Business Ethics the Illusion of Reverse Discrimination

Business Ethics

The Illusion of Reverse Discrimination

It sounds like such a good argument -- 'don't simply hire someone because he or she is a member of a minority group,' hire the most qualified person. Yes, disregard the compelling fact that the prospective applicant for a position is a member of a historically discriminated against minority group -- simply ask who is best. While such an argument sounds philosophically, emotionally, and occasionally, even ethically resonant in principle, the fact is that such arguments about reverse discrimination are specious and generate more heat than light.

What does 'best person for the job mean' really? Firstly and foremost, it must be noted that affirmative action programs and quota-based systems of job allotment are not analogous. Affirmative action suggests that individual's membership in historically discriminated against categories should be taken into consideration as one qualifying factor amongst many, not that an individual should be hired because of his or her membership in specific numerically desirable categories.

Hiring has always taken into account certain subjective matters, such as an individual's personality and rapport with the interviewer, as well as even more subjective skills he or she brings to the interview process, such as intellectual power and articulateness. The interviewer's subjective as well as objective assessment of his or her capabilities is always a factor, as well as the bullet points on an individual's resume -- often many qualified 'best' candidates exist, else there would be no need to screen potential candidates, if everything could be done by the numbers, irrespective of subjective judgment of the human resource department.

Of course, one should not hire someone who is patently unqualified for a position based on quotas. For instance, in making decisions about college admissions, it would be absurd to admit someone with SATs that are far lower than the institution's average score. But, it would not be similarly absurd to take the cultural experiences that individual had experienced, in admitting a qualified candidate, just as one considers his or her passion for a particular area of the institution's academic specialties, or prowess in athletics?

Similarly, one should not promote someone merely because they are an African-American, regardless of his or her objective qualities and job ratings as an employee. But in looking for an individual, for instance, to embark upon a community policing program designed to improve the image of the police in a particular community, an individual's race, under an affirmative action program, could be taken into consideration, in addition to their scores on the police test and numerical ratings of their job performance, based on an assessment scale.

The subjectivity of rating job performance and personal qualities shows that the idea of simply hiring the most qualified is in fact a chimera, a false assertion of an indefinable notion. Often, hiring the 'best qualified candidate' has simply been a verbal code for hiring white males, since the cultural attitudes and codes of white males are, quite often, the individuals whom make the interviewers in question feel 'most comfortable.' So-called reverse discrimination, supposedly perpetuated against white males, belies the fact that the job hiring and promotion process is always discriminatory, in that it is designed to pick one of many, and always has some subjective as well as quantifiable and objective standards to make such a determination. For over two hundred years, white males have become the most powerful group in the United States, for reasons due to verbal, visual, and legally enforced biases. Affirmative action acknowledges the existence of this history.