Affirmative action

affirmative action and positive action

refer to policies that take
• race,
• ethnicity, or
• gender
into consideration in an attempt to
promote equal opportunity or increase
ethnic or other forms of diversity. The
focus of such policies ranges from
employment and education to public
contracting and health programs.
• The force towards affirmative action
is twofold:
1.to maximize diversity in all levels of
society, along with its supposed
benefits, and
2.to restore perceived disadvantages
due to clear, institutional, or
involuntary discrimination
• Proponents of affirmative action
argue,
that the disproportionate
representations, results from covert,
institutionalized and involuntary
forms of discriminations that
permeates the fabric of society;
particularly in societies that have had
a long history of racial, ethinic, or sex
based discrimination.
Such acts of discrimination may take many forms.
Some are overt such as stereotypes
(eg. women are only fit to be secretaries and
housewives, and blacks are great entertainers and
sportsmen—modern day gladiators but little else).
Others are covert, such as "old boys" clubs, that tend
to favor racially similar new members
 Myths
• One can not hope to create a color blind society by
practicing color blind policies

• While a few studies claimed that affirmative action

undermined the self-esteem of women and minorities,

• The claim that one can not redress one form of

discrimination by introducing another is a play on
words that uses the same word "discrimination" to
refer to two different things. Racial, ethnic or sex
based discrimination is often based on unfounded,
often irrational and deeply ingrained prejudices.

• Affirmative action is a response to a statistically

observed inequity in representation, reproducibly
demonstrated by social scientists in many societies
with a history of discrimination
 Types

• Affirmative action is generally

established for:
• racial minorities.
• ethnic minorities.
• underprivileged castes (such as
in India).
• women.
• the physically disabled.
• those who served in the military.
 Opponent Argument
• Some opponents say affirmative action devalues the
accomplishments of people who are chosen because of the social
group to which they belong rather than their qualifications.[

• Some people also feel that affirmative action is discrimination in itself

since it judges people by their ethnicity.

• Opponents, who sometimes call affirmative action "reverse

discrimination," further claim that affirmative action has undesirable
side-effects in addition to failing to achieve its goals.

• They argue that it hinders reconciliation, replaces old wrongs with

new wrongs, undermines the achievements of minorities, and

• encourages groups to identify themselves as disadvantaged, even if

they are not.

• It may increase racial tension and benefit the more privileged people
within minority groups at the expense of the least fortunate within
majority groups (such as lower-class whites)
• Conservative commentator Dr. Thomas Sowell
identified some negative results of race-based
affirmative action in his book, Affirmative
Action Around the World:
• affirmative action policies encourage non-
preferred groups to designate themselves as
members of preferred groups
• (e.g., upper and middle class blacks),
detriment of the least fortunate among the
non-preferred groups (e.g., poor whites or
Asians);
thereby resulting in net losses for society as a
whole