Policies requiring institutions to act affirmatively in employment or other recruitment practices to avoid discrimination on grounds of race, ethnic origin, gender, disability, or sexual orientation; usually found in the USA. Executive Order 10925 issued by President Kennedy contained the first use of the term. Affirmative action policies can range from encouraging the employment of minorities to the setting of quotas of minorities to be employed.
Affirmative action is a policy or a program which gives preference to a minority, or protected group of people with the stated goal of countering past or ongoing discrimination against them.
Purpose
Affirmative action began as a corrective measure for governmental and social injustices against demographic groups that have been said to be subjected to discrimination in areas such as employment and education. The stated goal of Affirmative Action is to sufficiently counter past discrimination such that a strategy will no longer be necessary: the power elite will reflect the demographics of society at large.
Some groups who are targeted for affirmative action are characterized by race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or handicap. In India, the focus has mostly been on undoing caste discrimination. When members of targeted groups are actively sought or preferred, the reason given is usually that this is necessary to compensate for advantages that other groups are said to have had (such as through institutional racism or institutional sexism or historical circumstances). Ostensible measures of 'merit' may well be biased toward the same groups who are already empowered.
Controversy
Proponents of affirmative action generally advocate it either as a means to address past discrimination or to enhance racial, ethnic, gender, or other diversity. They argue that it can act as a form of discrimination, perpetrate new wrongs to counter old ones, and instill a sense of victim hood in the majority. It may increase racial tension and benefit the more privileged people within minority groups (such as middle to upper class blacks) at the expense of the disenfranchised within majority groups (such as poor whites). In the British 2001 Summer Of Violence Riots in Oldham, Bradford, Leeds and Burnley, one of the major complaints voiced in poor white areas was alleged discrimination in council funding which favoured minority areas.
Such complaints may result from media portrayal of affirmative action programs, which may be biased or erroneous (in which case, bodies such as local councils that initiate such programs have a duty to explain them fully and transparently to all of their constituents, be aware of the tensions that may arise, and avoid discriminating actively against majority groups), other complaints may have a legitimate cause for concern. Some members of races 'assisted' by affirmative action feel that the program is an insult to them, because they feel that their race is good enough to get jobs without the government's help. Finally critics and supporters disagree on the economic effects of affirmative action .
International human rights law
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination stipulates (in Article 2.2) that affirmative action programs may be required of states that have ratified the convention, in order to rectify systematic discrimination. It states however that such programs "shall in no case entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate rights for different racial groups after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved". Positive discrimination, on the other hand, even if intended to improve the lot of disadvantaged groups, is considered illegal in international human rights law, as is any kind of discrimination.
An in-depth examination of the legal status of affirmative action, and the different kinds of programs that exist and their pros and cons, can be found in a paper written for the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights by one of its members, Marc Bossuyt.
Implementation worldwide
In some countries which have laws on racial equality, affirmative action is rendered illegal by a requirement to treat all races equally. This approach of equal treatment is sometimes described as being "race-blind", in hopes that it is effective against discrimination without engaging in reverse discrimination.
In such countries, the focus tends to be on ensuring equal opportunity and, for example, targeted advertising campaigns to encourage ethnic minority candidates to join the police force. This is sometimes described as "positive action", as opposed to "positive discrimination".
United States
Main article: Affirmative action in the United States
In the United States, affirmative action occurs in school admissions, job hiring, and government and corporate contracts. Affirmative action has been the subject of numerous court cases, and has been contested on constitutional grounds.
India
Main article: Reservation in India
Affirmative action has historically been implemented in India in the form of reservation or quotas in government positions, employment and education for lower castes and minorities.
There have been recent attempts to introduce it into the private job sector and for Muslims. Many people disagree with affirmative action which has led to a lot of controversy. Some Brazilian Universities (State and Federal) have created systems of preferred admissions (quotas) for racial minorities (blacks and native Brazilians), the poor and the handicapped. The Bumiputeras of Brunei are accorded special benefits through a variety of affirmative action programs. The People's Republic allows non-Han ethnic groups (around 9% of the population) to be exempt from the One-child policy, and there is a quota for minority representatives in the National Assembly in Beijing, as well as other realms of government. Article 3 of the German constitution provides for equal rights of all people regardless of sex or race. In recent years there has been a long public debate about whether to issue programs that would grant women a privileged access to jobs in order to fight discrimination. There were programs stating that if men and women had equal qualifications, women had to be preferred for a job. The bumiputra laws are a form of affirmative action meant to provide more opportunity for the majority ethnic Malay population versus the historical financial dominance of the Chinese population. State universities implement a modified version of Affirmative Action. Secondary schools, both private and public schools, are each assigned a quota on how many students from that high school are accepted for admission, in addition to each student's score during the entrance examination. The Constitutional Court declared in October 2005 that affirmative action i.e. "providing advantages for people of an ethnic or racial minority group" as being against its Constitution. The Employment Equity Act and the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act aim to promote and achieve equality in the workplace (in South Africa termed "equity"), by not only advancing people from designated groups but also specifically disadvancing the others. By legal definition, the designated groups include all non-whites, females, people with disabilities, and people from rural areas. The term "black economic empowerment" is somewhat of a misnomer, therefore, because it covers empowerment of any member of the designated groups, regardless of race. By a relatively complex scoring system, which allows for some flexibility in the manner in which each company meets its legal commitments, each company is required to meet minimum requirements in terms of representation by previously disadvantaged groups. In countries such as Indonesia, affirmative action programs give natives preference over Han Chinese who have immigrated into the country. Affirmative action programs give Bulgarian immigrants and other minorities preference over natives.
"Consultations"
Another, more indirect form of affirmative action works through "consultations", whereby institutions such as schools or health-care facilities are viewed as centered on the majority culture, and therefore consultation with other ethnic groups are specified as a remedy. This can cause accusations of double-standards, as in practice representatives of all ethnic groups except the majority group receive consultation on institutional workings. Proponents discount this as being irrelevant, as they claim consultation with the majority group is pointless, as the institution's management is centered on their culture anyway..
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