Affirmative action

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Affirmative Action (in Great Britain also Positive Action ), German also positive discrimination , describes socio-political measures thatare intended to counteractthe negative discrimination of social groups in the form of social disadvantage by specifically granting advantages. “Affirmative” in this sense means the special confirmation and support of such groups. The approach is controversial because, according to critics, it replaces existing discrimination with new, opposite discrimination.

Affirmative action measures were initially developed in the United States as part of the civil rights movement . According to the 1977 report of the US Civil Rights Commission, affirmative action is understood to be “any measure that goes beyond the simple elimination of a discriminatory practice in order to correct, compensate for and prevent discrimination in the past and today” ( Kathrin Meier-Rust ) In the areas of training, the labor market and career opportunities, affirmative action measures are intended to improve the situation, particularly for women and people from disadvantaged ethnic groups.

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For the connection of different German language descriptions are used, none of them could yet prevail generally fachsprachlich or in public, "positive action" ( positive action ), " affirmative action" ( affirmative action ) and "positive discrimination" ( positive discrimination ). In different countries these terms have different meanings, and even in the scientific literature there is disagreement about what exactly each of them contains.

The term “positive discrimination” is misleading. In this variant of the term, the word discrimination is understood by its proponents in its older, value-neutral variant in the sense of unequal treatment (actually differentiation ) - instead of, as is usually the case today, in the derogatory sense of disadvantage . However, it can be used to express that an affirmative action has achieved its goal and has turned into “positive discrimination” (see “ reverse discrimination ”). On the other hand, a distinction that at first sight is advantageous for the person being distinguished can nevertheless have disadvantages for this person, for example with regard to their ability to feel that they are an equal member of a group and to identify with it. In this case it makes perfect sense to speak of “positive discrimination”, since the contradicting evaluations actually relate to effects to be evaluated contradictingly.

History of Affirmative Action

The concept of affirmative action was first introduced in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy , who with Executive Order 10925 created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission , which came into effect in 1964. In 1965, in a speech to Howard University black students , President Lyndon B. Johnson explained the basic idea of ​​affirmative action:

“You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair ... We seek not just freedom but opportunity, not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result. "

“You can't simply free a person who has been limping in chains for years, put him on the starting line of a race with the words: 'You are now free to race' and believe that you are extremely fair ... We not only want freedom, but equal opportunities, not just equality before the law, but real empowerment, not just equality as law and theory, but as fact and result. "

- Timeline of Affirmative Action Milestones

On September 24, 1965, Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 , which states that government and government-funded employers can no longer discriminate against people based on ethnicity, color, religion, gender, or nationality. Johnson's Executive Order also requires these employers to take affirmative action to ensure equal opportunities.

In the CSCE , positive discrimination was also made compulsory in order to guarantee human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially for minorities.

In Germany, affirmative action was formulated programmatically in the early 1980s. The Federal Government’s commissioner for foreigners at the time, FDP politician Liselotte Funcke , Volker Schmidt from the Berlin Senate Chancellery and Peter Menke-Glückert as chairman of the Society for Future Issues gave a pamphlet entitled Foreigners or Germans. Integration of foreign population groups in the Federal Republic , published in 1981 by the Cologne Bund-Verlag. The foreword outlines the idea: “For at least two generations, more must be done for foreigners than for Germans.” On page 13, the program is specified: “In order to provide foreigners with equal opportunities, however, more must be done for foreigners for at least two generations be done than for German. positive action "" legally called were "the first time in 2002 by the Federal administrative court recognized (Federal administrative court) and in the form of 2006 § 5 AGG ( General equal treatment Act enshrined in law).

Within the EU, affirmative action is usually used to denote acceptable actions, while judicially prohibited measures are more likely to denote positive discrimination .

2003 in South Africa , the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment introduced after the time of apartheid aside the wealth gap between the populations. Since then, companies have had to prove that they are promoting blacks, coloreds and Indians in order to obtain public contracts or licenses.

