Against Fairness

by Asma, Stephen T.

  It is also insufficient to think of tribes in purely evolutionary terms. We often find analysts, especially in the “clash of civilizations” debate, talking about tribes as a step or stage—one that’s on its way to becoming a state. There might be some other argument for claiming that tribes are primitive, but there seems to be little evidence that tribes are always supplanted or replaced by later kinds of political organization. Even when many different groups coalesce, by choice or force, tribal affiliations can continue within larger organizations of power and authority. Clans and cliques don’t always go extinct when states evolve into existence.

  Most important, perhaps, is this: The fact that there have been some very nasty and hostile tribes throughout history does not nullify the tribe as a valid form of social organization. I cannot underscore this point enough. Just because there are some bad motorcycle gangs or bankers or skateboarders, for example, does not mean that these groups are intrinsically deviant or corrupt. And yet a similarly sloppy logic has animated many objections to tribes, clans, cliques, and factions. We will need to begin our inquiry, at least, without assuming a contemptuous view of tribes.

  What do we mean by “fairness”? Etymologically, the term “fair” seems to have originated as an aesthetic term, describing someone beautiful or pleasant. Only gradually did the term migrate to the ethical domain, where it tended to mean a person or action that was unblemished by moral stain. When something is fair, it is generally considered free from bias and prejudice. If it’s used as an adjective for social interaction or for a distribution of goods, then it generally implies an equal measure for concerned parties. Philosopher John Rawls took fairness to be the key ingredient in justice, stating that “fundamental to justice, is the concept of fairness which relates to right dealing between persons who are cooperating with or competing against each other, as when one speaks of fair games, fair competition, and fair bargains.”11 And somewhere in the background of our usual thinking about fairness is the assumption of the equality of all mankind—egalitarianism.12

  The idea of universal respect is endorsed in both the modern secular and the ancient sacred traditions of the West. Our biblical traditions sometimes assert that human equality can be found in the idea that we were all made in God’s image, and our government documents affirm equality on the grounds of inalienable rights that were endowed by our Creator.13 Philosophers generally agree that modern Western society is premised on egalitarian ideology. We’ve already seen philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s claim that all citizens are of equal worth. And philosopher Charles Taylor reminds us that “the average person needs to do very little thinking about the bases of universal respect … because just about everyone accepts this as an axiom today.” Moreover, Taylor suggests that tribal thinking is uncivilized because it draws its circles of respect narrowly, while “higher civilizations” include the whole human species in their circle of respect.14

  Generally speaking, our ideologies run in favor of fairness and equal treatment. Some of us might even assume that we are always upholding this principle. Ironically, some Westerners even assume that it is their commitment to equality and fairness that makes them superior to other individuals and cultures. It is our notion of equality that makes us the “higher” tribe.

  In this ironic formulation, we can smell a burning friction between two concepts. The concept that everybody gets an equal share of the good scrapes up against another concept of fairness: winner takes all, or at least takes more. When merit or skill trumps the competitor, we generally think it is fair to apportion more reward. May the best man win, as we say. Merit deserves more. But this merit-based fairness vies against “equal shares” or “equal outcomes” fairness.

  Jesus trades on these competing concepts in his paradoxical parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16). A householder farmer goes out in the morning and hires some workers to labor in his vineyard, promising them one silver denarius for a full day’s work. At midday the farmer hires another crew to join the vineyard work, and in the final hour of the workday he hires yet another team. When all the laborers finish at nightfall, they return and the farmer pays them all the exact same wage—one silver denarius each. Adding insult to injury, the farmer rebukes the all-day workers who complain about the inequity.

  I remember hearing this parable in church when I was a kid and feeling bad for the suckers who had sweated all day for the same wage as the eleventh-hour laborers. I was soothed by priests, who explained that God saves by grace, not by merit. I was told that deeds—no matter how rigorous or pious—cannot really earn God’s rewards. Just ask and you can receive the kingdom of heaven. No one actually deserves salvation, and God will bestow it on sinners and saints equally if their hearts are sufficiently contrite. This may indeed be the true lesson of the parable, but for our purposes the story also illustrates the tension between fairness as equal outcomes and fairness as merit system.

  Our contemporary hunger for equality can border on the comical. When my six-year-old son came home from first grade with a fancy winner’s ribbon, I was filled with pride to discover that he had won a footrace. While I was heaping praise on him, he interrupted to correct me. “No, it wasn’t just me,” he explained. “We all won the race!” He impatiently educated me. He wasn’t first or second or third—he couldn’t even remember what place he took. Everyone who ran the race was told that they had won, and they were all given the same ribbon. “Well, you can’t all win a race,” I explained to him, ever-supportive father that I am. That doesn’t even make sense. He simply held up his purple ribbon and raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say, “You are thus refuted.”

  Shortly after this comedy, he informed me of another curious school district policy—one that’s been around the United States for a few decades. It’s trivial perhaps, but telling. If my son wanted to bring some Valentine’s Day cards for his classmates, we were told that he would have to bring one for every member of his class. No favoritism was to be tolerated. No one’s fragile self-esteem would be put to that awful test. The school legislates that all valentine outcomes will be equal.

