Affirmative action for hidden competence
Some people aren't hired for dumb reasons (e.g., ugly, short), despite their competence. In such cases, the usual objections to affirmative action fail.
Affirmative action is a hot topic in American politics due to a recent Supreme Court decision that formally ended the practice in college admissions. While many were disappointed by the ruling, others celebrated it on constitutional, legal, and moral grounds. The practice of affirmative action aims to mitigate discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics (e.g., race, sex, appearance), in the past and present, in the labor market. But it faces two big objections,
Anti-competence: favoring some individuals over others merely because they belong to a group that is unfairly discriminated against in the labor market due to their irrelevant and static personal qualities ignores the role of competence in the hiring process.
Reverse discrimination: favoring some individuals over others merely because they belong to a group that is unfairly discriminated against in the labor market for their static personal qualities results in unfair discrimination against individuals merely due to their static qualities (e.g., male, white).
The qualification and reverse discrimination objections are potent challenges to the legitimacy of affirmation action policies, but their impact is distinct depending on the variety of affirmative action in question. There two basic forms of affirmative action. The strong version of affirmative action holds that discrimination (of a kind recognized by the policy) is a reason to favor one job candidate over another due to discrimination against the former even when the latter candidate is more qualified than the former. The weak version of affirmative action holds that discrimination (of a kind recognized by the policy) is reason to favor one job candidate over another only when they are both equally qualified, and where the discrimination breaks the tie.
While the strong variety of affirmative action is highly susceptible to both the competence and reverse discrimination objections, the weak version is only susceptible to the latter objection. However, on its face, it still appears that weak affirmative action runs afoul of discrimination against other groups. Some moral philosophers defend weak affirmative action on grounds of fairness. As the moral and legal philosopher, Alan Goldman, explains,
The rule for hiring the most competent was justified as part of a right to equal opportunity to succeed through socially productive effort, and on grounds of increased welfare for all members of society. Since it is justified in relation to a right to equal opportunity, and since the application of the rule may simply compound injustices when opportunities are unequal elsewhere in the system, the creation of more equal opportunities takes precedence when in conflict with the rule for awarding positions. Thus short-run violations of the rule are justified to create a more just distribution of benefits by applying the rule itself in future years.
Other moral and legal philosophers disagree: they argue that discriminating against current job candidates to address past and current discrimination against other job candidates only further compounds such injustice. So, what should we conclude? Insights from an incentives-based epistemology would better illuminate the issue.
Begin with the idea that in many instances in which the individual in question is the subject of discrimination, and where they must be more competent and work harder to achieve what many other people achieve with less work and less competence, due to differences among traits that are irrelevant to the job. As the philosopher Dan Moller explains,
Much of our evidence reflects a kind of popularity: recommendations, previous hirings and many accomplishments ultimately reflect the fact that people thought highly of the candidate. How should this popularity influence us? Empirical evidence indicates that irrelevant personal attributes like beauty or warmth influence this kind of popularity to a startling degree, and accordingly we should discount for it. Conversely, we should favor those swimming upstream against such attributes […]. Faced with otherwise similar candidates, then, it’s powerful evidence against someone’s candidacy that they are good-looking, tall, confident, warm, extroverted or well-connected […].
And later,
Faced with a pick of accountants at a firm, sound epistemology overwhelmingly suggests barreling past attractive, polite workers and urgently seeking out the ugliest, shortest, most boorish one available.
When some job candidates must work harder than others to achieve the same result—due to discrimination or the lack of favoritism—then that suggests that such individuals should be favored over others who presumably, everything else being equal (or near enough), were able to work less, and be less competent, to achieve as much due to (often) irrelevant factors such as their race, gender, attractiveness, height, personality, and so forth. Imagine that Sammy is the best accountant one could hope for, but he has difficulty with social skills, warmth, and is very short. He does poorly in interviews compared to otherwise equally qualified job candidates due to his lack of superficial physical qualities and social skills. It would seem, then, that Sammy has a kind of hidden competence that explains why he still does fairly well on the job market, despite struggling more than others equally qualified, because he has had to overcome many social obstacles to even be in the running for the accounting job.
How does that hidden competence relate to weak affirmative action? Simple. Earlier we noted that weak affirmative action faces a moral objection: it is unfair to discrimination against a job candidate to somehow correct past and present discrimination because that punishes someone for something they didn’t do. However, if the individual in question is in fact more qualified than the other job candidates, but their qualifications and competence are ignored for reasons having to do with appearance and other superficial qualities—except where such qualities are salient—that isn’t reverse discrimination. It is rightly discounting qualities of job candidates that shouldn’t be part of evaluating job candidates, but often are because people sometimes exercise biased judgements. Why do we need affirmative action here? It could be a policy tool used to mitigate injustices in the hiring process resulting from irrelevant personal qualities of job candidates, and instead assessing them more appropriately relative to other wrongly discounted job candidates. This doesn’t mean we should affirmative action by the government, even in such cases, for reasons related to political economy (e.g., regulatory capture). And the fact that the government is often terrible at policing such matters effectively and efficiently is another reason not to involve them. However, it does mean that the big objections to affirmative action fail against some versions of the view.