What is Fair?

Every time I write something I have to add a new category because it doesn’t seem to fit in the ones I already have. This blog has only been up for a few days and I’m already worried that I’ve got too many categories. Ah well, what can I do? I’m just one man.

I’ve been wanting to gripe about this for years. It’s this word “fair” that so often seems to get in the way of rational thinking. Ironically, those who most want fairness tend to be those who are most hurt by government programs intended to make things fair.

Take minorities, for example. An outgrowth of the civil rights movement was that politicians gave them affirmative action. The idea is that because they’ve been discriminated against they deserve extra help so that they can catch up and so that the playing field can be leveled. In other words, they would get a fair shake. No reasonable person would say that minorities haven’t been or don’t continue to be discriminated against. But does affirmative action really help? What kind of message does it send to a minority group when they get special preference in the college application process based on nothing more than the color of their skin or their racial background?

It tells these people that they are victims. It tells them that they can’t succeed on their own. It tells them that somebody owes them something. Could any message be more damaging to young people? How much better would it be to admit that minorities face an extra set of challenges but then to say “I know you’re capable of overcoming these challenges and succeeding on your own terms. You may have to work harder than some other people, but you can do it.”

The fact of the matter is that everyone enjoys certain advantages and disadvantages. What if I grew up in a home where my dad was a drunk and beat my mother every day, eventually killed her, went to jail, and I was raised by a succession of foster parents, none of whom cared about my education or future success? Would receiving any sort of special preference on a college application really help me? Or do is it that I simply face challenges most other don’t and I’m going to have to buck up and overcome them?

Does any sort of affirmative action make sense? Maybe, in a limited sense, just to get things kickstarted. But affirmative action should not be a permanent program of the US government. There is no amount of college application favoritism or required government spending with minority-owned companies that can compensate for racial discrimination. Rather, the government’s responsibility should be to remove the barriers minorities face so that they can compete on a level playing field, and then let it go at that. Anti-discrimination laws have done good things, although it would obviously be a better world if they weren’t needed in the first place. But affirmative action laws go to far, not because of any damage they might do to the white man, but because of the damage they do to minorities by merely continuing to tell them that they are sub-standard human beings, that they are victims, and that they can’t do it on their own. In reality, affirmative action continues the unfairness and makes it worse.