AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Affirmative action programs are created in an attempt to
make sure that all groups within a given society have
the same opportunity to succeed. The term "affirmative
action" was coined by President John F. Kennedy and
expanded by President Lyndon Johnson. Although
different terms are used for affirmative action in different
nations, the concept is the same; affirmative action
means making sure that active steps are taken so that
minority groups are represented and hired in
organizations, government and businesses. Employment
decisions, admission to educational institutions, public
health policies and other arenas have all been affected
by a commitment to affirmative action.
Instituting an affirmative action policy comes from a
particular assessment of a nation's past; it is seen as
necessary as a compensatory measure in cultures that
have a history of discrimination or of withholding
economic opportunities based on race or national origin.
While some countries refuse to participate in affirmative
action because they have so-called "color-blind" laws
mandating that all races simply be treated equally,
other countries feel that favoring previously oppressed
groups, often called "reverse discrimination," at least for
a period of time, is the only way to restore complete
equality in the long term. This belief can lead to the
adoption of hiring quotas in which a certain number of
hires or appointments must come from previously
under-represented groups of people. In the United
States, affirmative action has been widely practiced, but
nearly as widely critiqued.
Critiques of Affirmative Action
Proponents of affirmative action point out that the
groups it currently favors are coming out of
backgrounds such as slavery, which made it nearly
impossible for them to succeed; thus, they deserve a
positive advantage when competing for jobs or
positions against others who experienced no systemic
barriers to success. Without a special opportunity to
enter into the system, disadvantaged groups might
never be able to overcome the handicap which was
forced on them by the exclusive priorities of their
culture. Eventually, all should be able to compete
equally, but discrimination is too recent to expect
underprivileged groups to do so now. In the end, the
goal is a free and equal society in which nobody gets a
head start to success. There are, however, many people
who are skeptical about these claims. These critics of
affirmative action point out that selecting someone
purely based on their ethnicity or origin actually
devalues the person's real accomplishments; they also
say that this devaluation ends up hurting the wider
ethnic or racial group from which a candidate comes.
Another common criticism is that as a form of reverse
discrimination, affirmative action keeps societies aware
of the barriers that divide it and actually perpetuates
alienation and resentment between ethnically diverse
groups, thus increasing rather than reducing racial
tension. Another concern is that affirmative action may
encourage individuals to misrepresent themselves as
members of an underprivileged group so that they can
get a job or appointment.
Finally, critics claim that racially-based hiring or
appointment policies encourage everyone not to perform
at their best - the underprivileged, because they may get
the position anyway, and the privileged, because they
cannot be hired no matter how well they perform. The
affirmative action debate is heated; while most
Americans favor affirmative action when it is focused on
gender and seeks to make sure that enough women are
hired, fewer of them claim to support racially-based
affirmative action programs.