The affirmative action strategy
It is not enough for government to be concerned with individual acts of discrimination. A nation dedicated to the principle of equal treatment has to recognize the enduring legacy of racial discrimination and compensate for it. Groups that have traditionally experienced discrimination, and continue to experience discrimination, must be given preferential treatment to facilitate progress toward racial equality. Racial justice is achieved when there is evidence of roughly equal results -- for example, a proportionate number of individuals of various races who hold good-paying jobs.
What Should be Done?
Insist on evidence of racial diversity, which often requires analysing numbers to determine whether racial balance has been achieved. Maintain public measures to require racial diversity in schools and universities. Insist on evidence of roughly equal results in the workplace, equal access among members of different races to high-paying jobs, and equal payment for performance. Maintain affirmative action policies that require employers to ensure that groups historically discriminated against are treated fairly in recruitment and promotion decisions. Continue to use race as a consideration in university admissions decisions to correct racial imbalances and move toward the goal of racial diversity. Keep preferences in effect until parity is achieved.
Arguments For This Approach
Because entire racial groups were systematically denied opportunity in the past, remedies that apply to entire groups -- not just individuals who have suffered discrimination -- are needed to achieve racial equality. Preferential treatment for racial minorities is needed because discrimination persists, as the government proved in the 1990's in civil rights suits against Denny's restaurants, Texaco, and other firms. Since equality for African-Americans and other racial minorities is still a distant goal, certain forms of preferential treatment are still needed. It is quite common for members of certain groups -- such as veterans and college applicants whose parents attended the university -- to receive preferential treatment. We should be no less willing to grant such preferences to racial minorities. By insisting on racial diversity -- in the workplace, in schools and universities, and in local communities -- we permit routine contact among the races to take place, which over time will cause racist attitudes to dissolve. Affirmative action works. Due in large part to affirmative action, there have been significant gains over the past 20 years in minority employment, even in traditionally segregated trades such as sheet metal and electrical work.
Arguments Against This Approach
Group remedies that take race into account amount to state-sanctioned discrimination by reason of race, which turns the principle of a color-blind society on its head. Affirmative action violates the principle that hiring and promotion should be based solely on merit, that the most qualified person should get the job. Preferences for minorities underscore the inferiority and low self-esteem that affirmative action programs were intended to correct. Affirmative action has fueled resentment against racial minorities and produced a backlash. Discriminatory barriers have largely broken down, so preferential treatment is no longer needed. Race-specific remedies offered to entire racial groups -- whether black, Hispanic, Asian-American or Native American -- are misdirected and unjustified. The fundamental problem is the persistence of educational and economic disadvantage, not racial discrimination.
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