Expert: Michael Troy - 7/13/2004

Question
affermative action has developed in the last decades, in your opinion where is this policy going?, do you think it's going to continue being a part of the mean policies of the next few years?

Answer
Hi there,

Affirmative Action started in the late 1960's, shortly after the Civil Rights laws were passed.  The idea was that there were a lot of fairly neutral laws and practices that might hold back minorities, even though they were not designed to be discriminatory.  Affirmative Action was simply saying people should take positive steps to look at their selection policies and make sure they were not doing things that might unintentionally disadvantage minorities.

From there, AA quickly moved to giving special benefits to minorities in order to overcome their low numbers in schools or workplaces.  Some institutions used quotas, meaning they would take a certain percentage of minorities no matter how unqualified.  Others used racial preferences, which gave extra points or rigged tests in favor of minorities in order to get more of them.

In most cases, AA was either adopted or required in order to overcome past discrimination.  In other words, policies and practices had unfairly discriminated against minorities for many years.  So, for a few years, they would discriminate in the other direction to balance things out.

For many years, this was the only justification under which Courts permitted (or sometimes required) affirmative action that involved racial preferences or quotas.  Schools or businesses could only used benefits to minorities in order to undo problems caused by their own past practices.  The general thinking was that such programs would be temporary until the racial composition of the workforce or student body became more balanced.

However, last year, the Supreme Court held that schools which had never discriminated against minorities could still give preferences to minorities in order to promote "diversity".  This seems like a dangerous departure from past rulings since it says that minorities think differently from non-minorities, almost the very definition of racism.  It is unclear whether the Court will continue down that road or not.

In practice, affirmative action is used as a sort of racial spoils system.  Politicians and business leaders want to make sure that minority groups are happy with them, so they make sure there are a certain level of minority faces at the table.  Many do not want to admit they give preferences to minorities because that almost concedes that minorities cannot compete on an even basis.  Also, because discrimination law in this area is so confusing, many are not even sure when they are breaking the law.  

For these reasons, many organizations try to keep their affirmative action plans quiet.  They give preferences to minorities to get the outcome they want, but don't want to let people know about the preferences.  I think that will continue for some time.

I hope this helps!
- Mike