ABSTRACT
Affirmative action programs remain controversial, I suspect, partly be cause the familiar arguments for and against them start from significantly different moral perspectives. Thus I want to step back for a while from the details of debate about particular programs and give attention to the moral viewpoints presupposed in different types of argument. My aim, more specifically, is to compare the “messages” expressed when affirmative ac tion is defended from different moral perspectives. Exclusively forwardlooking (e.g., utilitarian) arguments, I suggest, tend to express the wrong message, but this is also true of entirely backward-looking (e.g., reparationbased) arguments. However, a normal outlook that focuses on cross-tem poral narrative values, such as mutually respectful social relations, suggests a more appropriate account of what affirmative action should try to ex press. Assignment of the message, admittedly, is only one aspect of a com plex issue, but a relatively neglected one. My discussion takes for granted some common sense ideas about the communicative function of action, and so I begin with these.
