The Least Unjust Solution? (John Speaking)
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Let me give you an example of how things might be made more fair for the employer. Fred is right that the employer has to bear the cost of validating tests. For small companies, that may be a burden. Since we are imposing the burden to reduce problems that the company may not have created, maybe it's unfair to make them pay that cost. Christopher Jencks has suggested that we should all pay for developing better tests for jobs. Let the cost be spread around. Maybe there are other ways to make the system fairer by distributing the costs of compensation differently.

Even strong affirmative action programs, if we need them, could be made fairer. I agree that the young white job applicant is hardly the biggest villain or beneficiary in the situation.

If we were honest about affirmative action we could identify the whites who don't get hired because of it. Once we did that we could compensate them for bearing more than their fair share of the cost of compensating blacks. For example, we could give them an unemployment benefit while they are looking for a job or help them with training. We could also limit the number of times that an individual could be passed over because of an affirmative action program. All of these measures would make the programs fairer.

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