  In a similar case, school drama and music teachers complain these days that it is extremely difficult to put on plays, because they must try to find productions and scripts that contain equal numbers of lines for each student. Some parents will count the number of lines for each part and raise hell if their child is upstaged by another student.15

  More troubling than the institutional enforcement of this strange fairness is the fact that such protective “lessons” ill-equip kids for the realities of later life. As our children grow up, they will have to negotiate a world of partiality. Does it really help children when our schools legislate reality into a “fairer” but utterly fictional form? The focus on equality of outcome may produce a generation that is burdened with an indignant sense of entitlement.

  But our cultural appetite for excellence in sports and arts shows that merit-based concepts of fairness are also very strong. When people feel self-conscious about the “socialist” implications of their belief in equal shares, they will often try to purify their convictions about fairness by switching to the meritocracy version. Okay, they say, it’s actually more fair to give people what they really deserve (by excellence of skill or talent).

  The beloved children’s folktale The Little Red Hen embodies some of this merit-based fairness. Recall that the red hen works very hard planting and tending wheat, then harvesting, grinding, and baking it. All the while, she is pleading with her friends to help her, but they are too lazy and refuse. Finally, when the wheat is baked into delicious bread, the friends want to help her eat the bread, but she serves them a cold plate of fairness by eating all the bread herself.

  At first, readers may think that I’m making an all-too-familiar refinement or purification of fairness. Oh, you might think, he’s just playing a conservative card of entrepreneurial gumption against lazy social welfare handouts. But actually I will be arguing something much
more controversial: The rewards of favoritism do not need to follow the accomplishments of merit or even excellence. Favoritism flies in the face of both concepts of fairness—meritocracy and equal share distribution.

  Another term, “nepotism,” will be important throughout this book. What is nepotism? Favoritism is not just a belief or set of feelings. I might have stronger feelings for members of my tribe, but the ethical issues that really interest us are matters of action. How do I act on my favoritism? What are the behaviors that stem from favoritism?

  I will use the term “nepotism” to describe the values and actions of favoritism. “Nepotism” has become a dirty word—most people use it synonymously with “corruption.” But the word is a Latin term, nepos, that really means “nephew,” “grandchild,” or “descendant.” Nepotism is behavior that privileges your family.16 I will use it in its expanded sense—behavior that privileges your tribe.

  It is common for Westerners to sanction nepotism in private life but denounce it in public life. Never mind the hopeless task of drawing a clear line between private and public, let’s simply recognize that I can help my brother get a job at the factory where I work, but if I’m a congressman, then I might be charged with malfeasance for a similar act of nepotism. We have an official culture that formally rejects personal ties and preferential treatment.

  This is not as universal as we think, though. Things are quite different in the East. Having lived for a while in China and Cambodia, I can confirm some of the stereotypes of Asian nepotism—but of course unlike most commentators, I’m a fan of this stuff, not a foe. Asia and the Middle East are “face cultures” in the sense that social or public regard is absolutely crucial for success. And who you know is paramount. This is not just recognized privately (as it is in the West), but also officially.

  In Chinese culture (which is more communal than American individualism), you need to build elaborate connections with friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Guanxi is the Chinese word for “good connections,” and without guanxi you’re going nowhere fast. Being useful to people is perhaps the best way to build up guanxi, but also “giving face” or respect (in Chinese: gei mianzi) to elders, superiors, or friends can build up strong ties for when you eventually need help yourself.

  Getting our son into a good preschool in China, for example, was an elaborate ritual in which we had to find friends of friends and relatives of relatives who could “connect” in some remote way (by blood or acquaintance) to a staff member in the school’s administration office. Then we had to have a sit-down with everyone present—no e-mails or phone calls for serious business in a “face culture.” You must sit down and drink tea, face-to-face. You don’t fill out an application for things and trust that bureaucracy will give you your opening. You grease wheels. You curry favor.

  Nepotism is not just tolerated in many other cultures; it is in fact the coin of the realm. What people object to is not nepotism per se but the abuse of nepotism. This is hard to understand if you were raised in an official culture where every case of nepotism is seen as an abuse. In many face cultures, however, nepotism is a matter of degree, and it only becomes corruption when it scales up to obnoxious excess. Middle East scholar Lawrence Rosen relates a funny story of a conversation with Berber friends in a Moroccan home. As they were eating their main meal after prayers on a Friday afternoon, Rosen’s friend Hussein asked him if there was corruption in the United States. At first Rosen suggested Watergate as an example, but Hussein and the others dismissed this as just siyasa, politics. When Rosen offered an example of nepotism, his Moroccan friends replied, “No, no, no … that is just ‘a’ila, family solidarity.”17 When Rosen, slightly exasperated, pressed his friends to define corruption, they described it as a failure to share with one’s companions and allies. “Corruption is, in the Arabic idiom, ‘to eat’ the good things that should be shared with others.”18

