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Affirmative action

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Affirmative action (or AA) refers to policies that favor members of disadvantaged groups in an attempt to make up for historic or continuing oppression, particularly racism, sexism and homophobia, and for other circumstances which cause(d) such groups to be disadvantaged, such as disabilities.[1][2][3][4] These policies are very prevalent in the United States, due to its history of slavery and difficulty in getting over it.




Affirmative action was welcomed by many progressive thinkers and activists as an effective way to enable non-whites and women to compete with white males on an even footing, due to the inability of non-whites and women to get jobs or educational opportunities solely open to white males.


Ironically (but not surprisingly), some white people never had a problem with it when it favoured them.[7]

Straw man criticism[edit]

A good deal of opposition to affirmative action is based on the misconception that it imposes hard quotas that require employers to hire unqualified minorities. As in, affirmative action requires candidates from a majority group to be passed over in favour of any and all minorities. This is false and the Supreme Court has ruled against any policies doing so.[8][9] Employers simply need only to make a good faith attempt to hire qualified minorities, by, for example, choosing the minority candidate as a tie-breaker decision or at the very least not being a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic bigot in the hiring process (so in principle not that difficult). It's worked out pretty well in the NFL, as the Pittsburgh Steelers would no doubt attest. Affirmative action laws vary widely by state and many of the programs are enforced voluntarily.[10] Obviously bad hires related to affirmative action can happen, as the Jayson BlairWikipedia fiasco arguably attests, but to generalize such cases to attack the concept as a whole is a classic use of the spotlight fallacy.[11]

Black Asian Best Friend[edit]

Often trotted out are Asians being affected negatively by affirmative action, because they are model minorities (in spite of the oppression and animosity they faced historicallyWikipedia) and thus selected against by affirmative action. However, it is debatable if this is or isn't true.[12][13]

Adverse Impact[edit]

Some argue that the legal doctrine of adverse impact, sometimes called disparate impact, is used to impose hiring quotas.[14] In reality, adverse impact is only relevant when an organization's hiring standards can not be proven to have any practical purpose other than to discriminate.[15]

See also[edit]

External links[edit]