WHAT COMMUNITARIANISM IS 49

COMMUNITARIANISM OPPOSES SOCIAL SUBORDINATION, NOT DISCRIMINATION

COMMUNITARIANS DO NOT SEEK TOTAL SOCIAL EQUALITY, BUT AN END TO SOCIAL SUBORDINATION

From the standpoint of social justice, the most important threat to moral equality is social subordination. Although moral equality does not require social equality–communitarians are hardly egalitarian–we recognize that significant differences in wealth, income, and education tend to create and reinforce beliefs that affluent people are inherently more worthy than their disprivileged brethren. Social justice requires eternal vigilance against this caste principle, and against the invidious discrimination it breeds.

COMMUNITARIANS OPPOSE DISCRIMINATION WHEN IT IS INVIDIOUS DISCRIMINATION — AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EXAMPLE

I want to stress the concept of invidious discrimination. In the United States this idea has been obscured and mystified–indeed very roughly handled–in debates about affirmative action and equal opportunity. Classification by race may be distasteful, often arbitrary, and ultimately undesirable. However if such classification serves a legitimate moral and public purpose, such as overcoming prejudice and opening opportunities, it is not necessarily invidious; it does not impose a caste principle. Even very weak forms of affirmative action, let alone preferential hiring or promotion, require institutions to "know the race" of those entitled to enhanced opportunity. Such programs may deny to some people benefits they might otherwise have. But they are not thereby demeaned or degraded; they do not suffer invidious discrimination. Despite some rhetorical overreaching, in the slogan that the Constitution is color-blind, that document need not be read as requiring our governments to turn a blind eye to the most wounding reality of American life.