14
Attacking with the North: Affirmative Action and The Office
Abraham Lincoln once said that if you are a racist, I will attack you with The North. And those are the principles that I carry with me in the workplace.
Michael Scott (“Diversity Day”)
Michael tries to hide it, but he is one of the most racially insensitive people on the planet. Michael suggests that we should all be “color blind,”1 but clearly he isn’t. Three people bear the brunt of his insensitivity at the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin: Stanley (who is African-American), Kelly (who is Asian-Indian-American), and Oscar (who is Mexican-American). Michael has “faux pas’d” them all. He corrects Stanley by suggesting that “collard greens” are actually called “colored greens” (assuming that they are named after “colored people” because, according to Michael, they are the only people who eat them); he stereotyped convenience-store clerks as Asian-Indians in front of Kelly (demanding that she try some of his “googey-googey”); and he asked Oscar if there was a label he preferred besides “Mexican” since the word “Mexican” has certain—as Michael puts it —“negative connotations.” In fact, each faux pas was committed on “diversity day,” a day set aside by corporate for “diversity training” as a response to Michael’s insensitivity.
One of the goals of affirmative action is to ensure diversity in the workplace. The enforcement of a racial quota can require a business to ensure that a certain percentage of its workforce is made up of minorities.2 In addition to racial quotas, affirmative action may involve set-aside programs where a certain number of “open slots” are reserved for minority candidates only. (These are often used in the university/college setting.) Affirmative action can also take the form of minority preference in the decision-making process. (In such a system, an under-qualified minority applicant will not get preference over a well-qualified non-minority applicant—being able to do the job is required of anyone being offered that job; however, a qualified minority will get preference over a very qualified non-minority.) All in all, affirmative action gives minorities a better chance (than they had before) at employment. It not only increases the percentage of minorities in the workforce, but increases the number of minorities with well-paying jobs.3
Those who object to affirmative action point out that it does more than prohibit hiring practices that favor whites. Affirmative action demands (in many cases) hiring practices that favor minorities. They thus suggest that affirmative action is unjustified.
When it comes to affirmative action, sorting through all of the relevant arguments is as difficult as going through salesman-hazing with Dwight. But we’re going to do just that! (We’ll sort through the arguments, I mean. I would not be so vicious as to wish Dwight’s salesman-hazing on anyone. I certainly don’t want to go near Dwight’s beet farm, and I definitely don’t want anything to do with cousin Mose.) As we do, we will see that most of the common arguments against affirmative action fail. But in the end, we will see one very good reason to conclude that affirmative action is not justified and should be abandoned (in favor of alternate efforts with the same goal).
Affirmative Action and Racial Diversity: “What have you got for us Ryan?”
Some people object to affirmative action by focusing on its goal of racial diversity. Such objectors ask if there is something morally deficient about a labor force that is made up of one race. They grant that racially and ethnically diverse workforces are not bad things. But, they point out, those who defend affirmative action seem to assume that a racially and ethnically mixed workforce is something that is intrinsically good—something that is good to accomplish in and of itself—without even offering up an argument! It seems, according to these objectors, that instead of favoring minorities to ensure diverse workforces, we should simply be encouraging non-discriminatory hiring practices (that favor no one).
These objectors do get one thing right: an ethnically mixed workforce, although not bad, is not intrinsically good; there is nothing wrong with non-mixed workforces. To help make this point, consider the episode “Traveling Salesmen” from season 3. The sales staff at Dunder-Mifflin breaks off in twos and ventures off in an “Amazing Race” like sales competition. On the way to one of Stanley’s sale contacts, Ryan (who is paired with Stanley) asks Stanley to let him “take the lead” and make the sales pitch. But, when they arrive, Ryan discovers that the entire management staff he must pitch to is made up of large African-American males. The managers are super-friendly and absolutely love Stanley, but—when they ask “what have you got for us, Ryan?”—Ryan is so intimidated all he can manage to say is “hi” over and over again. Notice that, when we see that the management staff is all one race and one gender, we don’t pass moral judgment on the group. We don’t think any one of them is a bad person, and we don’t think there is anything morally deficient about the group itself. Granted, if the company has a policy of only hiring African-American males, we would have cause to complain. But as long as that is not the case (perhaps the mangers are four college buddies who went into business together after graduation) everything is fine.
For the same reason that we shouldn’t complain about an all-male African-American management team, we shouldn’t complain about any labor force that is made up of any one gender or any one race.4 Granted, if a particular large labor force is made up of only one race or gender, that is probably a good basis for suspicion and investigation. But as long as our investigation doesn’t uncover discriminatory hiring, we’ve got nothing to complain about.
