The Graduation Day Degree Gap

Unsocial injustice!  Discrimination!

Robert Nozick on Equality

The legitimacy of altering social institutions to achieve greater equality of material condition is, though often assumed, rarely argued for. Writers note that in a given country the wealthiest n percent of the population holds more than that percentage of the wealth, and the poorest n percent holds less; that to get to the wealth of the top n percent from the poorest, one must look at the bottom p percent (where p is vastly greater than n), and so forth.  They then proceed immediately to discuss how this might be altered.  On the entitlement conception of justice in holdings, one cannot decide whether the state must do something to alter the situation merely by looking at a distributional profile or at facts such as these.  It depends upon how the distribution came about.  Some processes yielding these results would be legitimate, and the various parties would be entitled to their respective holdings.  If these distributional facts did arise by a legitimate process, then they themselves are legitimate.  This is, of course, not to say that they may not be changed, provided this can be done without violating people's entitlements.

The entitlement conception of justice in holdings makes no presumption in favor of equality, or any other overall end state patterning.  It cannot merely be assumed that equality must be built into any theory of justice.  There is a surprising dearth of arguments for equality capable of coming to grips with the considerations that underlie a nonpatterned conception of justice in holdings.  (However, there is no lack of unsupported statements of a presumption in favor of equality).

                      ~Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), pp. 232-3.

Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard: Justice is Not Equality

I have posted numerous times on justice and equality (for instance here, here, and here).  It's a theme that runs through this blog.

The liberal view on justice is often that justice is equality.  Often this takes the form of justice being understood in terms of equal outcomes.  Are there a lot of white males in the administration?  Injustice!  Wage inequality? Injustice!  The first link above addresses that mindset.  Sometimes justice as equality takes the form of equal treatment.  To be just is to treat people or be treated by them equally.

This too I think is incorrect.  What all forms of justice as equality have in common is that the idea of justice is a COMPARATIVE notion.  Justice is a relation of equality that holds between a group or society wherein two or more people are treated equally or have equal outcomes.  And one only knows that a certain event, action, or state of affairs is just when one compares the action, event, etc. with actions, events, etc. done to another party.

I think that is wrong and I think the Biblical view of justice is that it is simply rendering or being rendered one's due.  I can treat you justly or unjustly and can know that I've treated you justly or unjustly regardless of whether I make a comparison with myself, you, and others.

I give everyone A's on the test. Have I acted justly?  Unjustly?  Has justice been served?  There is no way to tell simply by taking note of the fact that everyone has received the same outcome.  Rather, what I need to know is whether students have received what they were due--that is, whether they all had rights to an A and whether I had a duty to give them all A's.

I just recently reread the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew 20 and I think it better supports the view of justice as rendering or being rendered one's due rather than justice as equality.  Below the fold I reproduce the story and give my analysis.

Too Many Old White Men at School

A reader of the blog (a faculty member at a university) chimes in with the following story:

I was in a Dean’s office earlier today, meeting about some matter, when an email arrived in her in-box detailing the following: another Dean was stepping down. Let’s call the Dean I'm in the office with “Dean.” Here is our commentary about the email starting with what "Dean" said:

Dean: “Awwww…that’s sad.”

Me: “Why?”

Dean: “Well, because she’s like the only non-old-white-male Dean we have.”

Me: “Uhhh…so?”

"Dean" then goes to her computer, looks up all of the Academic Deans and goes down the list, saying (repeatedly): “White man. White man. White man. White man…”

Me (again): “And your point is…?”

Dean (looking at me incredulously): “You seriously don’t think that’s a problem?!?!”

Me: “Nope. Not at all.”

Dean: “Yep, that’s what any white man would say.”

Me: “Stereotype much?”

Note from TB: The Dean thinks there is a problem.  Is there a problem?  Is the problem with the school or with the Dean?  What is the problem exactly?  Exercise for the reader: precisely explain what the problem is and then give a cogent argument that there is a problem here.