A Review of Walter Feinberg: On Different Ground

Abstract

The general thesis of Walter Feinberg’s On Higher Groundis that affirmative action is a distinctive policy for the promotion of equal opportunity, based on distinctive historical considerations, and reserved for distinctive groups. Feinberg is clear that affirmative action is by no means sufficient for equalizing opportunity, let alone for achieving social justice more generally. He contends the strongest and most unconditional case for affirmative action can be made on behalf of certain “target groups:” particularly, women, African Americans, and Native Americans. A weaker and more limited case can be made in his view for extending affirmative action policies to also include groups such as Spanish-speaking people who became residents of the U.S. through the conquest of Mexico, as well as for persons with disabilities. Feinberg is motivated by two primary aims: defending affirmative action against those who would dismantle it and, just as importantly for his analysis, preventing it from suffering evisceration at the hands of those sympathetic critics who would subsume affirmative action under more general principles, responding to need and promoting diversity, in particular. Basing affirmative action on these general principles, Feinberg contends, would render it so broad in scope that even certain White males ‐ those who are poor and working class, for instance ‐ would be included among the groups legitimately within affirmative action’s purview. In the process, its ability to eliminate the special injustices suffered by proper target groups would be significantly diluted. This provides a brief sketch of the position Feinberg stakes out. In what follows I try to provide the reader with enough additional details to get a reasonably good feel for the character and contents of the book as a whole. But my emphases do not in all cases parallel Feinberg’s. Rather, I zero in on what I take to be the most central and, as it turns out, most problematic, thesis of Feinberg’s book: the “historical debt” argument. This will be from the perspective of someone who generally agrees with the kind of affirmative action policy that Feinberg supports, but on different grounds. In Chapter 1, Feinberg provides an overview of affirmative action as a policy, including some its legal history, its role in higher education, and the current backlash against it. Feinberg also broaches different interpretations of affirmative