This objection, however, fails to recognize that racially diverse labor forces are not the ultimate goal of, nor the prime justification for, affirmative action. Granted, diversity can be set as a goal—as it is with quotas or set-aside efforts—but setting such a goal is only one way of enforcing affirmative action, it’s not the goal itself.5 Having a diverse labor force, while certainly nothing to lament,6 isn’t something that’s intrinsically good (good in and of itself). When diversity is enforced, it’s only good in virtue of the fact that it eliminates majority-favoring hiring practices.7 8
Affirmative Action as an Effort to Eliminate Racism: “What you want? A cookie?”
Consider a different objection to affirmative action. Racial insensitiv-ity and racism, the objection runs, is the root cause of discriminatory hiring practices. Many objectors suggest that affirmative action should thus eliminate such things (or at least should make major progress in this area) if we’re going to use it at all. But affirmative action does no such thing! Racial insensitivity and racism are still major problems, even within companies that enforce affirmative action. Thus, affirmative action isn’t justified.
Michael is a clear example of non-discriminatory hiring practices not eliminating racial insensitivity and racism. Michael clearly is a proponent of affirmative action. The racial and ethnic make up of Dunder-Mifflin’s Scranton branch meets every appropriate quota.9 And yet Michael is still racially insensitive—perhaps even a racist. When Oscar skips work on spring cleaning day, Michael calls him and suggests that the office could use his “Mexican cleaning ethic.” His assumption that Stanley must have an African-American wife is so entrenched that he can’t bring himself to acknowledge that his wife is white, even after he sees Stanley and his wife holding hands at the Dundies. And on the bus to the beach in “Beach Day,” Michael tells Stanley to sit in the back.10 And, of course, Michael’s Chris Rock routine reeks of racial insensitivity:
Basically, there are two types of black people, and black people are actually more racist because they hate the other type of black people … Every time, [raising his voice to a yell] every time black people wanna have a good time, some mean-ass [bleep] [bleep] it up. I take care of my kids! [Bleep] always want credit for something they supposed to do! … What you want? A cookie? (“Diversity Day”)
After Michael performed this routine in the office, corporate sent Mr. Brown, of Diversity Today, to lead a seminar on diversity in the workplace. Michael, of course, does not believe that this black gentleman’s name is actually Mr. Brown and rather than be instructed by this outsider, Michael organizes his own diversity training where he forces his employees—as an exercise in understanding what it is to be a minority—to spout out, to each other, racial slurs based on stereotypes! Even if Michael isn’t a racist, he’s certainly racially insensitive—despite the fact that his office would meet any appropriate quota! If the goal of affirmative action is to eliminate racial insensitivity and racism, then clearly affirmative action is missing the mark.
Affirmative action, however, is not always defended as an attempt to eliminate racism. Indeed, its justification is often nothing of the kind. Rather, affirmative action is an effort to address past instances of racially discriminatory hiring practices. Those past practices caused injustice, and affirmative action is aimed at making up for that injustice—a goal that can be accomplished regardless of whether racism is eliminated or not.11 So, pointing out that affirmative action does not eliminate racism doesn’t show it to be unjustified.
Affirmative Action as Compensation: Injustice at the Ol’ Schrute Beet Farm
Of course, if we defend affirmative action in terms of justice, we’ll have to face a different objection: quite often affirmative action negatively affects individuals who have never discriminated against anyone. Affirmative action can cause a perfectly innocent non-minority applicant to be denied a position that he would have received had affirmative action not been enforced—and this seems wrong. In the same way that it is unfair to award a job to someone based on how many hot dogs they can eat in ten minutes (as Michael proposed in “Beach Games”), it is unfair to make a person “pay for” discrimination when that person has never discriminated against anyone (in neither case does the person deserve what they get). In fact, it seems that the only persons who should pay for past discrimination are those who carried it out: our ancestors themselves. But since they are long dead, the chance to make up for past instances of discrimination in this way is long past.