  It is not only the Eastern examples that give us some perspective on our Western ways. Our own history gives us insight into how far the contemporary view has changed. When the seventeenth-century Pope Urban VIII lay on his deathbed, he summoned a group of church canonists to examine his nepotism track record.19 He wanted to enter the pearly gates with a clear conscience, so he submitted a list of all the gifts that he had bestowed on his nepotes, nephews. Had he exceeded the bounds of family generosity? Of course, the private commission exonerated him and assured him of easy passage to the great beyond. But what’s interesting about this case is not whether they were right—subsequent biographers found Urban VIII to be overly lavish in his gift giving. What is interesting is that no one viewed nepotism itself as corruption. It was assumed by all that wealth (especially sudden good fortune, as was the case for Urban) should be preferentially dispensed to family first. Those outside your tribe should also reap some surplus benefits, of course. The goods, whatever they may be, should radiate out in concentric circles from the fortunate benefactor. Favoritism was not a sin—quite the contrary, sensible nepotism was actually considered virtuous. Immoderate or intemperate indulgence of one’s favorites was the problem.20

  Two Classic Cases of Favoritism

  In order to make my case for favoritism, I have to leave the arid realm of abstract generalizations and focus on specific cases. The details really matter, because our unique bonds of affection tie to distinct personalities. So I want to introduce two important cases—from Confucius and Socrates—that will also serve as helpful touchstones throughout later sections of the book.

  A Chinese politician from an outlying province attempted to impress Kongzi (Confucius) with an anecdote of local virtue. The politician explained that the people of his region were so morally upright that if a father steals a sheep, the son will give evidence against him. While the politician was basking in the righteousness of his story, Kongzi replied, “Our people’s uprightness is not like that. The father shields his son, the son shields his father. There is uprightness in this.”21

  No more is said about this exchange in Kongzi’s famous Analects, and no unified interpretation can be found in two millennia of Confucian philosophy. But, of course, most of us know exactly what Kongzi meant. We know it in our bones, even if we can’t articulate it in language.

  It is difficult to express an idea of moral privilege when almost all of our ethical education has been against it. From children’s stories to religious parables to technical philosophies, we are encouraged to eliminate our personal connections from considerations of justice. The idea of fairness that many of us are raised on requires us to assign all parties equal weight. Lady Justice herself is often represented as blindfolded when she balances her scales. She cannot factor in people’s money, status, or power, and she cannot play favorites. But I would side with Kongzi’s ethic rather than the impartial politician’s.

  When philosopher Bertrand Russell read this Confucian passage, he took it as both refreshingly honest and indicative of a large-scale difference in Eastern and Western ethics. Russell generally thought that Christian virtue was too extreme—demanding charity for everyone, including one’s enemies. Confucian ethics, on the other hand, is more moderate and therefore more attainable. Instead of loving one’s enemies and treating everyone as equals, the Chinese person, according to Russell, is expected “to be respectful to his parents, kind to his children, generous to his poor relations, and courteous to all. These are not very difficult duties,” Russell observes, “but most men actually fulfill them, and the result is perhaps better than that of our higher standard, from which most people fall short.”22 The Confucian ethic, which embraces favoritism, is less susceptible to the familiar Western hypocrisy—the pretense of believing we can be saints, but all the while acting like mere mortals.

  Fig. 3. Lady Justice, the allegorical personification of impartial fairness. In ancient depictions she is not blindfolded, but modern representations emphasize the need to eradicate subjective bias. Drawing by Stephen Asma.

  Kongzi would not have been a fan of Jesus’ u
niversal love, which tries to turn the other cheek for slapping abuses and worse. Kongzi knew about more universal notions of love, from his Daoist contemporaries, but it seemed incoherent to him. Daoist philosophers of the day regularly promoted the idea that one should return good for evil. But when asked about this pious policy, Kongzi replied, “What then is to be the return for good?”23

  For Confucian thinkers, integrity is not synonymous with fairness or equality. Rather, familial love and devotion trump all other duties and obligations. There is a natural hierarchy of values, with one’s kin on top, and Confucian culture enshrines, rather than denies, that hierarchy.

  Many of us have been raised to think that favoritism is inconsistent with morality and justice. Enlightenment philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham argued that ethical judgments should be more like mathematical operations—universal maxims and formulae in which human variables (equally valued) are processed and calculated. The utilitarians argued, for example, that we should always behave such that we maximize the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. We today are still heavily influenced by this mathematical model of egalitarian ethics. But Aristotle had a more nuanced view of justice—one that could admit favoritism. We don’t have to put our tribal biases in deep storage in order to enter into moral commerce with others. This introduces more ambiguity into our pursuit of justice, because it admits deep asymmetries in our values.24 The claims of justice are different, Aristotle said, depending on who is involved in the case. “It is a more terrible thing to defraud a friend than a fellow citizen, more terrible not to help a brother than a stranger, and more terrible to wound a father than anyone else.”25