Abstract

In this article, I review some of the arguments presented by Louis Pojman in “The Case Against Affirmative Action,” and attempt to show that Pojman’s main objections only hold against the strawmen Pojman has erected to represent the case for affirmative action. Affirmative action was designed to correct for state-enforced restrictions against blacks, and has been extended to protect a number of other groups, including women. Its principal justification has been that these groups have in the past been the target of group exclusions that were state sanctioned, and such patterns persist into the present. In this regard, the over-representation of Jews or Asians in academia is little more suspect than the over-representation of blacks in the NBA.