speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Experiments in Particularism
victims with fidelity to universalism, as the British experience illustrates.
In 1943, as Holocaust rumours were confirmed and local
fascists parroted Nazi anti-Semitism, the government considered
outlawing incitement to hatred against Jews (who were one percent
of the population). Home Secretary Herbert Morrison (a socialist
member of the coalition government) rejected the proposal because
"it would be contrary to public policy to single out one section of the
community for preferential treatment and protection ... we must
maintain the principle that our law is no respecter of persons." 40
Half a century later, some have grown more sensitive to past
injustice. The Labour Party allows constituencies to exclude male
candidates from short lists and has declared that women will be at
least 40 percent of the national executive by the mid-1990s. 41
Embarrassed that only 23 of its 12,000 drivers are women, British
Rail advertises openings in women's magazines. 42 Sometimes the
particularism is implicit. Among those charged with killing a spouse
or lover between 1982 and 1989, women were nearly twice as likely
as men to be charged with manslaughter rather than murder, four
times as likely to be acquitted or found unfit to plead, only two-thirds
as likely to be imprisoned, and sentenced to terms just over half as
long. 43
Yet preferential treatment elicits strong resentment. After the
Metropolitan Police changed its height and weight requirements
because of their discriminatory effects—only 1.6 percent of officers
were black compared to 15 percent of London's population, and
none was Chinese—a majority of officers protested that they were
victims of race and sex prejudice. 44 When Cambridge announced
an affirmative action plan affecting less than a dozen of its 10,000
undergraduates, Harrow headmaster Ian Beer condemned the
university for embarking "on a dangerous road of social engineering"
and complained that "it is not the fault of Harrow boys that they
are well taught." 45 The Bar Council narrowly voted to urge
chambers to offer five per cent of their vacant seats to minorities; and
Lord Mackay, noting that no High Court judges and only two circuit
judges are black, began monitoring the ethnicity of applicants for
silk. But the Master of the Rolls attacked a proposed judicial appointments
commission. "Why," asked Lord Donaldson, "is there a right
number of barrister or solicitor judges or men or women judges?" He
simply recommended the best person for the job. 46
The United States, which embraced affirmative action earlier,
more explicitly, and with greater commitment, displays an equally
incoherent mix of rhetorical posturing and political struggle. The
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