“Affirmative action” is a term that refers to policies designed to increase the presence of “underrepresented” members of particular demographic groups – such as ethnic minorities or women – in specific sectors of the workforce or in the student bodies of American universities. Affirmative action measures are founded on the premise that the observed imbalance is due, either wholly or in part, to past and/or present discrimination – the remedy for which consists of compensatory preferences in favor of the underrepresented group. These measures are manifested most commonly in lowered standards (for the hiring, promotion, or admission of members of preferred groups) and set-asides (which reserve and earmark a designated percentage of jobs or admissions for members of the preferred groups). 

The historical origins of affirmative action were gradual and subtle. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” contained no provisions for compensatory preferences. As legislators prepared to vote on the Act, Senator Hubert Humphrey, a key advocate of the bill, assured his colleagues that the new law “would not require an employer to achieve any kind of racial balance in his work force by giving preferential treatment to any individual or group.” Shortly after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which required federal contractors to adopt color-blind hiring practices. Employers were encouraged to take such “positive steps” as posting advertisements for job openings in places or publications where nonwhites were likely to see them – all for the purpose of equalizing employment opportunities rather than actual hiring outcomes.

But while the aforementioned pieces of legislation were being debated and ultimately passed into law, the concept of “affirmative action” was simultaneously carving out a niche in the American lexicon. Its precursors were such phrases as “positive effort” and “affirmative program.” In 1961 a National Urban League official announced that “being color-blind . . . is no longer a virtue. What we need is to be positively color-conscious.” A year later the Congress of Racial Equality began pressuring employers to give hiring preferences to blacks as compensation for past discrimination, while Urban League President Whitney Young candidly recommended, for similar reasons, “a decade of discrimination in favor of Negro youth.” The NAACP also joined the call for preferences, just a few years after having passionately advocated the color-blind standard in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954.

In the mid-1960s the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission changed the legal standards by which employment discrimination was to be judged, tacitly endorsing the notion that unequal outcomes were prima facie evidence of unfair labor practices. Soon thereafter, both private and public institutions began an elaborate process of adjusting employment and admissions standards in order to give preference to minorities, particularly blacks, to raise their representation in the workplace and in the halls of academia.

This process was driven principally by the courts and the federal government’s newly created civil rights divisions. The trend toward preferences continued in the ensuing years. In 1968 the Nixon administration’s Labor Department announced its Philadelphia Plan, which set specific “goals and timetables” for hiring in that city’s construction industry. That same year, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) issued its own guidelines containing the terms “goals and timetables” and “representation.” These guidelines encouraged preferential hiring. Within two years, the Labor Department codified a “goals and timetables” requirement for all federal contractors, and by 1971 the OFCCP made it clear that the central purpose of such “results-oriented procedures” was to “increase materially the utilization of minorities and women.” As the term “equal opportunity” gradually gave way to “affirmative action,” advocates of the latter tended to use both terms interchangeably, thereby blurring any distinctions between them.

Moreover, the definition of “affirmative action” was gradually evolving. No longer meaning “positive steps” taken to publicize employment opportunities in minority neighborhoods, it was transformed into a mandate that required employers, as one Department of Health, Education and Welfare official put it in 1971, to “consider other factors than mere technical qualifications.” Increasingly, affirmative action came to mean quotas.

Supporters of affirmative action contend that American society has long been, and remains, rife with discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities as well as women -- and that consequently affirmative action is needed to counterbalance that stubborn reality. They believe that eradicating affirmative action would increase -- to society’s detriment -- economic disparities between whites and underrepresented minorities.They argue further that affirmative action is of great benefit to society as a whole, because it brings added diversity to the racial and ethnic composition of the workplace and the campus -- thereby encouraging better relations between whites and nonwhites.

Opponents of affirmative action argue the following:

(a) Affirmative action encourages its beneficiaries to become excessively conscious of their ethnic or racial identity, thereby viewing themselves as separate, aggrieved, victimized enclaves; this, coupled with resentments aroused in members of non-preferred groups, fosters inter-group hostility rather than harmony.

(b) Affirmative action policies tend to benefit mostly those minorities who are already economically and professionally successful, rather than the impoverished and unemployed, in whose name the policies are enacted.

(c) Affirmative action is unjust, sending the message that race- or ethnicity-based double standards are worthy of societal acceptance. These double standards often harm their intended beneficiaries, as in the case of black students who are preferentially admitted to universities for which they are academically underprepared, and who consequently flunk out of school at disproportionately high rates.

(d) Affirmative action takes the focus off the actual causes of inequality and underrepresentation, wrongly ascribing all imbalances to discrimination or racism.

(e) Affirmative action is unnecessary, as evidenced by the fact that black progress (as measured by income, poverty rates, life expectancy, home-ownership rates, and scholastic achievement) was greater during the period between 1940-1960 than in the subsequent era of affirmative action.

In this section of DiscoverTheNetworks:

The category titled Origins, History, and Policy Evolution examines how affirmative action policies first came to be enacted and how, over time, they evolved into double standards and de facto quotas.

The category titled Practices Associated with Affirmative Action explains the workings of such practices as Banding, Race-Norming, Set-Asides, and the use of Double Standards.

The category titled Unjust and Unnecessary Policy contains resources that explain why affirmative action policies are not only fundamentally unjust, but are also unnecessary in contemporary America.

The category titled Critics of Affirmative Action features the writings of some notable opponents of group preferences, whether those preferences are given on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, or any other characteristic unrelated to merit. Among the authors whose work is included in this category are Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, Abigail Thernstrom, Stephan Thernstrom, Walter E. Williams, David Horowitz, Shelby Steele, Dinesh D'Souza, and Heather MacDonald.

The category titled Research on Affirmative Action in Academia examines research which has been done on preferential admissions policies in higher education, and the results to which those policies typically lead. Some of the resources in this category are official reports on specific studies that have been conducted at specific universities. Other resources are articles that analyze and comment upon such research and its implications.

The category titled Condescension, Victim Mentality, Groupthink, and Intergroup Tensions explains how affirmative action policies reflect societal condescension toward their beneficiaries, and how such policies encourage those beneficiaries to view themselves as victims of pervasive, undiminishing discrimination and oppression. The resources in this section also demonstrate how affirmative action leads members of different demographics to view themselves first and foremost as constituents of a group (either the guilty "oppressor" or the innocent "oppressed") rather than as individuals, and thus to think in terms of group rights rather than individual rights. These various mindsets have given rise to high levels of inter-group animosity and resentment, a theme explored in depth by Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai in their article "Diversity Distorted."

The category titled International Perspectives examines how affirmative action policies have consistently polarized populations not only in the United States, but also in other nations they have been tried. In his June 4, 2003 article "International Affirmative Action," Thomas Sowell writes: "Perhaps the most ominous common pattern has been a backlash by others who resent the special preferences given to particular groups."

The category titled Money-Lending and Affirmative Action examines policies designed to eliminate gaps in the rates at which loan applications submitted by members of different ethnic and racial groups are rejected. The most notable of these measures was the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, a federal law that required banks to extend — for purposes of racial “equity” — credit to undercapitalized, high-risk borrowers in low-income, mostly-minority areas. The Act also established extensive government oversight to monitor how well banks were complying with its mandates.

The category titled Philanthropy and Affirmative Action examines how identity politics has intruded into the world of philanthropy. To avoid the possibility of being sued for racial discrimination, charitable foundations must now meet "diversity targets" not only in the makeup of their workforce, but also in the way they choose to allocate the money they give away.