ABSTRACT
Many morally sensitive people find themselves faced with the following dilemma. On the one hand, they are persuaded by the argument that if being black, e.g., is morally irrelevant, then it is morally irrelevant and no more justifies favorable inverse discrimination than it justifies unfavorable discrimination. On the other hand, this move seems to open the way to ne glect, whether benign or malign, of genuine social injustices. Jam es W. Nickel and J. L. Cowan have done much to bring the logic of this situation to the surface. I shall not resist their general strategy of showing that the above is a false dilemma. My concern is with Cowan’s diagnosis of the trouble as consisting in the illegitimacy of the thought that blacks as a group deserve inverse discrimination. His view is that one cannot argue that blacks as a group deserve retribution without also implying blackness as such is a morally relevant characteristic. This is false.
