Affirmative Action

What does “Affirmative Action” Mean?

The term affirmative action refers to positive steps to rank, admit, hire, or promote persons who are members of groups previously or presently discriminated against. It has been used to refer to everything from open advertisement of positions to quotas in employment and promotion.

The original meaning of affirmative action was minimalist. It referred to plans to safeguard equal opportunity, advertise positions openly, ensure fair recruitment, and create scholarship programs for specific groups. Few now oppose these means to the end of equal treatment, and if this were all that were meant by affirmative action, few would oppose it.

However, affirmative action has acquired broader meanings—some advanced by proponents, others by opponents. Most important, it became closely associated—especially through its opponents—with quotas and preferential policies that target specific groups, primarily women and minorities, for preferential treatment. Stern critics of affirmative action hold that affirmative action today means little more than naked preference by race. Proponents of affirmative action wholly reject this suggestion. They see affirmative action as confined to policies that favor qualified women and minority candidates over similarly qualified men or nonminority candidates, where there is an immediate objective of remedying persistent discrimination, achieving diversity, and achieving a race- and color-blind society.

Criticism of affirmative action policies has often centered on the alleged use of quotas. Quota here refers to fixed numbers of a group that must be admitted, hired, or promoted—even to the point of including less qualified persons if they are the only available members of a targeted group. However, the term quota originally was not used with this meaning. Quotas were understood as target numbers or percentages that an employer, admissions office, recruitment committee, and the like sincerely attempts to meet. In this second sense, quotas are numerically expressible goals pursued in good faith and with due diligence, but they do not require advancing unqualified or even less qualified persons.

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