Why affirmative action?

A recent report suggested that the Sessions Justice Department is considering using resources currently devoted to pursuing civil rights investigations to instead investigate colleges for discrimination against white students. The reality of what is being pursued may be more complex, but this action would align with Sessions’ history and the Trump administration’s general hostility to civil rights and equal protection.

But, given that Trump supporters, according to polls, seem to believe that whites face more discrimination than other groups, perhaps they are simply playing to their base of angry, falsely aggrieved white men.

This might be a good time then, to explain exactly what affirmative action is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t.

For some reason, when people think of affirmative action, their minds immediately go to racial hiring quotas or quotas on college admissions. In fact, quotas have been illegal, per a Supreme Court ruling, for nearly 40 years.

But even without quotas, organizations can, and should, set goals for working toward diversity in hiring.

Let’s recall where the term “affirmative action” actually comes from. People tend to assume that once we passed a few anti-discrimination laws, the work was over. Discrimination would come to an end and everyone would be judged on merit.

Reality was far from this fantasy. None of us could magically will equality into existence. Therefore, there was a need to take action to affirm our anti-discrimination laws.

The term originates from a pair of executive orders, signed by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s. These required government and government contractors to “take affirmative action” to reach the goal of non-discrimination in the areas of race, religion, and national origin. Affirmative action in gender was added in 1967 and it likely has had the biggest impact.

Affirmative action exists for several reasons. One is to deal with a history of discrimination against disfavored groups. Some use the example of a foot race where one person or group is held back for a period of time while others get a head start, then the favored group acts as though everything is equal when somewhere in the middle of the race, the barriers are lifted.

But affirmative action exists not just to remedy past discrimination, but current bias. Not all discrimination is easily caught and dealt with in the law, but more importantly, most discrimination isn’t even intentional.

It is simply a fact that a group of people, making a hiring decision, will likely hire people most like themselves. If that group consists largely of white, middleclass, professional men, absent substantial efforts to ensure otherwise, the bulk of hiring will likely be of a similar sort.

Affirmative action is geared toward countering such implicit biases. It involves reaching out to make sure that hiring decisions are made by a diverse group of people and that the hiring pool itself is diverse. If these things are done, and a conscious effort is made to ensure that processes are fair, the result will likely be closer to justice than otherwise.

This is especially important in some fields as hiring has often been made based on the basis of contacts and family history. Occupations such as construction, police officers, and firefighters often fit this category as these careers are often multi-generational, making it difficult for previously excluded groups to break in, even if no intentional effort is made to exclude them.

Affirmative action is not, and never has been, about promoting unqualified people over qualified ones. In fact, the assumption that this is the case is a bias of itself, as it assumes that the previously favored groups: usually white men, are somehow always more qualified.

While quotas are illegal, it is helpful to track the number of applicants in a hiring pool and compare it to the demographics one of the population one is serving or drawing from. Where those demographics change rapidly, no affirmative action will be able to keep up, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Lastly, affirmative action exists, because diversity itself is an important value. It matters because the world of the future will be a diverse one, containing people from all genders, racial backgrounds, religions, sexual orientations, etc. So, we attempt to reflect that future diversity, not only to be fair to the individuals being considered, but more importantly because the outcome is that we generate a society in which all individuals and all groups are well represented and in which their talents are allowed to flourish.