To make this point, let’s imagine the following: suppose that, many years ago, there was a need for a work hand at the Schrute beet farm. (We’ll pretend that the Schrute family had a shortage of newborns, since they usually “grew” their own workers.) Suppose that despite the fact that Stanley’s grandfather was the most qualified applicant for the job, Dwight’s grandfather wouldn’t let Stanley’s grandfather work on his beet farm. Dwight’s grandfather simply didn’t like African-Americans. Also suppose that, when Michael was choosing his “replacement” at the end of season 3,12 Michael choose Stanley instead of Dwight despite the fact that Dwight is the more qualified of the two,13 because Michael was enforcing affirmative action. Even though we like Stanley just fine and might even prefer to work under him, we might think that somehow justice had not been served. It wasn’t Dwight who refused to hire Stanley’s grandfather, it was his grandfather. Dwight didn’t do anything to deserve to be “punished.” He had no choice about what his grandfather did—how could we hold him responsible? In fact, it seems an injustice has been done in this case; Dwight was more qualified! It seems, since their grandfathers are long ago dead, the chance to make up for the past injustice of Stanley’s grandfather is as gone as the Stamford branch. Punishing Dwight only accomplishes further injustice; it makes up for nothing. In general, it seems that punishing present-day white job applicants for the sins of their ancestors only accomplishes further injustice.
Objecting to affirmative action in this way, however, misses the mark. The goal of affirmative action is not to “punish present persons for the crimes of their ancestors.” The goal is to correct the present effects of past discrimination.
Question: “What present effects could past actions of discrimination possibly have?” Thanks Dwight, I’m glad you asked
Past discriminatory hiring practices kept most minorities out of well-paying jobs. As a result, most minorities lived in poverty and, consequently, could not afford a good education for their children.14 Thus, their children could not find well-paying jobs either and so they too were doomed to poverty and could not provide for their children’s education. Their children too were thus doomed to poverty—and the pattern continues today. Because their ancestors were discriminated against, a large percentage of the minority population today is stuck in a “cycle of poverty.” And this is the present effect of past discrimination—the thing that affirmative action is trying to counter: a very high level of poverty in the minority population.
We can learn four things from this revelation.
First, we can see why simply abolishing discriminatory hiring practices—simply assuring that the most qualified person regardless of race gets the job—doesn’t solve the problem. Since members of an impoverished family don’t have the financial resources to become the most qualified person for a well-paying job, they have no chance of getting a well-paying job. Ensuring that the well-paying jobs always go to the most qualified (regardless of race) only ensures that the well-paying jobs go to those who can already afford to be the most qualified: the members of the non-impoverished population.
Second, we can see the real goal and understand the strategies behind affirmative action. The goal is to reduce minority-impoverishment, thus breaking the cycle of poverty; the strategy is to funnel more money into the minority population, and thus funnel more economic opportunity (e.g., the opportunity to become better educated and qualified for well-paying jobs) into the minority population by giving minorities better paying jobs.
Third, we can better understand the logic of the minority preference strategy. The minority preference strategy does not suggest hiring unqualified people for jobs. (You obviously should never hire Michael Scott to teach a business class, the entire market would break down and condemn everyone to poverty.) But it does suggest that when two qualified people are competing for a job, if one of them is a minority, then the minority should be given the job—even if the non-minority is better qualified. The justification is that, even though we are missing the opportunity to do one justice—to give the best qualified applicant the job—we have the opportunity to do an even greater justice: help fight minority impoverishment by employing a minority and thus increase the economic opportunity of the minority population.
Lastly, we learn that affirmative action need not be permanent. The goal is to reduce poverty in the minority population—to move down the minority “poverty bar” (if you will). Once the bar is moved, the goal will have been accomplished, and affirmative action will not be justified (or needed, or desired) anymore.15 16
Affirmative Action as Reverse Discrimination: The Tale of Hank Tate
It can’t be denied that affirmative action does have negative effects. Affirmative action will inevitably lead to a reduction of efficiency in the workforce due to instances of well-qualified minorities being favored over better-qualified majorities.17 And this can also have a negative affect on the economy, and perhaps even on the self-esteem of the very people affirmative action aims to help. (Although I can’t imagine that Stanley would care one iota if he discovered that he was hired or promoted based on his race. As he said in “Beach Games” when Michael forced them to eat hot dogs for his job, “I would rather work for an upturned broom with a bucket for a head than work for somebody else in this office besides myself. Game on!”) As the contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel argues, these objections really can’t be answered; but affirmative action is justified nevertheless—the cost is worth the benefit. And what is more, the negative effects are limited; eventually affirmative action will accomplish its goal and be no more. So, it seems, the social good of permanently moving the poverty bar accomplished by affirmative action outweighs the social evil of these temporary negative effects.18
But perhaps the “evil” of affirmative action does not lie in its consequences. A very common objection to affirmative action is that it promotes reverse discrimination. And that it does is undeniable. Discriminatory hiring practices eliminate certain candidates and give preference to others, based on their race (or other inappropriate factors such as age or gender). And this is exactly what affirmative action does in most instances—it just does it in “reverse.” Affirmative action, many times, eliminates whites from consideration and favors minorities. Of course, the discrimination of affirmative action is motivated differently. Past discrimination was rooted in hatred of minorities and a part of a larger social system bent on repressing minorities. The reverse discrimination of affirmative action does not have the same basis; it is rooted in a desire for social justice. But it is racial discrimination nonetheless. And many argue that racial discrimination is an injustice and that we must always stop injustice.
