There is no right to “opportunity,” equal or otherwise: my objection to Simon Clarke’s defense

Simon Clarke, American University of Armenia

Although the meaning of “opportunity” has evolved over the last hundred years to refer narrowly to the chances of being economically employed, it has never lost its tie to the broader idea of “circumstance” or “set of circumstances.” Losing that connection has entailed adverse social consequences. Politics, the sphere of demands for non-market, state-enforced outcomes for some at the expense of others, has driven that constriction.

In a 2005 essay for The Philosophers’ Magazine, Dr. Simon Clarke (then lecturer in philosophy, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; currently Associate Professor and Chair, Political Science and International Affairs, American University in Armenia) offered a case for what has euphemistically been dubbed “affirmative action,” governmental and corporate policies that favor hiring members of certain groups.

Clarke presupposed, but did not argue for, the alleged moral obligation on which his argument is grounded, namely, the one to improve the self-esteem of certain group members by increasing their visibility in employment.

In my 2006 rebuttal to his article (reproduced below), I made many points, to which I’d like to give a wider audience. Unfortunately I did not, however, hammer this deficiency as hard as I should have. I’ll try in this preface.

After knocking down what he thought were three weak cases for affirmative action, Clarke writes:

[I]t is necessary first to distinguish real equality of opportunity from formal equality of opportunity. In order to have equal opportunities, it is not enough that people merely have opportunities. They need those of course, but they must also have the knowledge that those opportunities are available. To give a man locked inside a room for ten years the opportunity to leave that room, it is not enough to simply unlock the door without giving him any indication that his circumstances have changed. That would only be formal opportunity. If he has no reason for thinking the door has been unlocked, he is not going to try it, and our quietly unlocking the door without his knowledge cannot plausibly be thought of as giving him the opportunity to leave the room. He does not have real opportunity. To fully have opportunities, one must know that one has them, not just have them.

This provides a powerful case for affirmative action. If no members of a certain race ever occupy top positions in society, young members of that race cannot plausibly be expected to think that they have the opportunity of achieving such positions.

Clarke leaves “equality of opportunity” undefined and its implicit valorization undefended here, in the rest of his article, and in his response to my reply.

His example of “a man locked inside a room for ten years” invites the question: who locked him in it? Unless I have unjustly put him in those limiting circumstances, how is it that I have a moral obligation to free him from them?

Now, I may be compassionately moved to do so for any number of reasons without being morally obliged to. I may believe, for example, that he was wrongly convicted and seek to have that verdict overturned.

But if, to take a different example, he’s an unrepentant murderer about whose guilt there is no reasonable doubt, I not only fail to see how such a moral obligation to set him free could arise, but am incline to view anyone who would unlock his doors as deserving of a cell on the same block.

I believe that slavers, lynch mobs, and anyone else who initiates violence violate rights and should be held to account. But why should descendants of victims have a systematic advantage over descendants of aggressors when competing for limited resources? That is, why should the former have more opportunities than the latter?

Opportunities are but sets of circumstances, which convert easily into sets of scarce resources and past historical variables no longer under anyone’s control. What arrangements should govern their allocation, their “distribution”? And how is it anyone’s moral obligation to work for an arrangement of  circumstances for everyone such that they all deem it favorable?

Beneficiaries of special treatment rarely complain about the latter. All things being equal, they enjoy the benefits and want as many more of them as they can get. But their subjective well-being and their self-esteem are irrelevant to the question of their objective entitlements. I have no more obligation to make sure everyone else has “role models” to look up to; unless I’ve seriously misread Clarke, he presupposes that I (and you) do. Life is short.

“Affirmative action” is, of course, in today’s parlance, “so 20th century.” It survives in the statutes as an execrable example of legalese. The demand now is for “diversity, inclusion, and equity” (aptly acronymizable as D.I.E.), words that now perversely signal conformity, exclusion, and theft respectively.

