CASE STUDY
The W. R. Grace Company was founded by, yes, a man named W. R. Grace. He was Irish and it was a
shipping enterprise he brought to New York in 1865. Energetic and ambitious, while his company grew
on one side, he was getting civically involved on the other. Fifteen years after arriving, he was elected
Mayor of New York City. Five years after that, he personally accepted a gift from a delegation
representing the people of France. It was the Statue of Liberty. Grace was a legendary philanthropist. He
provided massive food donations to his native Ireland to relieve famine. At home, his attention focused
on his nonprofit Grace Institute, a tuition-free school for poor immigrant women. The classes offered
there taught basic skills—stenography, typewriting, bookkeeping— that helped students enter the
workforce. More than one hundred thousand young women have passed through the school, which
survives to this day. In 1945, grandson J. Peter Grace took control of the now worldwide shipping
company. A decade later, it became a publicly traded corporation on the New York Stock Exchange. The
business began shifting from shipping to chemical production. By the 1980s, W. R. Grace had become a
chemical and materials company, and it had come to light that one of its plants had been pouring toxins
into the soil and water underneath the small town of Woburn, Massachusetts. The poisons worked their
way into the town’s water supply and then into the townspeople. It caused leukemia in newborns.
Lawsuits in civil court, and later investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency, cost the
corporation millions. J. Peter Grace retired as CEO in 1992. After forty-eight years on the job, he’d
become the longest-reigning CEO in the history of public companies. During that time, he also served as
president of the Grace Institute. The nonfiction novel A Civil Action came out in 1996. The best-selling,
award-winning chronicle of the Woburn disaster soon became a Hollywood movie. The movie, starring
John Travolta, continues to appear on television with some regularity. To honor the Grace Institute,
October 28 was designated “Grace Day” by New York City in 2009. On that day, the institute defined its
mission this way: “In the tradition of its founding family, Grace Institute is dedicated to the development
of the personal and business skills necessary for self-sufficiency, employability, and an improved quality
of life.”
Source: Used from Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license
without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensor.
INSTRUCTIONS
Step 1: Write the Introduction
Create the introductory paragraph. The introductory paragraph is the first paragraph of the paper and
tells a reader the main points covered in the paper.
Step 2: Answer the following
1. In what ways does the structure of a “C” corporation protect its owners from absorbing ethical
responsibility for the company’s actions?
2. The triple bottom line is a form of corporate social responsibility where leaders analyze bottomline results. In addition, the company’s effects are evaluated in terms of the social realm as well
as in terms of the environment. At the intersection of ethics and economics is sustainability, or
the long-term maintenance of balance. In which way(s) did the W.R. Grace Company comply or
violate:
a. Economic Sustainability
b. Social Sustainability
c. Environmental Sustainability
3. There are three approaches to Corporate Responsibility - Corporate Social Responsibility; The
Triple Bottom Line; and Stakeholder Theory. What is the importance of balancing stakeholder
interests and how did the implementation or lack of implementation affect the W.R. Grace
Company?
4. Is the best method of managing Corporate Social Responsibility a governmental obligation,
marketplace responsibility, or a hybrid of the two? Explain.
5. What are the benefits of an Environmental Impact Statement; what are opposing arguments?
6. Do corporations have an ethical responsibility to finance environmental protections? Did the
W.R. Grace Corporation have a financial responsibility to protect the environment? Explain
7. How does a Cost-Benefit Analysis align with Utilitarianism? How might a cost-benefit analysis
pertain to the W.R. Grace Company?
8. Is the creation of “Grace Day” an ethical issue? Why or why not?
Step 3: Review the Paper
Read the paper to ensure all required elements are present. Use the grading rubric to ensure that you
gain the most points possible for this assignment.
Proofread the paper for spelling and grammatical issues, and third person writing.
Read the paper aloud as a first measure;
Use the spell and grammar check in Word as a second measure;
Have someone who has excellent English skills proofread the paper;
How to Set Up the Paper
Create a Word or Rich Text Format (RTF) document that is double-spaced, 12-point font. The final
product will be between 5-6 pages in length excluding the title page and reference page. Write clearly
and concisely.
Third person writing is required. Third person means that there are no words such as “I, me, my, we, or
us” (first person writing), nor is there use of “you or your” (second person writing). If uncertain how to
write in the third person, view this link: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/firstsecond-and-third-person.
Contractions are not used in business writing, so do not use them.
Paraphrase and do not use direct quotation marks. Paraphrase means you do not use more than four
consecutive words from a source document, but puts a passage from a source document into your own
words and attribute the passage to the source document. Not using direct quotation marks means that
there should be no passages with quotation marks and instead the source material is paraphrased as
stated above. Note that a reference within a reference list cannot exist without an associated in-text
citation and vice versa.
Provide the page or paragraph number (required) when using in-text citations. If using the eBook, use
Business Ethics followed by the Chapter/Section title and paragraph number.
You are expected to use the case scenario, and weekly courses readings to develop the analysis and
support the reasoning. The expectation is that you provide a robust use of the course readings. There
is no need to use external source material. Material used from a source document must be cited and
referenced. A reference within a reference list cannot exist without an associated in-text citation and
vice versa.
Use a wide array of the course material.
Chapter 10: The Tense Office: Discrimination, Victimization, and Affirmative Action from The
Business Ethics Workshop was adapted by Saylor Academy and is available under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license without attribution as
requested by the work's original creator or licensor.
Chapter 10
The Tense Office: Discrimination, Victimization, and
Affirmative Action
Chapter Overview
Chapter 10 "The Tense Office: Discrimination, Victimization, and Affirmative Action" examines issues and
ethics surrounding discrimination in the workplace.
Next
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10.1 Racial Discrimination
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1.
Define racial discrimination.
2.
Distinguish different ways that racial discrimination occurs in the workplace.
3.
Consider legal aspects of racial discrimination in a business environment.
4.
Discuss ethical aspects of racial discrimination in a business environment.
The White Running Back
Toby Gerhart is a bruising running back. Coming out of college at six feet and 225 pounds, he was drafted
by the Minnesota Vikings football team with their first-round pick in 2010. It was a controversial choice.
His playing style is unorthodox: he runs standing almost straight up and doesn’t do much faking and
cutting. Most NFL runners get low and slip away from tacklers. Gerhart chugs and blows through things.
That’s not Gerhart’s only distinction. In a league where running backs—almost all of them—are black, he’s
white. On the days leading to the draft, Gerhart feared his skin color might be expensive. An anonymous
quote had been circulating, suggesting that his position in the draft order could fall, bringing his paycheck
down along with it: “One longtime NFL scout insisted that Gerhart’s skin color will likely prevent him
from being drafted in Thursday’s first round. ‘He’ll be a great second-round pick up for somebody, but I
guarantee you if he was the exact same guy—but he was black—he’d go in the first round for sure,’ the
scout said.”
[1]
As it turned out, the scout was wrong. But the question of race in sports had flared, and the media came to
it. One story appeared on an MSNBC-affiliated website called theGrio.com. Writer John Mitchell pointed
out that twenty-seven of the NFL’s thirty-two general managers (those ultimately responsible for draftday selections) were white, and so, he asserted, it was “virtually impossible” that racism could work
against Gerhart.
[2]
John Mitchell is black. In fact, if you go to the Grio.com’s contributor page, you’ll find that, as a rough
estimate, 90 percent of the website’s writers are black, a number that’s far, far out of proportion with the
global percentage of black writers out there. The disproportion, however, would be less surprising for
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anyone who’d read the description the site presents of itself: “TheGrio.com is devoted to providing African
Americans with stories and perspectives that appeal to them but are underrepresented in existing national
news outlets. The Grio features aggregated and original video packages, news articles, and blogs on topics
from breaking news, politics, health, business, and entertainment, which concern its niche audience.”
[3]
On that same page, surfers are directed to a video story about the Grio.co-produced by NBC New York,
which is a station aimed at the general market, not the Grio.com’s niche audience. The story tells of the
Grio.com’s origin and in an interview with the website’s founder, he remarks that his contributors are very
diverse: “We have conservatives, liberals, old folks, young folks, rich folks, poor folks, politicians and plain
folks.”
[4]
The NBC story also informs us that the idea for creating a site that aggregated news stories involving the
black community was taken to NBC executives who agreed to sponsor the website. We don’t learn which
specific NBC execs received the proposal, but a quick check of the network’s directors and programming
directors and so on leads to the strong suspicion that most were white.
Questions about racial discrimination are tangled and difficult. Here are a few of the knotted uncertainties
arising from the Gerhart episode and its treatment in the press:
The story about Toby Gerhart in theGrio.com claimed that the white Gerhart couldn’t suffer racial
discrimination because the people who’d be drafting him (or not) were white. Is that true, is it impossible
for whites to be racists against other whites?
Overwhelmingly, running backs in the NFL are black. These are painful but very high-paying jobs with
long vacations and lots of fringe benefits. Most young guys would be happy with the work, but a certain
racial group holds a near monopoly. Is there racism operating here?
The Grio.com’s workforce is, according to its founder, very diverse in many ways but completely
dominated by a single racial group. Racism?
MSNBC, which sponsors theGrio.com, currently has a prime-time TV lineup (Joe Scarborough and Mika
Brzezinski in the morning and Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell at
night) that’s all white. Racism?
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What Exactly Is Racial Discrimination?
