"Advocates for and opponents of affirmative action remain as quarrelsome now as ever. . . . Walter Feinberg has produced a volume that elevates the debate. In strong support of gender- and race-based policies, he offers a moral defense of such preferences. . . . Those who stand strongly with using race and gender to surmount discrimination against women and minorities but have felt outgunned in today’s hostile climate will discover much useful ammunition to aim at and defeat their adversaries."
—From the Foreword

In this passionate and eloquent defense of affirmative action, Walter Feinberg moves the debate beyond the inadequate framework of economic issues to develop a theory of affirmative action that allows for a more refined understanding of its uses and misuses. He shows that affirmative action has three morally defensible goals. First, it seeks to correct systematic ruptures in the exercise of the principle of equal opportunity. Second, it seeks to advance the standing of groups whose members have been discriminated against because of certain ascribed characteristics such as sex or skin color. Third, it attempts to address a historical debt.