Who even talks these days about “equal opportunity,” which progressives regard as a kind of begging (e.g., “Please, just give me a chance”)? They are demanding as moral entitlements outcomes that could not, at least not to a  degree that would assuage their outrage, be achieved the old-fashioned way, that is, by industry and trade.

That is, in the more than half-century after the enactment of “equal opportunity” laws, material results simply did not accrue to favored groups to the degree they thought morality required. This realization quickly led to demands for group “proportional representation”—except, of course, where members of the favored group excel without help, leading to the de facto exclusion of non-favored group members. (Can you think of any examples? Sure you can.) The favored don’t give a damn about what goes on between the ears of the non-favored. Just show them the money.

Reconnecting explicitly the notion of “opportunity” to that of “set of circumstances” helps expose the folly of demanding “equal opportunity.” Would an Equal Employment Sets of Circumstances Commission have ever been created? No, because a circumstance is a fact or condition wholly analyzable into accidents of history and, again, scarce resources, including time.

With that background, and without prejudice to Simon Clarke’s “The Case for Affirmative Action,” The Philosophers’ Magazine, Issue 32, 4th Quarter 2005, 74-76, which I urge my readers to study, I present “First Objection” (mine was the first of three) in The Philosophers’ Magazine, Issue 34, 1st Quarter 2006, 74, to which he responded, Ibid., 75. TPM assures me I need no permission to publish my objection, but I have none to reproduce his response thereto.

Comments are welcome. I will alert Professor Clarke and offer him the space of a post to criticize mine.

Anthony G. Flood

* * * * *

First Objection

“If no members of a certain race ever occupy top positions in society,” Professor Clarke fears, “young members of that race cannot plausibly be expected to think that they have the opportunity of achieving such positions.”

So what?

No one is entitled to another’s favorable evaluation of oneself, one’s property, or one’s projects (i.e., ends, aims, or purposes). That is, no one is morally obliged to evaluate favorably or promote another’s self, property, or projects. But one is obliged not to violate a third party’s rights for that end. Defenders of affirmative action (AA) generally fail to sort these things out. Professor Clarke is no exception to this rule.

Each individual has vitally important projects and limited resources (including one’s own uncertain lifespan) with which to attempt to complete them. No one may violently interfere with that pursuit, because as mutual respect for project-fulfillment underpins a civil society, mutual disrespect undermines it. (I here assert dogmatically the value of civil society.) So, while to expand the opportunities of members of various groups may be the project of Professor Clarke and of many others, for which they are to be commended, they are morally restricted to using only peaceful (i.e., person-, property-, and project-respecting) means on that project’s behalf. They may not conscript others into that service and then charge them for the privilege, which is what governmental programs, including AA, entail.

Professor Clarke makes no distinction between an individual’s use of his or her own justly held property and forcible interference with such use. Only the latter offends morality. Peaceful efforts to frustrate the aims of others are consonant with morality, and what is called “AA” theoretically need violate no one’s rights. And so a private educational institution or firm violates no ones rights when it favors a black candidate over a white, wholly or partly because he or she is black.  But neither would it violate rights should it favor a white over a black, wholly or partly because he or she is white.

If in the exercise of property rights one discriminates against members of a class for whatever reason, including because of beliefs he or she holds about that class, those who find such behavior objectionable may exercise their property rights against the discriminator. This is the essence of boycott, which peacefully imposes costs on discriminatory behavior. It is, however, the discriminator’s right to bear those costs.

It may be that they are not high enough to dissuade the discriminator. If, however, his or her enemies collude with the government to pre-empt forcibly his or her right to absorb the costs of discrimination, or if they support governmental pressure on private institutions to discriminate when they otherwise would not, then they are imposing costs without justification.

Now, cost-imposition is morally a “big deal,” although one would never know it from reading most political programs. Indeed, imposing costs on one’s enemies to benefit one’s friends may be routine in democratic societies, but no more justified for being so. Philosophers should scrutinize that habit more frequently than they do.  AA poses no special problem.

See also