Racial discrimination in the economic world can be defined in three steps:
1.
An employment decision—hiring, promoting, demoting, firing, and related actions—affects an employee
or applicant adversely or positively.
2. The decision is based on the person’s membership in a certain racial group rather than individual ability
and accomplishment with respect to work-related tasks.
3. The decision rests on unverified or unreasonable stereotypes or generalizations about members of that
racial group.
The first step—someone has to suffer or benefit from the discrimination—is important because without
that, without something tangible to point at, you’re left making an accusation without evidence.
The second step—discrimination is based on race as opposed to job qualifications—is critical because it
separates the kind of racism we typically consider vile from the one we normally accept as reasonable. For
example, if actors are being hired to play Toby Gerhart in a biography about his life, and all the finalists
for the role are white guys, well, the casting company probably did discriminate in terms of race, but this
particular discrimination overlaps with qualifications helping the actor play the part. This contrast with
the alleged racial discrimination surrounding the Gerhart draft pick: the suspicion that he couldn’t be very
good at running over other people with an oblong leather ball cradled in his arm because his skin is white.
If that’s a baseless premise, then it follows that within this definition of racism, the Grio.com’s claim that
Gerhart has no reason to fear unfair discrimination because so many NFL general managers are white is,
in fact, wrong. Whites can exhibit racial discrimination against other whites just as blacks can
discriminate against blacks and so on.
The difference between discriminating in favor of white males to play Gerhart in a movie and
discriminating against white males as running backs is more or less clear. Between the extremes, however,
there are a lot of gray areas. What about the case of hiring at theGrio.com? Just looking at the list of
contributors, it’s hard to avoid wondering whether they’re picking people based on skin color as opposed
to writing ability. On the other hand, since theGrio.com explicitly states that its mission is to tell stories
affecting the black community, a case could be made that black writers are more likely to be well qualified
since it’s more likely that their lives significantly connect with that community. It’s not, in other words,
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that contributors are hired because they’re black; it’s the fact that they’re black that helps them possess
the kind of background information that will help them write for theGrio.com.
The definition’s third step—an employment decision rests on unverified or unreasonable stereotypes or
generalizations about members of a racial group—is also important. Staying on theGrio.com example,
there’s a difference between finding that in specific cases contributors well suited to the site also tend to
be black, and making the stronger generalization that whites, Asians, Hispanics, and so on are by
nature incapable of understanding and connecting with the realities covered by the web page. This second
and generalizing claim eliminates the opportunity for those others to participate.
Finally, questions about racial discrimination center on purely racial divisions but overlap with another
distinction that can be similar but remains technically different: ethnicity.
Race concerns descent and heredity. It’s usually visible in ways including skin, hair, and eye color.
Because it’s a biological trait, people can’t change their race. Ethnicity is the cluster of racial, linguistic,
and cultural traits that define a person as a member of a larger community. The Hispanic ethnic group, for
example, contains multiple races, but is unified by common bonds tracing back to Spanish and
Portuguese languages and customs. Though it’s not common, one’s ethnicity may change. A girl born in
Dublin to Irish parents but adopted by an Argentine family living in East Los Angeles may ultimately
consider herself Hispanic.
The US Census Bureau divides individuals in terms of race and, with a separate question, ethnicity. It’s
not unusual, however, for the two categories to be mixed in a business environment. Many organizations
place Hispanic on the list of racial options when measuring their workforce’s diversity. In the real world,
the line between race and ethnicity is blurry.
Locating Racism in Business
Questions about racism swirl around the Toby Gerhart episode, but it’s equally clear that getting a firm
grip on which people and institutions involved actually are racist is difficult. Nearly all running backs in
the NFL are black, and at least one scout presumes that racial discrimination in favor of that color is an
active part of the reason. But there could also be social and cultural reasons for the imbalance. Maybe
young black men are more likely to devote themselves to football because they see so many successful role
models. Or it may be that players—regardless of their race—come from a certain economic class or
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geographic part of the country where, in fact, blacks happen to be the majority. More explanations could
be added. No one knows for sure which is right.
On the other side, just as it’s prudent to be careful when using words like racist and pointing fingers, there
is real evidence indicating wide and deep currents of racism in US business life. Generally, there are three
evidence types:
1.
Experimental
2. Statistical
3. Episodic
One experimental indication of racism in hiring comes from economist Marc Bendick. He paired
applicants for gender and appearance, loaded them with similar qualifications, and sent them to New
York City restaurants in search of waiter jobs. The only notable difference between the two applicants was
their race; whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics participated. After 181 restaurant visits in which the two
applicants appeared within an hour of each other, the results were tabulated. Because four racial groups
were investigated there are a lot of cross-tabs, but the basic finding was simple: with everything else as
equal as possible, whites were significantly more likely to be given information about job duties, receive
second interviews, and be hired. According to Bendick, “The important thing is that we repeated the
experiment dozens of times so that we can be pretty sure when a pattern emerges it really is differences in
employer behavior and not a random effect.”
[5]
In terms of statistical evidence of racism, racial disparities are significant in many areas. Income is not
atypical. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2006 the median personal income for Asians was
$36,000; for whites $33,000; for blacks $27,000; and for Hispanics $24,000.
[6]
The disparities contract
significantly—but not all the way—when you adjust for education levels. Surveying only those who hold
bachelor’s degrees yields these numbers: white, $44,000; Asian $42,000; black $42,000; Hispanic
$37,000. Going back a little more than a decade, the federal Glass Ceiling Commission produced a set of
striking statistics. According to its study, 97 percent of the senior managers of Fortune 500 companies are
white (and 95 percent are male). That compares with a broader economic reality in which 57 percent of
the working population is female, or minority, or both.
[7]
Episodic evidence of racism in business life is real-world episodes where decisions seem to have been
made based on racial distinctions. The venerable clothier Abercrombie & Fitch, which once outfitted JFK
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and now sells heavily to collegians, garnered considerable (and unwanted) media attention when Jennifer
Lu, a former salesperson at the store, took her story to the CBS news program 60 Minutes. According to
Lu, she was fired soon after corporate executives patrolled the store where she worked and informed the
store’s manager that the staff was supposed to look like the models in the store’s display posters. If you’ve
been in Abercrombie, you may remember that they tend to have the blonde, blue-eyed, football team
captain look. Like Toby Gerhart. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Anthony Ocampo says, “The greeters
and the people that worked in the in-season clothing, most of them, if not all of them, were white. The
people that worked in the stock room, where nobody sees them, were mostly Asian-American, Filipino,
Mexican, and Latino.”
[8]
A lawsuit against the store was settled out of court when Abercrombie agreed to pay almost $50 million to
negatively affected employees and beef up their minority hiring. They also stated that their custom of
seeking out new sales staff at predominantly white fraternities and sororities should be modified.
Categories of Racial Discrimination
When discrimination exists in a business environment, it can be distinguished into several categories.
First, there’s a division between institutional and individual discrimination. Institutional discrimination is
exemplified in the Abercrombie lawsuit. The preference given to white, football-player types wasn’t one
person at one store; it was part of the corporate culture. Managers were instructed to include a certain
look while excluding others, and presumably their job depended on their ability to meet that demand. The
manager, in other words, who fired Jennifer Lu may (or may not) have thought it was a terrible thing to
do. Regardless, the manager’s personal feelings had nothing to do with the firing. Instructions were
provided by higher-ups, and they were followed.
Individual racial discrimination, on the other hand, can occur in any organization no matter how
determined leaders may be to create an organizational culture prohibiting it. The NFL, for example,
established a requirement (commonly called “the Rooney Rule”) in 2003 requiring teams to interview
minority candidates for football operations posts. It’s part of a broader effort by the league to ensure
against racial discrimination. Still, this comes from a 2005 article by Sports Illustrated writer Dan Banks:
“One Asian stereotype concerns size. A NFL personnel man told me on Thursday the problem with Chang
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is ‘the kid is short.’ But when I noted that Chang was 6-1½ and 211 pounds, and taller than San Diego’s
Drew Brees—the talent scout replied: ‘But he plays short. And he’s 211, but he looks frail.’”
[9]
A second broad distinction within the category of racial discrimination divides
isolated from regularized incidents. An isolated case of racial discrimination is a one-time deal.
Regularized incidents are repeated occurrences fitting into a pattern.
The final distinction cuts through all those mentioned so far; it divides sun
intentional from intentional discrimination. Take as a general example a seventy-year-old who grew up in
a time and place where racism was normal and accepted almost without objection. For someone coming
from those circumstances, it’s hard to imagine that from time to time some of that old way of seeing the
world isn’t going to slip through. Of course the fact that racism is unintentional doesn’t make it less racist,
but just like in everything else, there’s a difference between doing something without thinking about it
and doing something with premeditation and full understanding.
The Legal Side of Discrimination
A complex web of legal precedents and civil rules apply to racial discrimination. At the center,
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 covers all employers in both private and public organizations that have fifteen
or more workers. The act’s crucial language can be found in Title VII, which confronts a host of
discriminatory practices:
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to
discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his
compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race,
color, religion, sex, or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate or classify his employees or
applicants for employment in any way that would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of
employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of
such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
[10]
You notice that employee is referred to as “his,” not “his or hers,” and employers are also “his,” not “his or
hers.” That’s not a snarky comment; it’s just an example of how treacherous the issues of unfair
discrimination are. Even those with the best intentions find it difficult to pull completely away from what
others may perceive as signs and appearances of unfair practices.
