On Higher Ground: Education and the Case for Affirmative Action

In this defence of affirmative action, Walter Feinberg moves the debate beyond the inadequate framework of economic issues to develop a theory of affirmative action that allows for a more refined understanding of its uses and misuses. He shows that affirmative action has three morally defensible goals. First, it seeks to correct systematic ruptures in the exercise of the principle of equal opportunity. Second, it seeks to advance the standing of groups whose members have been discriminated against because of certain ascribed characteristics such as sex or skin colour. Third, it attempts to address a historical debt.