AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Affirmative action is a policy applied in the United States and other countries that aims to enhance educational and career opportunities for minorities and women by granting them preferences in college and graduate school admissions, promotions, and contract awards. Its detractors argue that a policy of favoring some races and ethnic groups over others not only fosters resentments and unrest but also compromises educational and professional standards by considering race or ethnicity ahead of objective criteria of achievement and qualifications. But supporters of affirmative action maintain that it necessary to redress past injustices—in their view created in part by traditional forms of de facto affirmative action (such as university "legacy" admissions) that have benefited only privileged elites.

In the United States, the term "affirmative action" originally referred to a court order requiring companies that had engaged in illegal racial or sexual discrimination to compensate those they had wronged and to show that they planned to avoid future illegal discrimination. Although this ruling suggested that affirmative action was compensation for unjust discrimination, it could not explain why the main beneficiaries of affirmative action were young women and young African Americans who had not been discriminated against by the companies required to hire and promote them. Some defenders of affirmative action responded that women and African Americans were the victims of a generalized prejudice compounded by a legacy of slavery. But critics pointed out that it hardly followed that companies that had refrained from participating in the pervasive discrimination and prejudice were required to compensate its victims; these critics contended that although the slaves deserved compensation from their masters, it did not follow that the descendants of the slaves deserved compensation from the descendants of the masters.

The debate on these issues was lively, but it was never completely settled because affirmative action began to refer to policies that took race and sex into account in order to increase the number of women and racial minorities in universities and businesses, with no implication that the policies were justified because the universities and businesses had practiced illegal discrimination. The defense of affirmative action therefore came to emphasize future results as much as past injustices. One early argument was that affirmative action would reduce inequality; critics countered that although it might increase the number of blacks in the middle and upper classes, it might do little to reduce overall inequality.

The most popular current defense of affirmative action in higher education centers on the educational and cultural advantages of a racially and ethnically diverse student body; this rationale was introduced by Justice Lewis Powell in the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor appealed to this argument in the Grutter v. Bollinger decision of 2003, but critics objected that the principle of strict scrutiny forbids the state from giving racial preference unless it demonstrates that they serve a compelling state interest, which, in their view, had not been demonstrated in these cases. Defenders of these decisions countered that states do indeed have an obvious and compelling interest in eliminating the racial subordination that would likely persist without some form of affirmative action. If these observers are right, the diversity argument for affirmative action may require supplementation with evidence that affirmative action is necessary to reduce racial subordination.

See also Racism; Social and Political Philosophy.

Bibliography

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Bernard R. Boxill (2005)