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The difficulty partially explains why the Civil Rights Act has been repeatedly modified and supplemented.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 set down new rules and created a powerful commission
to enforce and report on the status of anti-discriminatory efforts across the nation. These reports have
played a role in many civil lawsuits brought by individuals or groups against employers suspected of
discriminatory treatment.
Additional requirements—some involving affirmative action (to be discussed further on)—were compiled
for companies doing business with the US government. While these measures don’t bind organizations
operating independently of government contracts, the pure size and spending power of Washington, DC,
does send the measures far into the world of business.
So the legal and governmental bulwark set up against racial and other types of discrimination stands on
four legs:
1.
Racial and similar types of discrimination are directly illegal.
2. Civil lawsuits may be filed by those who feel they’ve suffered from discriminatory practices.
3. Government oversight (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) is continuous.
4. Government regulations insist that companies wanting to do business with deep-pocketed Washington,
DC, implement exemplary anti-discriminatory practices.
The Ethics of Discrimination: Arguments against the Practice
It’s difficult to locate a mainstream ethical theory for workplace life that can be twisted to support racial
discrimination as it’s defined in this chapter. The arguments mounted against it generally fall into three
groups:
1.
Fairness arguments typically operate from the assertion that discrimination divides up society’s
opportunities in an unacceptable way. (These kinds of arguments are sometimes called “justice
arguments.”)
2. Rights arguments typically assert that discrimination contradicts the victims’ basic human rights.
3. Utilitarianism arguments employed in the economic world frequently assert that discrimination reduces a
society’s economic productivity and so harms the general welfare, the happiness of the society.
Fairness, as Aristotle defined the term, is to treat equals equally and un-equals unequally. People, that
means, are to be treated differently if and only if there are job-pertinent differences between them. Burly
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men should be favored over thin ones when you’re hiring an offensive lineman in the NFL, but not when
you’re looking to contract a coach.
The philosopher John Rawls advocated an ingenious way to, at least as a thought experiment, promote
fairness. He proposed that individuals imagine the reality surrounding them as shaken up, with people
pulled from their situation and randomly inserted into another. So if you’re a white guy in college looking
for a summer job, you probably don’t mind too much that Abercrombie & Fitch is looking for your type
more than any other. But if you imagine getting shaken up with your black, Asian, and Hispanic
classmates and you don’t know beforehand what race you’re going to get assigned, then maybe you think
twice about whether Abercrombie should be allowed to hire whites so pervasively. This is called
a veil of ignorance test: you need to imagine how you’d like society to be if you don’t know beforehand
exactly where you’ll be placed in it. The imagined reality, presumably, will be one where everyone gets a
chance that’s fair.
Rights arguments against discrimination typically depart from the premise that as humans we’re all
endowed with a certain dignity and freedom that abides regardless of circumstances. These attributes are
an essential part of what we are: they’re like pregnancy in the sense that you can’t have them halfway.
You’re either pregnant or you’re not; you either possess full dignity and freedom just like everyone else or
you don’t. If all of us do possess dignity and freedom, then it’s a short step to see that discrimination is an
affront to them. Treating one group differently than another is to wrongly claim that they have different
levels of basic dignity. Or, from the viewpoint of freedom, discrimination grants one group more freedom
in the world than another. Again, the argument here is that dignity and freedom can’t be measured or
parceled out; as essential rights, everyone must hold them perfectly, and they must be respected fully.
The utilitarian argument holds that we ought to act in the business world in a way that maximizes our
collective happiness and welfare. If that’s right, then we all have an interest in ensuring that the most
qualified people occupy the various working slots in our economy. Possibly the examples of professional
football and Abercrombie don’t lend themselves very well to this argument, but if we move to other
professions, the inadvisability of discrimination becomes clearer. In the field of medical research, we
wouldn’t want to lose a breakthrough because the one person who’d have the idea that could cure cancer
happens to be Hispanic. The argument, therefore, is simply that as a society we benefit when each
individual member is allowed the maximum opportunity to contribute.
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The Ethics of Discrimination: Racism versus Job Qualification
While few argue that discrimination is good or justified, there are equally few who deny that some
situations do, in fact, allow for discrimination (the actor hired to play Martin Luther King is black, the
person hired to monitor the women’s locker room is a woman). Between these extremes there stretches a
tense set of debates about where the line gets drawn. When is some limited discrimination acceptable?
The lawsuit against Abercrombie & Fitch alleging that the company hires a disproportionately white sales
force and favors white employees for the best positions never went to court. Former employee Jennifer Lu
turned up on 60 Minutes, CBS news started running stories about how Asians and Mexicans were
confined to the stockroom, and with the bad publicity storming, Abercrombie opted to settle the matter
and move on. That was probably a good business decision.
Others, however, wanted to push the issue out to see the ethical consequences. One of those was lawyer
and talk show host Larry Elder. He made this point: “Abercrombie & Fitch ought to have the right to set
their own policies. Look, there’s a restaurant called Hooters. Hooters require you to have certain kinds of
physical accoutrements, and I think people understand that. Should they have a right to hire waitresses
because they want to attract a certain kind of clientele who want to ogle at the waitresses? I think so.”
[11]
Closing off the argument with respect to Abercrombie & Fitch, the point is that Abercrombie isn’t selling
only clothes but also a look, an image, a kind of social message. And that message is crystallized by the
kind of people they hire to walk around their showrooms and smile at consumers: white, attractive, fit,
upper-middle-class. Not coincidentally, one of the company’s subsidiary lines of clothes is called Prep
School. And if that’s what they’re selling—not just clothes but a social message—they should be able to
hire the best possible messengers, just as Hooters is allowed to hire the kind of waitresses their clientele
wants to ogle and just as the movie producer is allowed to hire a black actor to play Martin Luther King.
There’s no racial discrimination here; it’s just business. At bottom, it’s no different from theGrio.com,
which is selling a specific product and image that naturally leads to an almost entirely black organization.
In every case, it’s not that the business starts out with a certain racial (or gender) type that they’ll
contract; it’s that they start out with something they want to sell, and as it happens a certain racial type
lends itself to the business.
There are two types of responses to this argument. The first is to push back against the premise that the
one racial type really does serve the business’s interest better than the others. Rebecca Leung, the CBS
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reporter for the Abercrombie & Fitch case, shapes her story this way. The idea, Leung asserts, of prep
schools and the all-American pursuit of upper-middle-class life that Abercrombie tries to represent
belongs equally to all races. There’s no justification, Leung leads viewers to believe, for associating that
ideal with a skin color. That’s why her report ends this way:
“All-American does not mean all-white,” says Lu.
“An all-American look is every shade,” Lueng asks.
“Yes, absolutely.”
[12]
The other kind of response to the argument that Abercrombie’s business model lends itself to hiring
whites is to concede the point but then to insist that it doesn’t matter. Because society’s general welfare
depends on rallying against poisonous discrimination, it should be avoided in every possible case, even
those where there might be some rational, business-based reason for engaging in the practice.
Abercrombie, the argument goes, may have good reason for seeking out white sales staff. But even so, the
larger social goal of developing a color-blind society requires Abercrombie’s participation, and the
company ought to be required to participate even against its own short-term economic interest.
Conclusion
For historical reasons in the United States, discrimination in the reproachable sense of the word comes
into sharpest focus on questions concerning race. Any distinguishing characteristic, however, can be
levered into a scene of unfair marginalization. Women, for example, have suffered mistreatment in ways
analogous to the kind discussed here for racial groups. And it doesn’t stop there. Age, national origin,
religion, weight, whatever, all of us have features that can be singled out by others and then converted
into favoritism or negative prejudice in the workplace. Somewhere there’s probably a high executive who’s
convinced that individuals with knobby knees can’t do good work. In ethical terms, all these cases may be
understood and handled as the question of race has. That is, by thoughtfully determining whether the
identifying feature—the skin color, gender, age, religion, weight, the knobbiness of the knees—actually has
a bearing on the person’s ability to successfully accomplish the tasks fitting the job.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
Racial discrimination is adverse treatment stemming from unfounded stereotypes about a person’s race.
Favoring or disfavoring members of a racial group may imply racism, or it may reflect a legitimate job
requirement.
Evidence of racial discrimination may be accumulated experimentally, statistically, and episodically.
Racial discrimination in business can be divided into multiple kinds and intentions.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a key legal document in the history of discrimination.
Ethical arguments against discrimination are generally built on theories of fairness, rights, and utilitarian
arguments.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1.
In your own words, what are the three steps defining racial discrimination?
2.
What’s the difference between racial discrimination and a preference for race based on an occupational
qualification? Provide an example.
3.
List and define the six categories of discrimination in a business environment.
4.
What are the main legal and governmental remedies set up against discrimination?
5.
Why kind of business may favor Asians when hiring, and draw both reasonable defenses and criticisms of
the practice?
6.
What is the utilitarian argument against racism in the economic world?
[1] Michael Silver, “Race Factors into Evaluation of Gerhart,” Yahoo! Sports, April 20, 2011, accessed May 31,
2011, http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-gerhartstereotype042010.
[2] John Mitchell, “White Running Back’s Draft Status Won’t Be Hamstrung by Race,”TheGrio.com, April 22, 2010,
accessed May 31, 2011,http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/white-running-backs-draft-status-wont-be-hamstrungby-race.php.
