Affirmative Action

Affirmative action is a term describing policies, programs, and laws intended to boost ethnic minorities, particularly as applied within the United States federal goverment. However, in implementation, affirmative action is an area in which government policy is contradictory.

The law of the United States is non-discrimination: the concept that race, sex, ethnicity, skin color, or country of national origin are not criteria which should be used in job selection, education opportunities, etc. The original concept of affirmative action was that it is desirable to not merely act on non-discrimination passively (i.e., saying "this job is open to any applicant", but then making no efforts to find minority applicants), but should also be done affirmatively, by taking definite actions to find applicants from minorities. This would be, in its way, admirable.

However, in current use, affirmative action goes beyond this, often mandating the use of quotas for setting aside jobs or a portion of college entrance positions for each minority (including also some "minorities" which are actually majorities). In effect, this means selecting applicants by the color of their skin, precisely what the original concept of non-discrimination forbids. This is sometimes called "reverse discrimination," although this term is rather contradictory-- discrimination remains discrimination.

In short, "affirmative action" is an action that had an admirable origin, but has been taken to the point where it enforces the very discrimination that it had been intended to prevent.