![]() ![]() A great many educational institutions, professions and trades have opened their doors to women as a result of affirmative action, promoting the entry of women into a range of formerly male domains, from law schools to corporations to police departments. In many institutional contexts, they have long since expanded to cover other grounds on which groups of people face discrimination and unequal opportunity. Thus, even at their inception, when affirmative action policies were predominantly racebased, they were designed to remedy the institutional exclusion of a number of racially-disad- vantaged groups. In the context of the racial politics of the United States, we believe such a misrepresentation of the scope of these policies is not only false, but also dangerous since it is easier to negatively stereotype these policies when African Americans are viewed as their only beneficiaries. Justices of the Supreme Court that considered this case - the majority opinions as well as the dissenting opinions - discussed affirmative action only as benefitting African Americans. Nonetheless, almost the entire public debate surrounding the case discussed it in terms of Blacks and Whites only. For example, almost two-thirds of the students admitted under the affirmative action program of the Davis Medical School that was challenged in the landmark Bakke case in 1978 were Latino or Asian American. Even when these policies were first initiated, they were designed to benefit members of other disadvantaged racial minorities besides African Americans. This picture of affirmative action policies is, to put it bluntly, false. The most perturbing of these misrepresentations is the widespread tendency to construe these policies as race-based policies alone, and further, to talk about African Americans as the only racial group they are intended to benefit. The debate on affirmative action often misrepresents the scope of these policies in several important ways. In the final section, we argue that the "stigma argument" against affirmative action dissolves if affirmative action is understood as equalizing opportunities, and not as bestowing preferences. We argue that such rationales mischaracterize affirmative action as providing justifiable "preferences" to its beneficiaries. In the third and fourth sections respectively, we take issue with those who defend affirmative action on the grounds that it is a form of compensation, and with those who defend it on the grounds that it promotes diversizy and a range of other ![]() We argue that affirmative action policies should be understood as attempts to equalize opportunity for groups of people who confront ongoing forms of institutional discrimination and a lack of equal opportunity. In the second section, we address misunderstandings about the rationale for affirmative action policies, and take issue with those who regard affirmative action as bestowing "preferential treatment" on its beneficiaries. ![]() In the first section, we examine and challenge prevalent misrepresentations of the scope of affirmative action policies ~ misconceptions about the groups of people these policies are designed to benefit, and about the benefits they are intended to achieve. In this essay, we intend to describe these misconceptions, to explain why we consider them misconceptions, and to offer a much stronger defense of affirmative action policies than is usually offered. We think, however, that it is a policy that has often been misunderstood and mischaracterized, not only by those opposed to it, but even by its defenders Affirmative action is an issue on which there has been considerable public debate. ![]()
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