Prielration of New Discriminations

Affirmative Action;  The New Discrimination
by Gabriel Moens,
Centre for Independent Studies, 575 Pacific Highway, St. Leonards, 2065.
$11.95 plus $1.20 postage.

All businessmen (and women), employers and citizens who have any commitment to the free enterprise system should be vitally concerned with the implications of Affirmative Action, especially since the Federal Government's Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Bill has passed the House of Representatives and is due to be debated by the Senate later this year.

The current problems of affirmative action are more easily diagnosed by those with expertise in the twin disciplines of law and philosophy.  Dr. Gabriel Moens, Dr.Jur (Leuven), LL.M (North-Western, Chicago) Ph.D (Sydney), is thus particularly well qualified to do this.  Dr. Moens, a Lecturer in the Law of European Communities at the University of Sydney, produced his monograph as a result of a study at first commissioned and later rejected by the Australian Human Rights Commision.  The Commission claimed Dr. Moens study did not meet the usual standards of scholarship and objectivity.  Hired as an independent expert, Dr. Moens seems to have misunderstood what in the vernacular of the Australian Tirf is referred to as "his racing orders".  The Commission apparently wanted no objective assessment of affirmative action -- merely some thesis from a well-qualified academic which could be used to bolster views that it had already reached.

Dr. Moens' book includes an interesting analysis of the American experience and literature on affirmative action.  He draws the very important distinction between "soft" affirmative action programmes and "hard" affirmative action programmes (which involve the setting of goals, targets or percentages to be achieved according to a prescribed timetable).  Dr. Moens argues that "soft" affirmative action programmes such as the elimination of artificial barriers to employment or promotion, improvement in selection and recruitment practices and new training procedures open to all employees, do conform genuinely to the ideal of "equality of opportunity".

On the other hand, "hard" affirmative action programmes, which, through the setting of targets or goals, seek proportional representation of women and minority groups, conform to a different ideal, that of "equality of result".  Such programmes are inconsistent with the principle of hiring by merit and in academia their most serious and obvious consequence is the loss of excellence.

In a university, excellence is incompatible with the selection or promotion of applicants who are good enough in contradistinction to the appointment of those who are the best for the job.  Dr. Moens thus highlights what is often deliberately obscured by equal opportunists namely that a contrived equality of result is not equal opportunity nor can it achieve it.  Indeed it is used to achieve the very opposite, a discrimination against individuals within a majority to the advantage of individuals within a minority.  The fact that already in Australia government advertisements are appearing inviting applications from persons "regardless of sex, race, ethnic background, physical or mental impairment" (my emphasis) tends strongly to support Dr. Moens' conclusion.  Presumably to belong to the minority group of those with a significant mental impairment could theoretically be an advantage, when, for example, one applied for the post of neuro-surgeon in a government hospital.

Dr. Moens asserts that those affirmative action programmes which involve the setting of targets are a smoke-screen behind which preferential hiring takes place, thus shifting the burden of discrimination to a new group;  "The practice ends up by creating new classes of victims by lifting the burden from past group discrimination (women and minorities) to a new group -- white Anglo-Saxon males".

In Australia complaints of this kind are already surfacing.  A country newspaper in New South Wales carried the report of a man who claimed he could not get a job because he was "a white Australian male who is not disabled".  Arguments for social reform which require one social group or sex to suffer at the expense of another are obviously fraught with grave dangers.

Dr. Moens also makes the important point that affirmative action programmes do not help the truly needy or disadvantaged, because the members of the minority group or women who benefit from such programmes are likely to come from the top of the minority or female population, whereas those white males who miss out as a consequence of preferential hiring are likely to come from the bottom of the white male distribution of the population.

Dr. Moens emphasises that the question of whether justice should be done for individuals or groups is a key issue often neglected in the affirmative action debate.  Quoting Nathan Glazer he says;  "... if the whole concept has been developed in individual terms, how do we provide justice for the group -- for example, by a quota which determines that so many jobs must go to members of the group -- then do we not by that process deprive individuals of other groups not included of the right to be treated and considered as individuals, independently of any group characteristics?"

Affirmative Action;  -- The New Discrimination is well-written, fully researched and adequately referenced, but, more important, it brilliantly analyses the fundamental errors of current feminist and "equal opportunist" philosophy, which propounded and cloaked in trendy jargon, is often not recognised for what it truly is -- "the new discrimination";  Henry Mayer, Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Sydney, commented;  "Moens' anti-affirmative action monograph is an able and intelligent brief, much above the usual level, and I think those who differ from him need to reply at the same level".  The Foreword, which acclaims Moens study as one of international importance, is written by Professor Lauchlan Chipman, currently visiting Fellow in Philosophy and Law at Harvard.