ABSTRACT
My topic in this article is the argument that preferential treatment is needed to increase diversity in educational institutions and the workplace. Although this argument has achieved considerable currency, and although it is often thought to sidestep the complications that arise when preferential treatment is viewed as a form of compensation, its normative basis has rarely been made explicit. Thus, one aim of my discussion is simply to explore the different forms that the diversity argument can take. However, a further and more substantive aim is to show that its alleged advantages are illusory—that in every version, the appeal to diversity raises difficult questions whose most plausible answers turn on tacit appeals to past wrongdoing.