[3] “About theGrio,” TheGrio.com accessed May 31, 2011, http://www.thegrio.com/about.
[4] “About theGrio,” TheGrio.com accessed May 31, 2011, http://www.thegrio.com/about.
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[5] “City Room,” New York Times, NY/Region, March 31, 2009, accessed May 31,
2011,http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/racial-bias-seen-in-hiring-of-waiters.
[6] U.S. Census, “Table PINC-03. Educational Attainment—People 25 Years Old and Over, by Total Money Earnings
in 2005, Work Experience in 2005, Age, Race, Hispanic Origin and Sex,” in Current Population Survey (2006).
[7] George E. Curry, “Race, Gender and Corporate America,” District Chronicles, April 24, 2005, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.georgecurry.com/columns/race-gender-and-corporate-america.
[8] Rebecca Leung, “The Look of Abercrombie & Fitch,” 60 Minutes, November 24, 2004, accessed May 31,
2011,http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/05/60minutes/main587099.shtml.
[9] Don Banks, “Hurdles to History: From Size, Stereotypes, System, Chang Fights Skeptics, “Inside the
NFL (blog), Sports Illustrated, April 15, 2005, accessed May 31,
2011,http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/don_banks/04/15/chang/index.html.
[10] Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964).
[11] Rebecca Leung, “The Look of Abercrombie & Fitch,” 60 Minutes, November 24, 2004, accessed May 31,
2011,http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/05/60minutes/main587099.shtml.
[12] Rebecca Leung, “The Look of Abercrombie & Fitch,” 60 Minutes, November 24, 2004, accessed May 31,
2011,http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/05/60minutes/main587099.shtml.
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10.2 Gender Discrimination and Occupational Segregation
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1.
Define gender discrimination.
2.
Consider the ethics of occupational segregation.
3.
Discuss the doctrine of comparable worth.
4.
Define the glass ceiling.
5.
Examine the case of motherhood.
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10.3 Discrimination: Inferiority versus Aptness
Discrimination in the workplace moves in two directions. One is hierarchical, one group or another is
stereotyped as simply superior or inferior. Historically, many cases of race discrimination fit on this scale.
Discrimination can also move horizontally, however. In this case, divisions are drawn between different
groups not so much in terms of general capability, but as naturally suited for some and naturally unsuited
for other tasks and occupations. Gender discrimination frequently fits into this category.
Here’s a list of professions where the workers are more than 90 percent women:
Dental hygienists
Preschool and kindergarten teachers
Secretaries and administrative assistants
Dental assistants
Speech-language pathologists
Nurses
Child-care workers
Hairstylists and cosmetologists
Receptionists and information clerks
Payroll clerks
And another where the workers are 99 percent (not a typo) male:
Logging workers
Automotive body repairers
Cement masons
Bus and truck mechanics
Electrical power-line installers and repairers
Tool and die makers
Roofers
Heavy vehicle equipment service technicians
Home appliance repairers
Crane and tower operators
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The lists come from a blog called The Digerati Life.
[1]
The author is a software engineer living in Silicon
Valley. Because she’s a she, 78 percent of her colleagues don’t use the same bathroom.
[2]
What Exactly Is Gender Discrimination?
Gender discrimination defines analogously with the racial version:
1.
An employment decision—hiring, promoting, demoting, firing—adversely or positively affects an
employee or applicant
2. The decision is based on the person’s gender rather than individual merit.
3. The decision rests on unverified stereotypes or generalizations about members of that gender.
The difference, again, is that the stereotypes and generalizations tending to surround women in the
United States during our lifetimes have branded the group as naturally suited to some types of work and
not others; and, correspondingly, men also find their natural roles pointing in some directions and not
others. This division of labor raises provocative questions. More sparks fly when two other factors add to
the mix: concrete and broad statistics showing that women receive lower wages than men when doing
distinct but comparable work; and women who do pursue career lines dominated by men can find their
advance up the promotion ladder halted by a difficult-to-see barrier, a kind of glass ceiling.
So three ethical issues connecting with gender discrimination in the workplace are occupational
segregation, comparable worth, and the glass ceiling.
Occupational Segregation: The Causes
What causes occupational segregation? One explanation is biological. Differences, the reasoning goes that
are plainly visible physically also exist on the level of desires and aspirations. Women and men are simply
divergent; they pursue distinct goals, define happiness in separate ways, and tend to have dissimilar kinds
of abilities. For all those reasons, women gravitate to different kinds of professions. Now, if all those
things are true, then we should expect to see just what we do see: significant occupational segregation.
The biological explanation also functions less directly when career paths and family paths conflict.
Women who physically carry children find themselves removed—willingly or not—from work for
significant periods. If you see that coming in your not-distant future, then you may opt into a field where
that kind of absence is less damaging to the company and your own long-term prospects.
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One clean argument against the biological explanation for gender segregation in the workforce starts with
the suspicion that visible physical differences may be leading us to mistakenly believe that there are
underlying psychological differences where few actually exist. People, the reasoning goes, are making an
invalid argument when they suppose that because women and men look different on the outside, they
must be different on the inside too. There’s no reason that’s necessarily true, just like there’s no reason to
think that a Cadillac painted blue and one painted pink are going to perform differently on the road.
A second and frequently cited explanation for occupational segregation is social precedent. Young men
and women making career decisions normally have very limited experience in the workplace and so
depend on what others have done. It’s very reasonable, therefore, for a young man trying to decide
between, say, going to work as an assistant to a dentist and going to assist a roofer to notice that a lot of
other guys are working on roofs, but not many are in dentists’ offices. Women see the same thing, and the
occupational segregation that already exists in society gets repeated. In this case, it’s the individual men
and women themselves who are effectively volunteering for professional separation.
A third explanation—and the one drawing the sharpest ethical attention—is discriminatory prejudice.
Those in charge of hiring stack the deck to favor one gender over another because of unverified
generalizations about differences between men and women. In his book Business Ethics, Manual
Velasquez relates an experiment done by the ABC news program Primetime Live. Two early careerists—
Chris and Julie—were outfitted with hidden microphones and tiny cameras and sent out to answer the
same help-wanted ads. Their experiences were for TV entertainment, not a scientific study, but they do
illustrate how discriminatory occupational segregation can work.
[3]
Both she and he were in their mid-twenties, blond, and attractive. They presented virtually identical
résumés, and both claimed to have management experience. What they got from their interviewers,
however, was very different. When Julie appeared at one company, the recruiter spoke only of a position
answering phones. The same day the same recruiter offered Chris a management job. In a gotcha-followup interview, the flustered recruiter told the camera that he’d never want a man answering his phone.
Another instance wasn’t quite so clear-cut. The two visited a lawn-care company. Julie received a typing
test, some casual questions about her fiancé, and was offered a job as a receptionist. Chris’s interview
included an aptitude test, some casual talk about keeping the waistline trim, and a job offer as a territory
manager. When confronted in his gotcha interview, the owner strongly defended his actions by pointing
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out that being a manager at a lawn-care service means actually doing some of the outdoor work; and
Chris—an objectively stronger candidate in the physical sense—seemed more apt for that. The question to
ask here—and it’s one that comes up time and again in discussions of occupational segregation—is the
extent to which the outdoor work requirement is a legitimate reason for hiring Chris or an excuse for
excluding Julie (because the owner doesn’t believe women should be in that line of work).
The Ethics of Women’s—and Men’s—Work
What kind of ethical arguments can be mounted for and against the idea that occupational segregation
ought to exist? Possibly the strongest argument in favor runs through a utilitarian theory—one that judges
as ethically correct any act that raises a society’s overall happiness. The theory’s cutting edge is the
requirement that individual interests be sacrificed if that serves the greater good. For example,
occupations requiring hard physical strength (firefighter, logger, construction) may require strength tests.
These tests, which more or less measure brute power, are going to weed out most women—so many, in
fact, that it may make practical sense to essentially designate the job as a male realm, and to do so even
though it may be unfair to a very few physically strong women. That unfairness is erased, in ethical terms,
by the requirement that the general welfare be served.
There are a number of responses to this argument. One is to say that the general position of firefighter
should be open to everyone, but every firehouse should make sure there are a few big guys in the mix in
case smoke-inhalation victims need to be carried down perilous ladders. Another response is to concede
that there are some occupations that may be right for one or another gender but draw the line firmly there
and demand equal opportunity everywhere else. Another, more polemical argument is to assert that the
goal of a gender-neutral society is so important and worthwhile that if it means sacrificing performance in
some occupations, then the sacrifice should be made. The greater good is better served by occupational
equality than by the certainty that the 250-pound weight-lifting guy will be the one who happens to be in
the firehouse when the alarm goes off even if it goes off because it’s your apartment that’s on fire.
Another way to argue against occupational segregation of any kind, no matter the circumstances, starts
from rights theory and the premise that the highest ethical value is personal freedom and opportunity:
what’s always recommendable is maximizing our ability to pursue happiness as each of us sees fit. Within
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this model, it becomes directly unethical to reserve some jobs for women and others for men because that
setup limits both men and women; it impinges on their basic freedom.
Like utilitarian theory, this freedom-based argument can be twisted around to work in the other direction.
