A Right To Equality? Re-Examining the Case for a Right to Equality

Extract

In the area of politics one is not surprised to encounter bias, prejudice, rationalization, special pleading; yet rarely does one encounter these phenomena so often, so blatantly, as in the area relating to equality. Indeed, even among those whose job it is to be impartial, rational, informed, namely, philosophers, one finds less objectivity, less evidence of a genuine search for the truth, and a greater concern to press preconceived views than elsewhere in their work. Among Western philosophers, there is a very widespread commitment to equality as a political value. So deep has been and is the commitment in theory at least, to this value, that concern for knowledge and truth have been subordinated to it by many — as in the refusal to allow or determination to discourage research into racial differences, for fear that the results of such research may lead to a lesser political commitment to equality. Yet, for all this professed concern for equality, a genuine lover of equality could be excused for being perplexed by the attitudes of those who profess such a concern for equality.