That discrimination is an injustice is fairly uncontroversial, but the latter part of the previous statement is as hairy as Michael’s David Hasselhoff imitation. Some things are more important than others and it is unclear that all injustices must be stopped at all costs. Couldn’t the positive consequences of discrimination ever justify it? It seems so. Consider this scenario.
Hank Tate is the Scranton branch’s security guard. (You may remember him from the episode “Drug Testing,” where he inducted Dwight as an honorary Security Guard. Unfortunately, he also had to tell Dwight that he wouldn’t get a gun and he couldn’t bring his bo staff to work.) Hank is African-American. But suppose that the security guard before Hank was a white racist, and every night at quitting time he insisted on searching Stanley, Darryl, and all other African-American workers to make sure they weren’t stealing office supplies. (Of course, he should have been searching Creed.) This really pissed them off—and they were very vocal about it, and this caused a lot of unrest in the whole branch—and so, finally, Michael fired the racist security guard. Now suppose that when Michael was looking to hire a new security guard, he had a choice between Hank (an African-American) and a much more experienced white man. Michael established that the white man was not a racist and, based on his experience, was qualified for the job better than Hank. But imagine that with uncharacteristic insight, Michael realized that hiring an African-American security guard would completely “calm the unrest” within the branch—a white security guard might still make everyone uneasy—and so Michael hired Hank.
In this story, Hank is hired on the basis of his race and is less qualified for the job than the white man. Clearly, this is an instance of racial discrimination. But Michael justifies the discrimination based on the action’s consequences. Yes, he is hiring an African-American because he is African-American, but doing so will calm the unrest in the branch. It seems that Michael’s decision is morally justified because the happiness of everyone at the branch morally outweighs the discrimination.
In the same way it seems that alleviating minority impoverishment —a consequence of affirmative action—morally outweighs the reverse discrimination of affirmative action. If all things were equal, and minority impoverishment didn’t exist, then the job should go to the most qualified candidate, regardless of race. But if a discriminatory action can have significant positive consequences (such as breaking the minority “cycle of poverty”), then those positive consequences can morally justify it.
But this last example opens the door for one last, very telling, objection to affirmative action. If Michael could have calmed the unrest at the branch while still hiring based on qualification (and not on race), he should have. And there are multiple ways that Michael could have done so. If he had simply proven, to everyone, that the new security guard wasn’t a racist there would have been no problem. And it seems that he could have done so, most simply, by telling everyone what he discovered about the man in an email (and he could have attached vacation pictures of him and Jan to make sure that everyone would see it). So, since he could have calmed the unrest at the branch without discrimination, it seems to me his discriminatory hiring was unjustified.
In the same way, if we could eliminate minority impoverishment without racially discriminatory hiring practices, then racially discriminatory hiring practices cannot be justified in the name of eliminating minority impoverishment. And I can think of at least one way that we can. As we learned before, the reason that past discriminatory hiring practices have locked the minority population into a “poverty cycle” is because poverty prevents minorities from affording the education necessary to be “the best candidate” for well-paying jobs. Consequently, it seems that increasing education in the minority population would also eliminate minority impoverishment, and thus racially discriminatory hiring practices are not needed to accomplish this goal. And increasing education in the minority population would not only not require discrimination, but would seem to be more easily accomplished and would have other benefits as well (the benefits of a good education don’t end with better paying jobs.) Thus, since the same goal can be accomplished in a better, easier and non-discriminatory way, it seems that affirmative action is, ultimately, unjustified.
Ultimately some may object to the education option. Perhaps some will argue that it is slower; others will argue that it will not be easier to implement. We will have to save that debate for another time. But what I have shown, using examples from The Office, is that many of the classic objections against affirmative action fail—mainly by misunderstanding the ultimate purpose of afterimage action: the elimination of minority impoverishment. This goal would justify the reverse discrimination of affirmative action, if affirmative action were the only way to accomplish this goal; but since it is not the only way (it seems education could do just as well), I conclude that affirmative action is not justified.