If individual freedom is the highest ethical good, the reasoning goes, then shouldn’t business owners be
able to hire whomever they like? There may be an owner out there who simply doesn’t want to hire guys.
Perhaps there’s no rational reason for the exclusion, but if individual freedom is the highest good, there’s
no strong ethical response to the preference. The only open pathway is to say that if you don’t like the fact
that this owner isn’t hiring men, then you should make your own company and you can hire as many of
them as you wish.
Comparable Worth
Going back to the list of gender-concentrated occupations, some on the women’s side really aren’t so
different from those on the men’s side in terms of skill and training required, effort exerted, and
responsibility held. Take hairstylists and cosmetologists from the woman’s list and automotive body
repairers from the guy’s list. While it’s true that a lot of the hairdressers wouldn’t be caught dead working
in the body shop and vice versa, their jobs really aren’t so different: fixing hair and giving cars makeovers.
The wages are different, though, at least according to statistics that come from the San Jose Mercury
News. Doing hair will net you about $20,000 a year, and working in the car shop gets you $35,000.
[4]
This reality is at odds with the doctrine of comparable worth, which states that when two occupations
require comparable levels of skill, training, effort, and responsibility, they should be rewarded with
comparable salaries. The gender problem associated with comparable worth is that statistical evidence
suggests that so-called women’s work has consistently garnered lower wages than men’s work. The
hairdresser and the body shop example isn’t an anomaly but a representative of the larger reality.
According to the US government, the median income of American working women is $27,000, while for
men it is $39,000. More, the differences hold when adjusting for educational levels. For high school
grads, it is $21,000 versus $32,000. For college grads, it’s $40,000 versus $60,000. At the PhD level, it’s
$55,000 versus $78,000.
[5]
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These statistics don’t tell the whole story, however; they never do. As it happens, statistician is one of
those professions where there’s a notable pay gap between genders—$49,000 versus $36,000 as a median
salary—and women get the $49,000.
[6]
Glass Ceiling
What happens when a woman goes into a field traditionally dominated by men and starts strong,
receiving salary and treatment comparable with her male workmates but then hits a promotion wall?
Called the glass ceiling, it’s the experience of women topping off in their career for, apparently, no reason
beyond the womanhood. A good example of the glass ceiling—and also of breaking it—comes from Carly
Fiorina, the former CEO of the very masculine Hewlett-Packard. In an interview with the web
magazine Salon, she discusses the topic candidly. Five of her ideas come through loudly.
[7]
First, in Silicon Valley Fiorina believes there is a glass ceiling at many companies.
Second, she buys the notion that women and men are fundamentally different, at least in this way: they
feel comfortable with different kinds of languages and ways of communicating. Compared with Silicon
Valley guys, she says, “Women tend to be more communicative, collaborative, and expressive. The stylistic
differences get in the way [of mutual understanding]. That’s why diversity in the workplace takes real
work.”
[8]
Third, differences in the way women and men communicate ultimately doom many women’s professional
ascent. As the office culture becomes increasingly male on the way up, women are decreasingly able to
communicate with and work well with colleagues.
Fourth, Fiorina believes that given the way things are now in Silicon Valley, if a woman wants to break
through to the highest echelons of management, she’s probably going to have to learn male rules, and
then play by them. For example, she once pulled on cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, stuffed socks down
her crotch, and marched into a hall full of (mostly) men to proclaim, “Our balls are as big as anyone’s in
this room!” In the Salon interview, she explains it this way:
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Fiorina:
Part of the reason I succeeded in Silicon Valley was that I talked to people in a language they
understood. When I negotiated in Italy, I ate a lot of pasta and drank a lot of wine. In bringing a
team together to focus on a common goal, you have to find common language.
Interviewer: And the language of the business world remains male?
Fiorina:
Yes, and particularly that case you cited, it was an incredibly male-dominated, macho culture.
They understood balls and boots, they understood what that meant. [9]
Fifth, in the medium to long term, Fiorina believes the way to truly demolish the glass ceiling is for
women to work their way up (like she did) and occupy more high-level posts. “When I went to HP,” she
says, “I hoped I was advancing women in business by putting women in positions of responsibility. But it’s
clear that we don’t yet play by the same rules and it’s clear that there aren’t enough women in business,
and the stereotypes will exist as long as there aren’t enough of us.”
[10]
The Special Case of Motherhood
One advantage Carly Fiorina had on the way up was a husband who cooperated extensively in rearing her
children. Still, women alone physically bear children and frequently hold principal responsibility for their
care at least through the breast-feeding stage or further. For that reason, a discrete area of business ethics
has been carved out for managing the tension between the legitimate interest businesses have in
employees continuing their labors without the occasional childbearing and rearing interruption, and the
legitimate interest professional women and society generally hold in motherhood and in ensuring that a
healthy generation will be arriving to take over for the current one.
One proposal has been the creation of a dual-track career system: one for women who plan to have
children at some point in the not-so-distant future and another for those who either do not plan to have
children or envision someone else as assuming primary child-care responsibility (a husband, a relative, a
paid nanny). Under this scenario, companies would channel women planning for motherhood and child
rearing into positions where work could be interrupted for months or even years and then resumed more
or less from the same spot. A potential mother would receive an at least informal guarantee that her spot
would be held for her during the absence, and upon resumption of duties, her career would continue and
advance as though there had been no interruption. In fact, in many European countries including Spain,
France, and Germany, such leave is actually required by law. In those countries, the birth of a child
automatically qualifies one of the parents (the laws generally treat fathers and mothers indiscriminately
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as caregivers) for an extended leave with the guarantee of job resumption at the end of the period. Laws in
the United States are not so worker oriented (as opposed to business oriented), though some companies
have taken the initiative to offer extended parental absences without adverse career effects. These include
Abbott Laboratories, General Mills, IKEA, and others.
Theoretically, granting professional leaves for the fulfillment of parental responsibilities makes sense. The
problem is that in the real world and in many industries, it’s nearly impossible to go away for a long time
and then resume responsibilities seamlessly. In the interim, projects have been completed and new ones
have begun, clients have changed, subordinates have been promoted, managers have moved on, and the
organization’s basic strategies have transformed. Reinsertion is difficult, and that leads to the fear that
companies and managers—even those with the best intentions—will end up channeling those they
presume will seek parental leaves into less important roles. The potential mother won’t be the one chosen
to pursue research on the company’s most exciting new product—even if she’s the best researcher—
because the firm won’t be able to just put product development on hold at some point in the future while
she’s away. The end result is that the so-called mommy track for professional life becomes the dead end
track.
There are no easy solutions to this problem, though there are ways to limit it. Technology can be a major
contributor. Just something as simple as Skype can allow parents at home with young children to “come
into” the office regularly. Further, companies can, and increasingly are, providing day care facilities in the
building.
Ethically, one way to manage the conflict between professional life and parenting is to locate the interests
of those involved, set them on a scale, and attempt to determine how the issue weighs out. So, who are the
primary stakeholders along the mommy track: whose interests should be considered and weighed? The
mother, to begin with, has a right to pursue success in professional life, and she has the choice to embark
on motherhood. A born child has a right to nurturing care, and to the love parents give. A business owner
has a right to hire employees (and fire) employees in accord with rational decisions about what will
benefit the organization and help it reach its goals. The coworkers and subordinates linked to a
prospective parent have the right to not be bounced around by someone else’s personal choices. Society as
a collective has a responsibility to nurture the growth of a new generation fit to replace those who are
getting old.
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The next step is to put all that on the scale. In the United States today, the general consensus is that the
business owners’ rights to pursue economic success outweigh the parents’ interest in being successful in
both professional and family life and society’s concern for providing an upcoming generation. That
weighing can be contrasted with the one done in most countries of Western Europe where, not
incidentally, populations are shrinking because of low birthrates. In Europe, there’s a broad consensus
that the workers’ interest in combining professional and personal lives, along with society’s interest in
producing a next generation, outweighs the business’s interest in efficiency and profit. For that reason, the
already-mentioned laws guaranteeing extended family leave have been implemented.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Gender discrimination can take the form of occupational segregation.
Strong ethical arguments may be formed for and against some forms of occupational segregation.
The doctrine of comparable worth prescribes comparable pay for distinct occupations that require
similar capability levels.
The glass ceiling blocks women from advancing to the highest professional levels for reasons outside of
dedication and capability.
The fact that women can also be mothers introduces a broad set of ethical questions about the rights of
employers and a society’s priorities.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1.
What are the three steps defining gender discrimination?
2.
What are some of the causes of occupational segregation?
3.
What is an argument in favor of some occupational segregation? What is an argument against
occupational segregation?
4.
What is comparable worth?
5.
What are two explanations for the existence of a glass ceiling?
6.
How might the existence of a career track dedicated to those who expect to rear children be criticized in
ethical terms?
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[1] Silicon Valley Blogger, “Traditional Jobs for Men and Women and the Gender Divide,” The Digerati Life (blog),
May 29, 2007, accessed May 27, 2011,http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/index.php/2007/05/29/traditionaljobs-for-men-and-women-the-gender-divide.
[2] Claire Cain Miller, “Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley,” New York Times, April 17, 2010, accessed May 31,
2011,http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/technology/18women.html?pagewanted=1.
[3] Manuel Velasquez, Manual Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002), 306.
