It is currently easier, or widely thought to be easier, to get certain jobs or to gain admission to certain educational institutions if one is black or a woman than if one is a white man. Whether or not this is true, many think it should be true, and many others think it should not. The issue is this: If a black person or a woman is admitted to a law school or medical school, or appointed to an academic or administrative post, in preference to a white man who is in other respects better qualified, and if this is done in pursuit of a preferential policy or to fill a quota, is it unjust? Can the white man complain that he has been unjustly treated? It is important to investigate the justice of such practices, because if they are unjust, it is much more difficult to defend them on grounds of social utility. I shall argue that although preferential policies are not required by justice, they are not seriously unjust either – because the system from which they depart is already unjust for reasons having nothing to do with racial or sexual discrimination.

In the United States we have reached the present situation by the following steps. First, and not very long ago, it came to be widely accepted that deliberate barriers against the admission to desirable positions of blacks and women should be abolished. Their abolition is by no means complete, and certain educational institutions, for example, may be able to maintain limiting quotas on the admission of women for some time. But deliberate discrimination is widely condemned.