Role models

Abstract

This chapter assesses arguments contending that affirmative action is justified as a means of ensuring role models for minorities. It argues that often this argument is best construed as one that appeals to a suitably broad notion of qualifications and which, coincidentally, justifies some of the selection schemes that are normally regarded as affirmative action. As such, within a certain range of settings, most notably educational ones, it is a rather strong argument, though possibly reducible to the equality of opportunity argument. Moreover, exactly what sort of affirmative action it supports—if any at all—depends on which distributive shape its normative premise takes and on the specifics of the psychology of role modeling—issues which are generally under-described in the literature.