Session 10 assignment

John Meyer
108018271714
Anderson writes against color blindness advocacy, particularly that which prohibits
discrimination on the basis of unjust racialization (hereafter DotBoUR for brevity). The other
side views DotBoUR as irrational, racist, in violation of fairness and merit, divisive conception
of the proper relations among racial groups, or disrespectful of individual worth.
To irrationality, Anderson responds that while character races do not exist, racialized
groups do and so are a valid target of DotBoUR. Furthermore, irrational arbitrariness doesn’t
hold against DotBoUR because it can be instrumentally useful and is statistically sound to use
minimal race as a way of targeting DotBoUR, given that the underlying characteristics of unjust
racialization are well correlated with minimal race and hence non-arbitrary.
The supposed racism of DotBoUR also fails to stick. Racism consists of prejudice,
stigmatizing stereotypes, and harmful conduct. DotBoUR is characterized as prejudicial in that it
is a hostile retaliation against whites, but as DotBoUR is only instrumental to achieving justice
this is obviously not the case. DotBoUR is also not paternalistically racist, since it views its
targets as meritorious and only extrinsically held back from their potential.
In terms of fairness and merit, DotBoUR in diversity affirmative action promotes merit
by directly furthering institutional missions like justice, democracy, and integration.
Discrimination-blocking affirmative action defends individual merit from unjust exclusion, using
racialized status as a proxy for exclusion vulnerability in conferring countervailing benefit.
Compensatory affirmative action is a more diffuse way of achieving justice for the racialized
group by recognizing the merit that would have been realized (e.g. opportunities for education)
had racialized disadvantage not been the case. In order to be understood as fair, the ties between
affirmative action and meritocratic criteria should be made more visible.
The racial divisiveness claim doesn’t hold against the best affirmative action conceptions,
since they are rooted not in racial spoils or creditor/debtor relations, but in individuals’ just
claims.
 DotBoUR’s offense to individuality is implausible. DotBoUR doesn’t treat racialized
people as if they are intrinsically the same, but instead seeks to protect or compensate them for
harms done on that assumption by treating their race as an extrinsic targeting factor.
In fact, DotBoUR has been recognized in high courts as not only not inherently morally
wrong, but indeed mandated by justice. Naively forbidding race conscious means would not
condemn Jim Crow, nor would forbidding race conscious ends prevent whites from locking-in
unjust gains.
As another matter, color-blind policy simply is ineffective at promoting integration,
destigmatization, and preventing unjust racial discrimination. Class is a poor proxy for the
injustice faced by racialized people. Geography is closer, but would be problematic to apply to
education. Prohibition of DotBoUR as by Justice Roberts fails to make the important distinction
between the unjustly racialized status to be rectified and the minimal race used to target efforts.
Colorblind enforcement of anti-discrimination leaves the unjust and segregated status quo intact
and is subject to many faults, including loopholes, weak enforcement, evaluative discrimination,
discrimination laundering, unconscious discrimination, aversive racism, racial negligence,
second-order discrimination, and discrimination in contact.