Publicity

Abstract

According to the publicity objection to affirmative action, inevitably public affirmative action programs are self-defeating. This is the empirical premise of the objection. The normative premise says that affirmative action is justified only if it does not violate the liberal publicity constraint and has a reasonable chance of being successful. The chapter argues that the former premise is false and the latter groundless. The normative premise is groundless because, in the form publicity must take to be congenial to the publicity objection, it cannot be based on the work of a selection of prominent liberal defenses of publicity. The empirical premise is false. Even if we focus on those goals which most plausibly are best served by nonpublic rather than public affirmative action, public affirmative action might still serve these goals even if not optimally so. While some actual affirmative action schemes might be objectionable because of the way in which they flout requirements of publicity, we cannot reject affirmative action on grounds of publicity.