Positive Discrimination Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Positive discrimination refers to the broad range of deliberate, time-bound (voluntarist) policies intended to facilitate the integration of historically deprived social groups that were hitherto discriminated or disadvantaged either by government policy or social prejudice. The principle of positive discrimination aims to reduce de facto inequality and gives preferential treatment to people belonging to groups whose past and actual discrimination in a given society is tied to ascriptive characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, region, language, caste, or religion. It is thus a form of discrimination that actually benefits the actee or recipient of discrimination and aims to achieve equality of outcome or results, as well to enhance the diversity of a society and redress the material conditions of the deprived group. The end goal is to bring them in line with the average standards already being enjoyed by society as a whole.

Positive discrimination is enacted primarily in areas of employment, education, and business, in order to increase the representation of historically excluded groups in the workforce. This is accomplished through specially designed admission or recruitment policies (i.e., the selection of a candidate for a position on the grounds of race, caste, or gender rather than merit alone). However, positive discrimination strategies can also cover other areas characterized by the underrepresentation of certain social or political groups. For example, in the area of political representation, some countries have introduced positive discrimination policies setting mandatory group quotas for the selection of candidates from, or the reservation of constituencies for, such underrepresented groups (e.g., women, ethnic minorities).

Positive discrimination is an elusive concept with no clear definition. Policies based on the principle of positive discrimination are known by a variety of terms such as affirmative action in the United States, reservation in India, (black) economic empowerment in South Africa, temporary special measures in international law, indirect discrimination in European law, and positive action in the United Kingdom. The latter, however, is based on the distinction between positive action, aimed at ensuring equal opportunity through, for example, targeted recruitment campaigns, and positive discrimination as preferential treatment at the point of selection.

Forms of implementation include targeting funding and financial assistance for underrepresented groups, building awareness and capacity, removing practical barriers that disadvantage certain groups, creating legally established (mandatory) quotas for political representation, intraparty selection, public sector as well as corporate recruitment, and admission to institutions of higher education.

The term as such, contradictory in itself, remains controversial because the notion of discrimination, independent of the objective of redressing inequality, implies that the measures it describes run against equality and, consequently, against the principle of formal justice. Positive discrimination could therefore eventually mean reverse discrimination. The principle of positive discrimination is no less controversial. On the one hand, it is argued that all discrimination is negative and that, especially with regard to recruitment, positive discrimination violates the principle of meritocracy leading to less able applicants filling positions, and thus causing resentment among those who were rejected, hardening existing discriminatory attitudes. Instead, the focus should be on improving access to education for all. On the other hand, positive discrimination levels the playing field for disadvantaged groups, empowering them to surpass the obstacles put on them by a long history of exploitation, exclusion, and deprivation. It helps bring to the fore the untapped potential of so far underrepresented groups, thus furthering the extent of diversity, representativeness, and fairness in a given society. Beneficiaries of positive discrimination could act as role models for future generations and, in the ideal scenario, contribute to alleviating existing racist, sexist, or casteist attitudes to the extent that the temporary measure of positive discrimination would no longer be necessary.

Ultimately, the question of whether positive discrimination is a useful instrument to work toward a more just society must be addressed from a standpoint of morality. It is a question of compassion, and the preservation of a collective morality of humanity based on a historically derived moral obligation to compensate for the effects of past discrimination and exploitation, effects, and wrongs that otherwise risk occurring undiscussed and unaddressed.

Apart from philosophical investigations into the ethical underpinnings of positive discrimination, current empirical research on the matter concentrates mainly on whether measures of positive discrimination undertaken worldwide have had any impact at all and on what the best institutional devices are to make positive discrimination a useful and successful instrument. Results are ambiguous and do not always point in a positive direction. However, changing deeply ingrained discriminatory attitudes and redressing inequality is a difficult and long-term task, which is not only a matter of policy and institutional innovation.

Bibliography:

Hepple, Bob, and Erika M. Syzszczak, eds. Discrimination: The Limits of the Law. London: Mansell, 1992.

Mitra, Subrata K., ed. Politics of Positive Discrimination: A Cross National Perspective. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1990

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