[4] Silicon Valley Blogger, “Traditional Jobs for Men and Women and the Gender Divide,” The Digerati Life (blog),
May 29, 2007, accessed May 27, 2011,http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/index.php/2007/05/29/traditionaljobs-for-men-and-women-the-gender-divide.
[5] “Table PINC-03. Educational Attainment—People 25 Years Old and Over, by Total Money Earnings in 2005,
Work Experience in 2005, Age, Race, Hispanic Origin and Sex,” Current Population Survey (CPS), accessed May 31,
2011,http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/perinc/new03_000.htm.
[6] Jeanne Sahadi, “39 Jobs Where Women Make More than Men,” CNNMoney.com, February 28, 2006, accessed
May 31, 2011,http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/28/commentary/everyday/sahadi_paytable/index.htm.
[7] Rebecca Traister, “The Truth about Carly,” Salon, October 19, 2006, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/10/19/carly_fiorina.
[8] Rebecca Traister, “The Truth about Carly,” Salon, October 19, 2006, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/10/19/carly_fiorina.
[9] Rebecca Traister, “The Truth about Carly,” Salon, October 19, 2006, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/10/19/carly_fiorina.
[10] Rebecca Traister, “The Truth about Carly,” Salon, October 19, 2006, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/10/19/carly_fiorina.
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10.4 The Diversity of Discrimination and Victimization
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1.
Indicate characteristics beyond race and gender that may be targeted for discrimination.
2.
Form a general definition of discrimination in the workplace.
3.
Define minority status.
4.
Analyze victimization.
The Diversity of Discrimination
There’s a difference between history and ethics. Historically, racism and sexism have been the darkest
scourges in the realm of discrimination. In straight ethical terms, however, discrimination is
discrimination, and any isolatable social group is equally vulnerable to negative prejudice in the
workplace. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends protection to those stigmatized for their religion or
national origin. In subsequent years, amendments and supplements have added more categories, ones for
age and disability. Currently, there are no federal laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual
orientation, though measures have been enacted in states and localities. Other measures identifying and
protecting further distinct groups exist on local levels.
What holds all these groups together is that they fit into the most general form of the definition of
discrimination in the economic realm:
1.
A decision affects an individual.
2. The decision is based on personal characteristics clearly removed from job-related merit.
3. The decision rests on unverified generalizations about those characteristics.
Even though discrimination in the realm of business ethics can be wrapped up by one definition, it
remains true that distinct groups victimized by discrimination have unique and diverse characteristics
affecting the way the issue gets managed. Two types of characteristics will be considered here:
discrimination based on traits that are concealable and discrimination based on traits that are
(eventually) universal.
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Concealable and In-concealable Status
One of the enabling aspects of race and gender discrimination is that it’s normally easy to peg someone. If
you don’t think Asians do good work, you’re probably going to see who not to hire. The same goes for
gender, age, and many disabilities.
Other traditionally discriminated-against groups aren’t so readily identifiable, though: the characteristics
marking them as targets are concealable. For example, it’s not so easy to detect (and not so difficult to
hide) religious beliefs or sexual orientation. John F. Kennedy, many young people are surprised to learn
today, faced considerable resistance to his presidential ambitions because of his religion. In fact, he
considered the fact that he was the first Roman Catholic president of the United States as one of the
higher virtues of his story. While the Protestant-Catholic divide has faded from discriminatory action in
America, other splits have taken its place—Christian and Muslim, for example. No matter the particular
religion, however, most individuals going into the work world do have the opportunity to simply reduce
that part of their identity to a nonissue by not commenting on or displaying their religious beliefs.
A similar point can be added to considerations of national identity. Only a generation ago Italians were
disdained as “wops.” Legendary football coach Joe Paterno (no stranger to insults himself: “If I ever need
a brain transplant, I want it from a sports reporter because I know it’s never been used.”) remembers
being derided as a wop in his career’s early days. If you wander down the street calling people a “wop”
today, however, hardly anyone will know what you’re talking about, which indicates how quickly
discrimination against a group can fade when the source (in this case nationality) isn’t readily visible.
Ethical questions raised by the possibility of invisibility include “In the business world, do those who feel
they may be discriminated against for a personal characteristic that they can conceal have any
responsibility to conceal it?” and “If they choose not to conceal, and they’re discriminated against, do they
bear any of the blame for the mistreatment?”
Universality versus Individuality
One obvious reason it’s easy for white men to discriminate against racial minorities and women is that
they don’t have to worry about riding in that boat themselves. Age is different, however. All of us have
gray years waiting at the end of the line. That hasn’t stopped people from denying jobs to older workers,
however. Take this report from California:
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When a then-emerging Google recruited engineer Brian Reid in the summer of 2002, it
appeared to have landed a Silicon Valley superstar. Reid had managed the team that built one
of the first Internet search engines at AltaVista. He’d helped co-found the precursor company to
Adobe Systems. He’d even worked on Apollo 17.
But within two years, Google decided that the 54-year-old Reid was not a “cultural fit” for the
company and fired him, allegedly after co-workers described him as “an old man,” “slow,”
“sluggish” and “an old fuddy-duddy.” Reid responded with an age discrimination lawsuit
blasting Google’s twenty something culture for shunning his generation in the workplace.
[1]
Reid can take satisfaction in knowing that, eventually, these twenty something are going to get what’s
coming to them. Is it more than that, though? Is the fact that they too share that fate a license for their
discrimination? Assuming those who fired Reid aren’t hypocrites, assuming they accept that one day they
too will be subject to the same rules, can Reid really claim any kind of injustice here? In terms of fairness
at least, it seems as though the Google whippersnappers should be able to treat others in terms they would
accept for themselves.
On the other side, if his work performance matches his younger peers, if the only difference between Reid
and the others is that his hair is gray and he doesn’t know who Lady Gaga is, then his case does fit—at
least technically—the definition of invidious discrimination. Google might be wrong on this one.
Regardless of which side you take, there’s a fundamental ethical question here about whether
discrimination can count when it’s based on a characteristic that’s universal, that everyone shares.
What Is a Minority?
The boundaries marking who can rightfully claim to belong to a group falling victim to systematic
discrimination in the workplace are shifting and uncertain—in different times and places the victims share
different characteristics. For that reason, it makes sense to try to form a definition of personal
vulnerability that doesn’t rely only on describing specific personal traits like skin color or gender but that
can stretch and contract as society evolves. The term minority, as understood within the context of
workplace discrimination, is sometimes summoned to perform this role.
To be part of a minority means to belong to a group of individuals that are the minority within a specific
organizational context. Whites, for example, are not a minority population in the United States, but white
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students are a minority at the University of Texas–San Antonio. Similarly, women make up more than 50
percent of the population but count as a minority in corporate boardrooms where they represent only a
small percentage of decision makers.
Being part of a minority doesn’t just mean suffering a numerical disadvantage; it also means having so few
peers in a situation that you’re forced to adapt the language, the styles of dress, the sense of humor, the
non-work interests, and so on of people very different from yourself. In the case of the minority white
population at University of Texas–San Antonio, it’s difficult to claim that their numerical minority status
also forces them to adapt in any significant way to the Hispanic majority—whites can get by just fine, for
example, without speaking any Spanish. By contrast, the case of Carly Fiorina wadding up socks in her
crotch and screaming out that she has big balls, this is minority behavior. For minorities in a man’s world,
if you want to get ahead you have to adapt. To a certain extent, you need to speak and act like a man.
The term minority can be defined by three characteristics:
1.
Physical and/or cultural traits set a group of individuals within a community apart from the customs and
members that dominate the collective.
2. The physical and/or cultural traits that set the group apart are either disapproved of, or not understood by
the dominant group. In Carly Fiorina’s case, these traits included her gender and, more importantly, her
feminine use of language. As she put it, “The stylistic differences get in the way”
[2]
of trying to
communicate well with male colleagues. She was a minority because she wasn’t well understood.
3. A sense of collective identity, mutual understanding, and common burdens are shared by members of the
minority group. Fiorina sensed this collective identity and burden very clearly when she said, “I hoped I
was advancing women in business by putting women in positions of responsibility. But it’s clear that we
don’t yet play by the same rules as men, and it’s clear that stereotypes about women in business will exist
as long as there aren’t enough of us.”
[3]
The advantage of using the term minority to name a group vulnerable to discrimination in the workplace
is connected to the rapidly changing world, one where those subjected to discriminatory treatment come
and go. For example, a tremendous influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico have recently
made that group a target of sharper discrimination, while the marginalization that the Irish once
experienced in the United States no longer seems very threatening. There’s no reason to believe that this
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discriminatory evolution will stop, and in the midst of that shifting, the term minority allows the rules of
vulnerability to discrimination in the workplace to remain somewhat steady.
What Is a Victim?
As the number of characteristics classified as vulnerable to discriminatory mistreatment has expanded, so
too has a suspicion. It’s that some of those claiming to suffer from discrimination are actually using the
complaints to abuse others, or to make excuses for their own failures. This is called victimization.
To accuse someone of being a victim is to charge that they are exploiting society’s rejection of
discrimination to create an unfair advantage for themselves. There are a range of victimization strategies
running from strong to weak. Strong victimization is individuals in protected groups who aren’t suffering
any discrimination at all claiming that they are and making the claim for their own immediate benefit.
