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With a growing majority of conservatives eager to see the elimination of racial and gender preferences as guides to federal affirmative-action programs, political leaders are scrambling to refine their stances on an issue that promises to play a key role in next year's presidential election. But amid liberal and conservative ideologies, will the essential goal of affirmative action (as a means to justice for all people) end up lost in the political hustle?

Affirmative action emerged in the 1960s as a result of efforts by the civil-rights movement to persuade America to honor its original contract of constitutional ideals: that "all [people] are created equal." President Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964 sought to prohibit racial discrimination in the present and in the future; however, it could not correct the effects of past societal inequities-particularly in the areas of housing, education, and employment. In a nation scarred by a legacy of racial injustices, affirmative action was to be the compensatory medicine that would offer equal opportunities for all individuals regardless of color, race, religion, or gender. While first addressed to the needs of African Americans, later the needs of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and women were added to the roll.

Today, many look upon the process of affirmative action as being unfair. Unfair to whites and, particularly, to white men. But an urgent question for Christians is this: Should we be more concerned about fairness or justice?

Genuine justice is not based simply on fairness. In fact, a preoccupation with justice as fairness lies at the root of most problems in our society and in the world—whether among individuals, groups, or nations—and is at the center of the affirmative action debate.

The notion of justice as fairness wrongly assumes that everyone is equal. But what is sometimes forgotten is that sociohistorical circumstances often preclude equality. Our history has made the playing field of opportunity uneven from the start.

In some track and field racing events, the starting blocks are staggered so that those beginning from different points on the track will all have an equal opportunity. Similarly, affirmative action is a staggering of society's "starting blocks" with the aim of creating a level playing field for women and people of color. Why? Because, as Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "There is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals."

In order to treat all persons equally and provide genuine equality of opportunity, affirmative action says society must give more attention to those born into or placed in less favorable social positions. This "fair share" approach is a particularistic effort and not a universal action, since it is an attempt to place select groups in the equal position that they would have held had there been no barriers in their paths to progress.

But the principles that drive affirmative action also place it in a precarious Catch-22. Created on the idealism that the rights of individuals should be respected without regard to race or gender, affirmative action ends up contradicting this very premise by giving a perceived "advantage" to individuals from underrepresented groups.

How then does one address this supposed dilemma at the heart of the current debate? A good starting place is to go back to God's concept of justice. God's justice does not spring simply from what people deserve but more often from what they need. It is not fair play but righteous play, based on individual circumstances (Ezek. 33:20).

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November 13 1995, Vol. 39, No. 13