Dworkins Belief Of Preferential Treatment :: essays research papers

Dworkin's Belief of Preferential Treatment For many years, preferential treatment has been used to try to make up for past wrong-doings to minorities. There have been many cases tried over racial discrimination, with verdicts of both innocent and guilty. Ronald Dworkin attempts to argue that preferential treatment is socially useful and at the same time does not violate people's rights. This is wrong for many reasons; here I shall illustrate how preferential treatment hinders racial equality, violates people's rights, and can lead to a lower opinion toward a particular race. Dworkin believes that continuing preferential treatment will decrease racial consciousness and the importance of race. This is the total opposite of what truly happens. If a person were to consider America's past, as an example, he would see how racially diverse people were. Now look around. Just walking across any given area, groups of people of the same race are seen walking together. Most people do not notice this, but very rarely are groups of ethnically diverse people seen. Although there are no longer any laws stating that there must be a separation between different races, people still practice it unconsciously. Dworkin states that the long-term goal of preferential treatment "is to reduce the degree to which American society is overall a racially conscious society (294)." Preferential treatment does nothing of the sort. It was used widely in the past and still exists in some areas today. It has not reduced racial consciousness, but increased it by making people think more about how many spaces are reserved for their particular race. Instead, people should think of what their chances are of getting something on account of their personal knowledge over someone else's, not even considering their race as a factor. This is evident in a black's point of view of getting into the medical school of the University of California at Davis. Sixteen places are set aside just for blacks and other minorities, no matter how low their test scores are. That way, minorities don't even have to worry about competing with whites for a position. This does not, in any way, reduce racial consciousness by setting two tracks for admission to medical school, one for the minorities, and one for the majority. Mr. Dworkin supports the idea that preferential treatment does not violate people's rights. His argument is weak here because he attempts to prove this by saying that if two things do not violate people's rights, then neither does a third. The two things that supposedly do not violate rights are the denial of someone to medical school because of their age and because their test