This is what’s being alleged in an Internet post where a supervisor writes the following about an
employee:
This person came out & stated in this meeting that I use a racial slur on a very regular basis in
my vocabulary. With my profession, this is something that is EXTREMELY HARMFUL to my
status in my job, my respect in my job & community, my reputation, etc. But that word has
NEVER been in my vocabulary. I am SO UPSET I do not know what to do!
[4]
Assuming this supervisor’s allegations are true, then the employee was never subjected to racist language
or offended by slurs. There was no workplace discrimination. Instead, it sounds like the employee may
actually be disgruntled and is aiming for revenge by getting the supervisor in trouble. If that’s what’s
going on, then the accusation of racial discrimination has become a workplace weapon: the charge can be
invented and hurled at another with potent effect.
Weak victimization occurs when someone works in a context where discrimination is a constant subject of
attention, one permeating daily life in the office. In that situation, it can happen that a worker suffering an
adverse work evaluation (or worse) comes to the conclusion that it wasn’t poor job performance but
minority status that actually caused the negative review. (Possibly, one of the few universal human truths
is that we all find it easier and more comforting to blame others for our problems than ourselves.) In the
interview with Carly Fiorina—which was done not long after she’d been fired from Hewlett-Packard—the
interviewer broaches this possibility very gingerly. Here’s how she puts the question:
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I’m predisposed to be sympathetic to the notion that you were treated differently because of
your gender. But I’ve also read a lot about actual business mistakes you made.
Fiorina comes back with an ambiguous answer and the interviewer lets it go. For a while. Suddenly,
however, after a few softball questions she tries again, more forcefully:
Interviewer: I want to press you on the fact that you missed a quarter’s projections big-time…
Fiorina:
Wouldn’t be the first top company that missed a quarter either. Or the last.
Right. But that miss was huge. And you wrote in the book that “building a culture of
accountability and execution of discipline requires real and clear consequences for failure to
perform.” If you had been told that you were fired because you missed the quarter, would you
[5]
Interviewer: have understood?
What’s being intimated here is that Fiorina got so caught up in being a woman in a man’s world that when
she got fired, she was so invested in that battle-of-the-sexes way of seeing things that she ended up
suspecting sexist discrimination where maybe there wasn’t any.
Weak victimization means that someone is twisting discrimination claims into an excuse for their own
imperfections, shortcomings, and failures. Everyone faces adversity in their lives. When that happens, the
choices are deal with it or collapse. Accusing someone of being a victim in the weak sense is saying they’re
collapsing; they’re using racism or sexism or whatever as an excuse to not confront what most people face
every day: an imperfect and sometimes difficult world. So weak victimization is an accusation tinged with
exasperation. Here’s what the accusation sounds like in longer form, as posted on an Internet forum:
I genuinely don’t believe that in this country that persecution of minorities exists anymore. This
is not to say that these things don’t exist, of course they do in isolation, but being black or gay or
a woman is not in any way a barrier to achieving anything that you want to achieve.
I told her that she was playing the victim against an oppression that doesn’t exist, is looking for
excuses about things she can’t do rather than looking at what she can do (which is anything she
wants) and that she’s being patronizing towards all those from ‘minority’ groups who had gone
on to be successful. Thatcher didn’t whine about latent sexism, Obama didn’t complain that
being black meant he wasn’t able to do the most powerful job in the world.
[6]
In the ensuing discussion, quite a few posters pick up on the claim that “being black or gay or a woman is
not in any way a barrier to achieving anything that you want to achieve.” Some agree, some not so much.
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What’s certain is that somewhere between Carly Fiorina stuffing socks down her pants and Carly Fiorina
leading one of the world’s most powerful companies and somewhere between black slavery and a black
president, there’s a line. No one knows exactly where, but it’s there and it divides a reality where sexism
and racism are vile scourges from another reality where they’re things people whine about.
An ethical argument against victimization—against someone playing the role of a victim of
discrimination—can be outlined quickly. It begins with the duty to respect your own dignity, talents, and
abilities. Those blaming their failures on others are essentially giving up on their own skills; they are
concluding that their abilities are worthless when they may not be. If Carly Fiorina believes that her
gender makes success in Silicon Valley impossible, and it really doesn’t, then by denying her own talent
she’s subtracting from her own dignity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Discrimination may be applied in a society to a group defined by any physical or cultural trait.
A successful general definition of discrimination in the workplace must evolve as society and the face of
discrimination change.
Minority is a general category meant to include those vulnerable to discrimination.
Victimization occurs when vulnerability to discrimination converts into a weapon to use against others,
or an excuse for failure.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1.
In your own words, explain the general definition of discrimination.
2.
What’s the difference between a concealable and in-concealable characteristic that may leave one
vulnerable to discrimination?
3.
In your own words, define what it means to be a minority.
4.
What’s the difference between strong and weak victimization?
[1] “Ex-Google Worker’s Case Goes to High Court,” San Jose Mercury News (CA), May 24, 2010.
[2] Rebecca Traister, “The Truth about Carly,” Salon, October 19, 2006, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/10/19/carly_fiorina.
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[3] Rebecca Traister, “The Truth about Carly,” Salon, October 19, 2006, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/10/19/carly_fiorina.
[4] UT alum, August 24, 2005 (9:09 a.m.), “Falsely Accused of Racist Slur,” ExpertLaw Forum, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2887.
[5] Rebecca Traister, “The Truth about Carly,” Salon, October 19, 2006, accessed May 31,
2011, http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/10/19/carly_fiorina.
[6] Gerogerigegege, February 26, 2010 (10:27), “Does Racism/Sexism/Homophobia Exist in Any Meaningful Way in
Modern Britain?,” DrownedinSound.com, accessed May 31,
2011,http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4248929.
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10.5 The Prevention and Rectification of Discrimination:
Affirmative Action
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1.
Define affirmative action.
2.
Elaborate arguments for and against affirmative action.
3.
Discuss the ethics of affirmative action.
4.
Indicate why some organizations implement affirmative action policies.
Race-Based Scholarships
“The scholarship,” according to Carlos Gonzalez, an overseer appointed by a federal court, “was designed
essentially as a jump-start effort to get the process of desegregation under way.” He was talking about a
new race-based scholarship at Alabama State University (ASU). It was triggered by a federal court’s
finding that “vestiges” of segregation remained within the Alabama university system: the state was
ordered to spend about $100 million to racially diversify the student body.
Two years later, 40 percent of ASU’s budget for academic grants went to minority students even though
they represented only about 10 percent of the student population. That meant minority students got about
$6 of aid for every $1 going to everyone else.
One beneficiary of diversification was a grad student who accumulated $30,000 in scholarship money.
She said that she would’ve attended the school anyway, but getting the money because of her skin color
was an added bonus. “I think it’s wonderful,” she exclaimed, according to a CNN report.
[1]
Not everyone came off so well. One big loser was another grad student, Jessie Tompkins. The effort to
balance the student body racially meant funding he’d been promised got reassigned to others. He
remembered the moment vividly. He’d received an assistantship for three years, but when he went to
apply the next year, he learned that the scholarships had been reserved for those with a different skin
color. “I said, ‘Ma’am?’ She said, ‘You can apply, but you won’t get it.’”
[2]
As word of the new scholarship policy circulated, temperatures rose. They heightened even more when
news got out that the race balancers were more lucrative than the old funding mechanisms that had been
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available to everyone. The minority set-asides paid for tuition, books, and for room and board, and then
added on almost $1,000 for personal use. While the new students got all that just for showing up inside
their color-appropriate skin, Tompkins remembered that he hadn’t even received enough to fully cover
tuition; in exchange for his aid, he’d worked for the school by helping coach the track team and by
scheduling tennis court use.
The situation reached a boil with one more detail: the revelation that the minority scholarship recipients
weren’t as academically qualified as those including Tompkins who were now suddenly being turned
down at the funding office. To qualify for financial aid, the new recipients only needed a C average,
significantly below what had been required of all applicants in the earlier, color-blind system. That led the
editor of the university newspaper, Brandon Tanksley II, to express his frustration and anger this way,
“It’s not that they’re minority students, it’s that they’re not competitive.”
[3]
As for Jessie Tompkins, with his scholarship no longer available, he was forced to drop out and take a job
handling packages at United Parcel Service. The next year he returned on a part-time-student basis and
once again applied for his old scholarship. Again he was rejected. In a newspaper interview he said, “We
don’t need race-based quotas. I don’t want anyone telling my children they’re the wrong color. If you want
something, you work for it; you just work for it.”
[4]
Eventually, Tomkins connected with the Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit public interest law firm
with conservative and libertarian leanings. The firm was experienced with this kind of complaint: it had
previously led a charge against the University of Texas’s affirmative action program. In an article in
the Wall Street Journal, Tompkins compares himself to a plaintiff in that important case, Cheryl
Hopwood: “We were bumped aside, regardless of our qualifications, because of our race.”
[5]
Tompkins says he’s just like Hopwood, even though she’s a woman and he’s a man, and even though she’s
white and he’s black.
As for the administration at the traditionally black Alabama State, they chose not to respond to Tompkins
directly, but they did stand behind their affirmative action program. William Hamilton Harris, president
at ASU, defended the set-asides this way, “Bringing whites and blacks together on campus will broaden
the quality of education and the quality of life at Alabama State.”
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What Is Affirmative Action?
The Civil Rights Act aimed to blind organizations to gender and race and similar distinctions removed
from merit. The idea behind the law is an ideal, a theoretically perfect society where discrimination in the
invidious sense doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, the real world rarely lives up to ideals.
