Who is the last person you would expect to promote discrimination? How about a renowned activist, winner of many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who is founder and president of a prominent multiracial advocacy organization?
Whom could such a person promote discrimination against? Disabled people? Fat people? Gays and lesbians? Old people?
This crusading woman would never set out to hurt these groups. Yet the sort of discrimination she promotes shortchanges many disabled people, fat people, and gays and lesbians, as well as all old people. In fact, it shortchanges everyone old enough to be an adult.
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the widely revered Children’s Defense Fund, wants our society to put children first.
She describes the mission of the Children’s Defense Fund as follows: “We are committed to putting our children first as parents, grandparents, citizens, and community leaders and insist our private and public sector leaders do so.”
This sort of bias is so conventional that it virtually never gets acknowledged as bias. But if public-sector leaders should put children first, where should they put the rest of us? Second, as in second-class citizens? Why would anyone endorse this?
Here are some common rationales for putting children first:
•We must take care of children because they cannot take care of themselves.
But many adults also need assistance. Shouldn’t public sector leaders recognize that people in both groups matter equally?
•To quote Ms. Edelman, “Children don’t vote but adults who do must stand up and vote for them.”
Of course, others should stand up for people who cannot stand up for themselves. This hardly means that adults must put children first, rather just put children on a par with adults. Furthermore, children are not the only people who cannot stand up for themselves. Neither can severely retarded adults or those with advanced dementia. When did you last hear anyone say that public sector leaders should put severely retarded adults or those with advanced dementia first?
•The future of our society depends on our children, who are the productive adults of tomorrow.
But, while the long-term future of our society depends on our children, the short-term future depends on our adults who keep society running. Moreover, the decency of our society depends on our not giving second-class status to people who cannot be productive.
•What happens to children affects the rest of their lives.
But the present and future welfare of adults also relies on adequate food, housing, and health care. It would be cold-hearted for a society to practice the sort of crude utilitarianism that ranks needy adults behind children because children are apt to have more years ahead of them.
•Children deserve help more than adults do. To quote John and Laura Arnold, who donated $10 million to keep Head Start running during the recent government shutdown, “[I]t is especially unfair that young children from underprivileged communities and working families pay the price for the legislature’s collective failures.”
Especially unfair? Why are the sufferings of poor adults less unfair? Because poor adults are to blame for their poverty? Such a view would be mean-spirited and ignorant.
•It is natural to put children first.
If it is natural to put children first, why do we need to be exhorted to do it? Why has killing unwanted infants been a common practice in some societies? And if putting children first is natural, why does that make it good, rather than make it a natural form of bias that civilization ought to overcome?
It would be absurd to criticize an advocacy group or charity for limiting its area of concern. There is nothing wrong with a Children’s Defense Fund or a charitable contribution to Head Start, just as there is nothing wrong with an American Cancer Society. But the American Cancer Society does not insist that public sector leaders give cancer higher priority than all other life-threatening illnesses, nor does it claim that the sufferings of cancer patients are “especially” unfair. Advocates for children should likewise avoid such discriminatory rhetoric when pursuing their worthy cause.
Whom should public sector leaders put first? Particular groups may need special attention in their times of crisis. But no demographic group should be put first on a permanent basis.
We all matter equally, remember?
Felicia Nimue Ackerman, a monthly contributor, is a professor of philosophy at Brown University.