not going to tell you whom I plan to nominate, only that if you’re male or your ancestors aren’t from Sub-Saharan Africa, you can count yourself out.”

Biden could have gone ahead and nominated a black woman anyway, making no reference to her race and gender. And while critics might have grumbled that he’d selected her on this basis, Biden could have replied that she’d been selected purely on the basis of her legal qualifications. But he didn’t do this. Instead, he explicitly stated that he was looking for a black woman (rather than, say, the most qualified person). You have to feel slightly sorry for Ketanji Brown Jackson, as critics are able to say with some justification, “She’s only there thanks to her race and gender.”

As to why Biden opted for the latter approach, I can only speculate that “equity” (i.e., equal outcomes across groups) is now so coveted by the increasingly powerful woke faction of his coalition that he reasoned it would pay him to do so. Biden’s supporters will reward him for recognising that, in the Current Year, you don’t simply select people on the basis of their individual accomplishments. Rather, you show an awareness of the need to correct “structural disadvantages” that hold certain groups back. As this video released by Kamala Harris explains, “equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place”.

Biden was essentially announcing that he’d be using affirmative action in the Supreme Court nomination process – and proudly. There are, of course, many objections to affirmative action: first and foremost, that it’s blatant discrimination; but also that it hurts those it intends to help through the mismatch effect; and that it distorts labour market signals by reducing the average ability of individuals with a certain qualification. But what if we just take affirmative action to its logical conclusion?

There are (at least) two ways we can do this. The first was outlined by Jordan Peterson in a blog post titled ‘The Great Ideological Lie of Diversity’. (Though the basic argument may have been made before.)

The problem with affirmative action, Peterson notes, is that you can define an almost unlimited number of intersectional categories. To be truly “diverse”, an organisation needs not only the right number of women and black people, but also the right number of disabled people, the right number of people from working class backgrounds, the right number of transgender people etc. And these categories multiply. So even after you’ve ticked what seem like all the relevant boxes, someone can say, “But black female disabled working-class transgender Muslims are underrepresented!” I have dubbed this the ‘social justice calculation problem’ in reference to the ‘socialist calculation problem’ described by Ludwig Von Mises.

And you can go further. Since everyone other than the most “privileged” people along some dimension (sex, race, class etc.) can be considered “victimised”, the ultimate implication is that you should just select people at random. How else can you get a truly “representative” workforce? Needless to say, this isn’t the basis for a well-functioning society. I mean, do you want your heart surgeon to be selected at random?

Incidentally, I suspect the reply from affirmative action proponents would be that sex and race are more “salient” than all the other categories. Which may be true. But perhaps that’s because individuals from all the other categories haven’t yet gained their “category consciousness”, and risen up to break free of the chains of oppression holding them and their fellow category-members back! Persons who are shorter-than-average of the world, unite!

However, there’s another logical conclusion to which we can take affirmative action. And it’s this. Why only apply it in domains like Harvard admissions, Hollywood movie casting and Supreme Court nominations? Sure, people care about the status that flows from getting into an elite college, being cast in a blockbuster movie, or serving in a prestigious institution. But they care about other things too.

Like earning a decent income. Shouldn’t we make sure that women and black people are represented in all large companies in proportion to their shares of the population? After all, what’s the difference between casting for Hollywood movies and hiring for JP Morgan or McKinsey? The gender and racial make-up of CEOs matter just as much as the gender and racial make-up of Supreme Court Justices. If the film industry can get behind affirmative action, then every other industry can do the same.

And why focus only on institutions? Shouldn’t each of us seek to promote “equity” in our role as consumers? After all, what’s the difference between selling some product as a company (whether blockbuster movies or financial services) and buying that product as a consumer? Anyone who cares about dismantling “structural disadvantages” ought to ensure that women and black people are adequately represented among the owners of the companies from which they buy goods and services.

And why restrict affirmative action to the domains of work and education? People care about personal relationships just as much as, if not more than, they care about earning a decent income. Shouldn’t each of us seek to promote “equity” when selecting friends and spouses? After all, we know that some groups consistently lose out in the dating market. Does it not behove us to date people of different races in proportion to their shares of the population?

While I’ve been studying the profiles of the people with whom I’ve matched, I’ve made no decision except one. The person I will date will be someone with extraordinary looks, style, personality and sense of humour. And that person will be the first black woman I have ever dated.

I consider this only slightly more peculiar than the statement from Biden on which it’s based. The idea of affirmative action is that we should select people on the basis of traits other than those that are relevant to the domain in question, with the aim of achieving some larger goal. (Though as Oliver Traldi notes, that larger goal seems to have shifted over time.) If so, why not apply it to all institutions, and indeed, to all domains of life that people care about?

Affirmative action is a divisive and discriminatory policy, which requires too much of those who support it. (As I noted last time, white people who believe their profession needs more “diversity” should resign and give up their positions to members of underrepresented groups.) Taken to its logical conclusion, affirmative action implies that we should select people at random – not just in institutions, but in our capacity as individuals as well.

This article was originally published behind a paywall on Noah’s Newsletter.

Noah Carl is Editor at Aporia.

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