Pojman's Arguments Against Strong Affirmative Action

Louis Pojman argues against Strong Affirmative Action (abbreviated as AA), which he claims is different from Weak Affirmative Action. He ultimately wants to show that two wrongs do not make a right and concludes that Strong AA is not morally justified. However, Pojman does not consider that injustice and racism against blacks are still pervasive today and that is a purpose of AA. Pojman creates his argument against Strong AA by offering up five pro AA arguments and discredits them for the first half of his argument and then offers two arguments against AA. For the first argument in defense of AA, Pojman recognizes that we all need good role models to follow (p.462-463). However, he goes on to say that a good role model does not necessarily have to be like us. He admired people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King. …show more content…
Pojman’s next two cases go hand in hand. One argument is that AA is a way to compensate those who have suffered past injustices (p.463) and the other is to compensate for the fact that people have innocently benefitted from past injustices done on others (p.465). Pojman argues that it is a distorted way to compensate blacks for past injustices by giving them preferential hiring. Compensation is usually on an individual basis. It is unknown whether all these recipients of AA have been wronged in the past and if all whites that are paying for it truly did innocently benefit from the past. Pojman moves on to the diversity argument. While diversity is important, he does not believe that it is justified to reserve specific quotas to force diversity. Pojman thinks that qualifications are far more essential. Lastly, Pojman counters the equal results argument. AA proponents believe that there should be equal representation in all fields of work and AA is a way to achieve this.

Show More

Pojman's Arguments Against Strong Affirmative Action

Related Documents: Pojman's Arguments Against Strong Affirmative Action

Unit 10 Essay