Utility and Rights (John Speaking)
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I want to raise another question. How do these utilitarian arguments fit with the issues we discussed earlier about rights and compensation?

We agreed before that if people had rights and those rights were violated, then at least sometimes compensation is required. We disagreed about when compensation was due and who should be required to provide it or bear the costs.

Can we hold, on the one hand, that everyone has a right not to be discriminated against because of their race or color and ALSO hold that utility justifies discriminating against whites in strong affirmative action programs? Or let me put it this way: If people have a right to not be discriminated against that is strong enough that violating it requires compensation, how can utility justify affirmative action programs that override those rights?

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