Positive and Negative Discrimination: Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is the practice or policy of favoring individuals belonging to groups known to have been discriminated against previously. While affirmative action is an idea that many would say is necessary to bring about equality, which is absent majorly due to the above-mentioned past discrimination of the backward groups, and the idea itself has many good points like promoting diversity in workplaces and educational institutions, especially in India where quota is sometimes used as campaign material by political leaders. There are also many negative aspects that are not fully explored.
It promotes discrimination in reverse. The other name for affirmative action is positive discrimination. If the end goal is to eliminate discrimination from society, then something that promotes discrimination is not the way to go about doing so. Giving one-person preference over another because of their minority status instead of their qualifications is the wrong perspective, especially in quota-based systems. It is due to this that simply being qualified for something is not being enough to get what a person from the general class deserves in life. It’s not that the person didn’t work hard enough, it's simply that there was a person from the minority who also applied and due to quota got what the more qualified person deserved. Searching for a diverse group of qualified candidates and having programming to promote that search lessens the promotion of discrimination. Where is the moral high ground of achieving equality when it promotes inequality?
Like Wan Saiful from the Institute of democracy and economic affairs says in his article, “Affirmative Action is Morally Wrong”, “To give a very simplified analogy, imagine a poor person and a rich person walking next to each other. The best way to statistically make these two people equal is by legalizing robbery so that a poorer person can legally rob a rich person, as long as the amount taken makes both of them equal. Then inequality would be zero. So here we have solid data to suggest that to eradicate inequality, we should simply legalize robbery. Yet the fact remains that taking someone’s property by force is wrong regardless of the outcome. Clearly, even if the data says it works, morally wrong action is still wrong. The same applies to affirmative action. It may not involve robbing one person to help another. But it is still discrimination. Even if data shows it works, discrimination is morally wrong. We must not create excuses to justify discrimination.”
The objection here is not merely that Affirmative Action subjectively denies positions which the people from the majority groups are entitled to under existing and publicly declared rules and regulations or that administrators of Affirmative Action deviate from the pre-established rules and standards, but that the preferences in Affirmative Action violate principles of justice and individual moral rights governing the distribution of desirable positions. Any time a program exists that allows someone to obtain a position in a school or a workplace, a foundation of minority-based stereotypes can be built. Even if all people are qualified, Affirmative Action comes from the perspective that women or minorities are “inferior to” the majority or general group, which promotes a superior attitude from the majority class. It presupposes that all people of the same skin color are from the lower class, and therefore need help. This also reinforces stereotypes and even embeds them permanently into the system. For such a program to succeed, it must come from a viewpoint of pure equality which is almost impossible is promote in today’s society. The very fact that it supposes there is a superior and an inferior in people, just based on the program itself makes it morally wrong Diversity for the sake of having it provides little benefit to a school or business. There must be a purpose of seeking out a diverse environment for it to be beneficial. When a program like Affirmative Action exists, the goal of the program tends to slide toward meeting expectations or regulations instead of seeking out highly qualified people. If that slide occurs, diversity can hurt more than it can help.
For example, in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET medical entrance exams), out of the total seats available, 15% are reserved for the SC, 7.5% for the ST, and 27% for the OBC which is a total of 49.5 %. This means that even when 49.5% of the people may not be fully qualified to apply, they get the seats. While this may not seem like a problem in the face of promoting equality, we forget that they are basically applying for a job in the health care industry where a single mistake or wrong diagnosis may cost a person their life and yet we allow the less qualified person to get the job saying that it’s okay because it’s for diversity. Simply having people of different races or ethnicities in the workplace/university does not necessarily mean diversity of opinion. People with the same skin color or the same caste are not necessarily the same in opinion or even culture. Morally, a philosopher would argue that if a person, while knowing that giving the minority the job when there is another person who more deserves it is wrong, they still do it for diversity, it is wrong because the action is creating inequality and discrimination against the general person at the moment. If someone receives a position because of a program like Affirmative Action, then their achievements are viewed as a result of policy instead of personal skill and talent. This means people in minority groups typically must work harder to achieve the same level of respect that people in majority groups receive as they must counter the policy perspective. While most of the people in the minority may be less qualified, it does not apply to all of them. A person may be fully qualified for something like a job, but they still use minority status, so they have a higher chance of getting the job. It’s a logical and reasonable decision to want to increase the chances of getting a job but they are seen as inferior to the people from the majority and thus their achievements are deemed less worthy. This difference in treatment is baseless and wrong. Differences in treatment should not be based on criteria that are arbitrary, irrelevant, or trivial; the criteria for given differences in treatment should be morally relevant.
While discrimination is a problem, Affirmative action is reverse discrimination as well. The past discrimination against certain minority groups is a major setback, it does not fully justify present discrimination against non-minorities. Affirmative action policies lower standards and make students less accountable. If standards for test scores, grade point average, etc. are lowered for underrepresented groups, it is argued that these students will only strive to meet the lower requirements. Affirmative action policies do not necessarily help economically disadvantaged students. A study by the Hoover Institution found that affirmative action tends to benefit middle- and upper-class minorities. States should focus on other policies or programs that encourage equal opportunity, such as setting high expectations for all students and improving their college readiness. Affirmative action destroys the idea of meritocracy and instead puts race/caste/creed and other factors that should not affect jobs (and in other places like education) as the dominant factor in admissions and hiring procedures. The people should be put in the position they best deserve, regardless of race/culture/creed, etc. All people are equal in the eyes of the law and should be treated accordingly. tern of discrimination.' Bernard Joseph, a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of New Jersey says that “Other critics stress that they do not regard this policy as equivalent to reverse discrimination, but they agree that in violating the principle of merit this policy is unjust.” It is a fact that students/workers who are put into a position through affirmative action often are not fully ready and qualified for their task. Not only is this not good for the university/company, but it is also not good for these students/workers as well because it lowers self-esteem.