NOTES
1 In “Diversity Day,” Michael suggests that the Scranton branch is a “color-free zone” and that, for example, he doesn’t see Stanley “as another race.” As Mr. Brown (of Diversity Today) rightly pointed out, we don’t have to pretend to be color blind and doing so is fighting “ignorance with more ignorance.”
2 Usually the percentage required reflects the percentage of minorities in the population that constitutes the business’s potential labor force.
3 Affirmative action here and throughout the chapter is discussed in terms of racial minorities. But it’s also possible and common to have affirmative action on the basis of gender.
4 Of course, one could complain, but one shouldn’t. If there is nothing morally objectionable about a group being made up of only African-Americans, there is nothing morally objectionable about a group being made up of only Asian-Indians or Caucasians.
5 Quite often, quotas are a kind of “last ditch” effort, imposed on companies who refuse to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices. In such situations it is obvious that meeting the quota itself is not the ultimate goal.
6 As Mr. Brown taught us in “Diversity Day,” diversity is something to be celebrated.
7 But the question still remains: Shouldn’t we simply be trying to establish hiring practices that favor no one, instead of instigating ones that favor minorities? We will address this question shortly, and it should then be clear why doing so is not sufficient to accomplish the real goal of affirmative action.
8 It is important to note however that affirmative action in college admissions is often justified—in part—in the name of diversity. However, a college campus is very different than a business workforce. Ethnic diversity on a campus can provide a student with the opportunity for enriching experiences and to learn different points of view—part of the reason a student goes to college. I imagine some employers would offer the same justification—certainly it’s used as part of the justification for hiring minority faculty members on campuses—but most businesses are not concerned with the cultural education and enrichment of their employees.
9 As is turns out, Scranton is only 3.02 percent African-American, 1.08 percent Asian, 2.62 percent Hispanic (source: www.scranton.area-connect.com/statistics.htm). Speaking strictly of the workforce on the second floor, the racial quota that could be enforced at the Scranton branch is clearly already met. With only 15 employees (pre-merger), one employee makes up 6 percent of the entire workforce; the presence of Stanley, Kelly, and Oscar entails that 6 percent of the upstairs workforce is African-American, 6 percent is Asian, and 6 percent is Hispanic—each percentage being well above what would be required under a quota. (And the merger in season 3 did not change this fact.)
10 Although, in this instance, I think Michael’s mistake was innocent. He was responding to Stanley’s smart-aleck remark and he immediately also gave him the option of sitting in the front or driving.
11 Of course, it goes without saying that the world would be better if racism was eliminated.
12 Recall, at the end of season 3, Michael thought he was going to get a job at corporate and considered Dwight and Stanley (among others) as his replacement. He appointed Dwight before he got the job—but then took it back once he “withdrew” himself from consideration.
13 We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that Dwight’s higher sales and refusal to take off major holidays—and Stanley’s “I-only-work-for-pretzel-day-run-out-the-clock” attitude towards work—make Dwight the more qualified candidate. I personally would rather work under Stanley.
14 Their poverty would have held back their children’s education in numerous ways. Obviously, they couldn’t afford to send their children to college, but in addition, their poverty would have also prevented them from receiving a good basic education. They would be forced to live in poorer communities with not-well-funded schools—schools that would obviously not provide well-funded educations.
15 Because of this, it is also important to note that, in this entire effort, a close eye needs to be kept on our progress towards the goal and we need to stop when we have reached it. If we move the minority’s poverty bar down too much, we may move another population’s bar up too far, and then we would have to start the whole process over again. We simply need to move the “poverty bars” so there is equal economic opportunity for all populations.
16 It is worth noting that a slightly different rationale would need to be offered for affirmative action in favor of women.
17 Again, this is not to say that minorities are never the best qualified candidate. But at times they are not (usually because of the present effects of past discrimination); and when they are not, affirmative action demands that the best-qualified applicant be passed over if giving an aptly but less-qualified minority the job is an option. And when a less-qualified person does get the job, it is undeniable that the work doesn’t get done as well as it could have if the best-qualified person— i.e., the person who would do the job best—had been hired.
18 See Thomas Nagel, “A Defense of Affirmative Action.” In Tom Beauchamp & Norman Bowie (eds.) Ethical Theory and Business, 7th edn. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2004).