Affirmative action enters here, at the realization that things won’t be perfect just because we make laws
saying they should be. What affirmative action does—as its name indicates—is act. It’s not a requirement
that organizations stop discriminating; it’s a set of preferences and policies that aggressively counter
discrimination, usually in ways that themselves hint at discrimination. There is, even ardent defenders
admit, a troubling element of fighting fire with fire where affirmative action operates.
In practice, affirmative action comes in various strengths:
In the strongest form, quotas are employed to guarantee that individuals from disadvantaged groups gain
admittance to an organization. A number of slots—whether they are seats in a classroom or posts in an
office—are simply reserved for individuals fitting the criterion. Since quotas inescapably mean that certain
individuals will be excluded from consideration for certain posts because of their race, gender, or similar
trait, they’re relied on only infrequently.
In strong form, significant incentives are deployed to encourage the participation of minority groups. In
universities, including the historically black Alabama State University, special scholarships may be
assigned to attract whites to campus. In private companies, bonuses may be offered or special
accommodations made for targeted individuals. A mentor may be assigned to guide their progress.
Statistics may be accumulated and care taken to ensure that salary hikes and promotions are being
distributed to members of the aggrieved demographic.
Moderate affirmative action measures typically mean something akin to the tie goes to the minority.
Whether a university is admitting students to next year’s class or a business is hiring new sales
representatives, the philosophy here is that if two candidates are essentially equally qualified, the one
representing a disadvantaged group will be selected.
Weak affirmative action measures refuse to directly benefit one or another identity group. Steps are
undertaken, however, to ensure that opportunity is spread to include minority candidates. Frequently,
this means ensuring that the application pool of candidates for a post or promotion includes individuals
from across the spectrum of genders, races, and similar. A commitment to implement his policy was part
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of the Abercrombie & Fitch discrimination lawsuit settlement. The company in essence said they’d been
doing too much recruiting at overwhelmingly white fraternities and sororities, and they promised to
branch out.
The history of affirmative action has been brief and turbulent. Since the early 1970s, the courts—including
the US Supreme Court—have visited and revisited the issue, and repeatedly reformed the legally required
and allowed strength of affirmative action. The specific physical and cultural traits affirmative action
policies address have also stretched and contracted. In the midst of all that, individual states have formed
their own rules and guidelines. And for their part, companies have scrambled to bring policies into line
with accepted practice and, in some cases, to take the lead in establishing standards. Because there’s no
sign that the legal and historical developments will settle in the near future, this section will concentrate
only on the ethics and the broad arguments surrounding affirmative action.
Arguments for and against Affirmative Action Policies
Arguments in favor of affirmative action include the following:
1.
Affirmative action is necessary to create fairness and equal opportunity in organizations because
discrimination is so ingrained. When Carly Fiorina went to Hewlett-Packard, she found a culture so
thoroughly masculine that it was difficult for her to communicate well with her colleagues. In that kind of
environment, one where it’s difficult for a woman to really make herself understood, forcing women into
the workforce is necessary to open channels of communication so that more may flow without needing the
help. Similarly at the historically black Alabama State University, the concern was that few white students
would want to be the first to confront the specific traditions and customs of the longtime black school.
Consequently, it’s necessary to force the doors open with attractive scholarships so that later, with the
comfort level raised, more whites will follow.
2. Affirmative action will stimulate interest in advancing at lower levels of the organization. Even if HewlettPackard really is gender neutral with respect to picking a CEO, it may be necessary to put a woman in the
post so that younger women at the company feel that the way is open to the very highest levels. In other
words, it’s not until people actually see that they can become a CEO or enroll at Alabama State that they
really make the attempt. In the absence of that seeing, the aspiring may not be there and the result is a
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company without women leaders, or a historically black university without whites, even though the
doorways are wide open to them.
3. Affirmative action benefits third parties. Sometimes we think of affirmative action as being about a tight
set of winners and losers. When Carly Fiorina went to HP, it’s very possible that a white guy didn’t get the
job. When a white student got a scholarship at Alabama State, Tompkins lost his. But the stakeholders
don’t end there. Society as a whole will be more harmonious as discrimination recedes. To the extent
that’s true, the tangible benefits of affirmative action climb significantly even while it remains true that
there are individual losers.
4. Affirmative action can reduce tensions in a university, an office, or any organization by offering
assurances that discrimination of minorities will not be tolerated, and also by opening the workplace to a
diversity of viewpoints.
5.
Affirmative action benefits organizations by helping them reach their goals. The more open an
organization is to all candidates for all positions, the better the chance that they’ll find someone truly
excellent to fill the role. Affirmative action, by expanding the range of people considered for posts, helps
the organization excel in the long term.
6. Affirmative action is necessary as compensation for past wrongs. Even if tomorrow all discrimination
magically disappears, there’d still be a long legacy of suffering by minorities who didn’t get the
opportunities available to their children. By giving those children a little advantage, some of the historical
unfairness balances out.
Common arguments against affirmative action include the following:
1.
Affirmative action is discrimination (just in reversed form), and therefore it’s wrong. When you privilege a
minority at the expense of, say, a white male, you’re treating the white male unfairly because of skin color
and gender, and that must be unacceptable because the reason we have affirmative action in the first place
is that we’ve all agreed that racial and gender discrimination are unacceptable.
2. Affirmative action is discrimination (just in reversed form), and therefore it reinforces what it combats.
When you privilege a minority at the expense of, say, a white male, you’re treating the white male unfairly,
and so you’re sanctioning the way of thinking that caused the problem in the first place. When you start
selecting people for scholarships or jobs because of their skin color or gender, the larger point is you’re
reinforcing the habits of discrimination, not eliminating them.
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3. The best way to eliminate discrimination is to let the law, markets, and time do their work. The law, which
prohibits discrimination, should be enforced scrupulously, no matter who the in-fractor might be. More,
companies that are discriminatory will put themselves out of business in the long term because
competitors that hire the best talent regardless of minority status will eventually win out. With time, the
conclusion is, discrimination will be stamped out, but trying to hurry the process may just create social
rancor.
4. Affirmative action can be unfair and damaging to third parties. Surgeons, firefighters—those kinds of jobs
are vital to all individuals. Lives are at stake. If a surgeon who otherwise would have failed medical school
eventually got her degree because the school needed to graduate a few minority female doctors to fulfill
their affirmative action requirements, the people who pay may be patients.
5.
Affirmative action is unfair to minorities who are treated as tokens. Minority candidates for positions who
would win the post on merit alone see their hard work and accomplishments tarnished by suspicion that
they didn’t really earn what they’ve achieved. Minorities, consequently, can never be successful because
even when they merit respect in the classroom or in the workplace, they won’t get it.
6. Affirmative action creates a tense organization. The web of resentments lacing through classrooms and
offices touched by affirmative action are multiple and complex. Nonminority workers may resent special
privileges given to those favored by affirmative action. Also, because such privileges are handled discretely
by HR departments, the tensions might exist even where affirmative action isn’t active: suspicion that
others are receiving special treatment can be as aggravating as the certainty that they are. The list of
potential angers continues, but the larger problem with affirmative action is the social stress it may create.
7.
Affirmative action damages organizations. By forcing them to evaluate talent in ways outside of merit, it
diminishes their competitiveness, especially against companies from other states or nations where
affirmative action implementation is less rigid.
8. Affirmative action doesn’t compensate past wrongs. Those who suffer today because their scholarship or
their promotion is taken by an otherwise undeserving minority are paying the price for past
discrimination even though they may have never discriminated against anyone. Further, those who
benefit today aren’t the ones who suffered in the past.
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Finally, an important point to note about the debate swirling around affirmative action is that there’s
broad agreement on the goal: diminishing and eliminating discrimination in organizations. The conflicts
are about how best to do that.
The Greater Good versus Individual Rights: The Ethical Prism of Affirmative
Action
In business ethics, few subjects raise emotions like affirmative action. There are a number of reasons, and
one is that the ethics are so clear. In all but its weakest form, affirmative action stands almost straight up
on the divide between individualism and collectivism.
Do you belief ethics are about individual rights and responsibilities, or should ethics revolve around
society and what benefits the larger community?
Where does right and wrong begin? Is it with you and me and what we do? Or is it the society as a whole
that must be set at the start and before any other concern?
If you believe that individuals center ethics, it’s going to be hard (not impossible) to defend favoritism, no
matter how noble the goal. An ethics based on fundamental personal duties—especially the requirement
for fairness—demands that all men and women get an even shot in the workplace. Any swerve away from
that principle, whether it’s to favor whites at a historically black university in Alabama, or women in
Silicon Valley, or any other minority group anywhere else, is going to be extremely difficult to justify.
Further, if you believe that ethics begins with individuals and their rights to freedom and to pursue
happiness, then blocking the opportunities allowed for some just because they don’t fit into a specific race
or gender category becomes automatically objectionable.
On the other side, if you believe in the community first, if you think that society’s overall welfare must be
the highest goal of ethical action, then it’s going to be hard (not impossible) to deny that some form of
affirmative action balancing, at some places and times, does serve the general welfare and therefore is
ethically required. Thinking based on utilitarianism accepts that divvying out opportunities in terms of
minority status will harm some individuals, but the perspective demands that we only bear in mind
the total good (or harm) an action ultimately does. With respect ...
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