ABSTRACT
A full and careful examination of the justifiability of these programs would be worth undertaking today both because such programs do exist and because they are now the object of an intense antipathy emanating from governmental agencies such as the Civil Rights Commission and the Department of Justice, agencies which in the past had a special concern for the disadvantageous social position of the members of the racial groups fa vored by these programs. Such an examination would, of course, also be appropriate because, since their inception, these programs have been con troversial within philosophy. They have generated philosophical interest and disagreement because of the moral issues that are so naturally impli cated, issues that concern, for example, the evils of racism and racial dis crimination, matters of compensatory and distributive justice, and the justifiability of the departure from an exclusive concern for the qualifica tions of applicants that these programs require.
