Book Reviews

RACISM AND JUSTICE: THE CASE FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

by Gertrude Ezorsky

(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991, 140 pages)

In her book, Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action, Gertrude Ezorsky develops her defense of Affirmative Action (AA) around the distinction between overt and in- stitutional racism: an act is overtly racist if it discriminates against an in- dividual because the person has certain properties which define him/her as being a member of an undesirable race; an act is institutionally racist if it dis- criminates against an individual be- cause that person lacks certain prop- erties or qualifications which have in the past been denied to individuals of a particular race, but which do not themselves define an individual as belonging to a particular race.

For Ezorsky, "the primary impor- tance of affirmative action lies in its effectiveness as a remedy for institu- tional racism, by which race-neutral policies and practices can lead to the exclusion of blacks" (p. 2). Thus, re- quiring unnecessary skills and com- petencies, recruiting through personal acquaintances, and awards based on

seniority all perpetuate the effects of (past and present) overt racist acts and are therefore instances of institutional racism.

In order to remedy recruitment through personal networks AA re- quires that positions be publicly ad- vertised, with special effort to inform formerly excluded groups. This ben- efits all qualified job seekers who have no personal connections to the job source. Likewise, AA requires that qualifications not substantially related to job performance be eliminated. As a result, many jobs have been made accessible to a much wider pool of candidates, both white and black, than would have been the case otherwise.

Many whites with seniority have benefited from racist acts that gave them employment advantages over blacks. And when they are able to avoid layoffs or gain promotions or special training because of their se- niority, they benefit from institutional racism.

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Whites have eleven times the wealth of blacks, one-third of all blacks have no major assets whatsoever except for cash on hand. Thus seniority-based lay- offs of b lacks . . , increases the concentration of blacks at the bottom of the occupational ladder or among the unemployed, thereby reinforcing the racist ste- reotype of blacks as inferior. (p. 25)

One remedy for seniority based layoffs Ezorsky discusses is "work- sharing": instead of laying off the least senior workers, all workers take a re- duction in hours worked. Thus, instead of laying off a tenth of the work force by eliminating those most recently hired, all workers, both senior and re- cently hired, would take a 10 percent cut in hours worked (p. 44).

As legal scholar Derrick Bell points out in And We are Not Saved (ch. 2, Basic Books, 1987), the greatest ben- eficiaries of these aspects of AA have been white male and female job seek- ers, since they continue to have greater access to otherwise race-neutral job qualifications. Only with respect to that aspect of AA which grants pref- erential treatment to black over white applicants may blacks have actually benefited more than whites from AA. And it is this aspect of AA that has generated the most controversy.

Preferential treatment may award opportunities to some blacks who are basically qualified to fulfill the re- quirements of the position in question, but who may not be the most qualified applicant for the position (p. 41). It

thus remedies the lower qualifications of blacks resulting from past and present racism by making race a miti- gating factor in the selection of can- didates for employment and educa- tional benefits.

While stressing that "AA rein- forcement has moved blacks up, not only into management, white-collar, and professional positions, but also into semiskilled, service, blue-collar, craft, police and firefighter jobs" (p. 64), Ezorsky acknowledges that AA cannot help blacks who lack basic qualifications, and that other programs that provide needed health and educa- tional services are required in addi- tion to AA. Still, AA provides an in- centive for younger blacks to improve their job skills by assuring them that jobs will be available. And such as- surances remain important, since "in 1980 blacks with college educations had a higher unemployment rate than did white high-school dropouts" (p. 69).

In periods of economic expansion, AA is needed in order to take advan- tage of more desirable positions; and in periods of recession, it is needed to assure that blacks do not bear the brunt of layoffs. "The better, decent paying jobs are largely a white preserve. The aim of AA is to break that racist bar- rier. Without that pressure, even in an expanding economy, occupational segregation will continue" (p. 72).

Some critics have argued that pref- erential treatment simply reinforces whites' beliefs that blacks are basically inferior, because black candidates given preferential treatment are in fact less qualified than their white coun-

Book Reviews 111

terparts. To this, Ezorsky replies that the prejudice of many whites biases their assessment of the competence of blacks, and that blacks hired prefer- entially through AA might even be superior to workers hired by traditional forms of preference based on ethnic, racial, and family ties (p. 62).

The goal of occupational integra- tion might sometimes result in well- off blacks benefiting through AA over less well-off whites. But this is because well-off blacks are likely to have been victimized despite their relatively better off situation, and are therefore likely to continue to suffer the injus- tices of racism. Here Ezorsky draws an analogy with the preferential treat- ment of veterans:

compensatory employment pref- erence is sometimes given to veterans who are more affluent than the nonveterans who are thereby excluded from jobs. In- deed, some veterans gained, on the whole, from military life: placed in noncombat units, they often learned a valuable skill. Yet no one proposes that for this rea- son veteran preference be aban- doned. (p. 79)

In contrast to many defenders of AA, Ezorsky rejects the claim that all whites are responsible for racism, or even that all whites have benefited from racism. Rather, she argues, "white workers have both gained and lost from racism." Some have gained from racist preferences which allowed them to displace or win advantages over black workers. But others have

lost when business owners use black workers to undercut the demands of white workers.

If some whites have gained and some have lost from the racist treat- ment of blacks, then we are left with the question of who is liable for com- pensating blacks (at least to the degree that they are spared from having their injuries perpetuated). Ezorsky accepts the argument that whites who lose out on benefits as a result of AA preferen- tial treatment are bearing an unrea- sonable amount of the expense of compensating for institutional racism. Thus, where a less senior black worker is retained while a more senior white worker is laid off, or where a less qualified black applicant is hired over a more qualified white applicant who would have been hired otherwise, she proposes that these specific individu- als be compensated "by substantial monetary awards, funded by the fed- eral government to supplement unem- ployment insurance" (p. 86). She warns that care must be taken to pre- vent abuse of such awards, but clearly believes that specific whites should not be forced to bear a disproportion- ate share of the cost of preferential treatment for blacks (PTB).

It is not at all clear, however, why specific individuals should be com- pensated in the case of preferential treatment of blacks (PTB), but not so in the case of preferential treatment of veterans (PTV). The Supreme Court has ruled (Fienerman vs. Jones) that granting veterans an extra 10 points on a state employment test does not violate the rights of other applicants. Hence, an applicant who would have

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been hired were it not for PTV is not being denied equal treatment before the laws of that state, and has no con- stitutional grounds to demand redress.

We may speculate that PTV is both to compensate veterans for disadvan- tages they may have incurred as a re- sult of putting themselves at risk for the sake of their country, and to en- courage others to volunteer to do likewise. All citizens may benefit from the service of veterans, even though only those who are seeking educa- tional, employment and capital devel- opment (mortgage loans) opportuni- ties must bear the costs of PTV.

Ezorsky gives no reason for not viewing PTB as having a similar im- portance for the country as PTV, granting that only a limited class of whites must bear the major cost of PTB. The projected fact, for instance,

that within the next twenty-five years a majority of the work force will be nonwhite certainly suggests that the country as a whole will benefit from current efforts to encourage nonwhites to develop their skills and abilities, and to integrate them into the em- ployment and educational network. This purely utilitarian justification of PTB is not to suggest that there are not nonutilitarian justifications that are equally compelling. But if Ezorsky can provide no moral or constitutional grounds for granting compensation to "victims" of PTV, I see no reason to grant compensation to "victims" of PTB. Despite these reservations, I strongly recommend Ezorsky's book. In my estimate, it offers the clearest, most compact defense of AA that is currently available.

Albert Mosley