Practice of affirmative action

Affirmative action is more than the quota system , which is very rarely used in the United States and then used in particularly severe cases of discrimination. Affirmative action includes diversity training and special educational programs against racism and sexism as well as lowering performance requirements (for example at universities) as a whole or for specific disadvantaged groups. At some universities in the United States, affirmative action takes place through the point system: At the University of Michigan, applicants can achieve a maximum of 150 points, of which 20 points each for "socio-economic disadvantage" and for belonging to an "underrepresented racial-ethnic minority ". Most affirmative action programs in the United States use self-disclosure of the potential beneficiaries to determine race and ethnicity. The categories used - for example on application forms for admission to a college - are mostly based on the corresponding definitions of the United States Census . If the self-disclosure turns out to be implausible or even fraudulent, this can have negative consequences for the applicant.

Another measure is what is known as contract compliance . The US federal government obliges all state subsidy recipients and contract recipients to implement the affirmative action. The award of public contracts and subsidies, including those to schools and colleges, has been tied to positive discrimination contract signing and compliance , which is controlled by the Federal Office for Contract Compliance . This contract compliance obliges the institutions to monitor and manage the ethnic composition of their workforce (or their clientele) and to submit trend reports that set out their concrete plans for the future to reduce discrimination. Corresponding measures have also been included in the anti-discrimination strategies of the UK and the Netherlands.

In September 2007, the sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf also called for a quota of migrants for German universities due to the continuing educational disadvantage ; In May 2011, the SPD federal executive board decided on such a quota of 15% for the party's leading bodies. The Left in Berlin is calling for a quota system to make it easier for children from poor households to access high school . Hartz IV children and children whose parents receive housing benefit or other state transfer payments should benefit from the regulation.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a well-known affirmative action advocate

Known opponents and supporters of affirmative action

In general, criticism of “affirmative action” can be summarized under the following formula: “The positive discrimination of one is the negative discrimination of the other”. Well-known proponents of affirmative action include Stanley Elkins, a history professor (who saw it as a compensation for slavery, as he explained in his book Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life ) and United States sociologist and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who cited Elkins, among others. Opponents include Antonin Scalia , Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas , who were or are justices at the United States Supreme Court , the philosopher Carl Cohen and the author Richard Rodriguez .

In the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, incumbent Republican President George W. Bush spoke out against affirmative action in favor of black youths when they were admitted to state universities. The then African American Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated this practice, the then also African American security advisor Condoleezza Rice considered it legal: "Race can be appropriate as one factor among others to put together a really representative student body."

Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr., in an analysis of admission and drop-out numbers, point out that the increased admission of disadvantaged groups and their support through scholarships at highly selective American universities lead to increased failures in study and increasing drop-out rates. Conversely, the ban on affirmative action at UCLA has not led to a drop in the undergraduate graduation rates of African Americans and Hispanics.

Affirmative Action Court Rulings in the United States

In 2003, the University of Michigan Law School's admissions policy was the subject of a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court in the Grutter v. Bollinger decided that the ethnicity of the applicants may be used as a criterion in the admission decision, thus maintaining the affirmative action policy pursued, which aimed at promoting black and other minority applicants.

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Even if this policy of the University of Michigan Law School no longer met with concern with regard to the federal constitution, it continued to meet with resistance from the unsuccessful plaintiffs as well as from parts of the population of Michigan. On November 7, 2006, a referendum initiated by Barbara Grutter and Jennifer Gratz , after which the constitution of the state of Michigan is to be changed to the effect that admission decisions by public educational institutions, in particular the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Law School, was successful , Applicants should not be given preferential treatment based on race, origin or other ethnic criteria. Several lawsuits are currently pending against the constitutional amendment originally scheduled to come into force on December 22, 2006. On December 19, 2006, the US District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan therefore ruled that at least the University of Michigan and two other public universities in the state may maintain the previous licensing practice until the decision in the main part.

Caste quotas in India

In India, up to 50% of jobs in the public service and in state-owned companies are reserved for applicants from the lower castes , especially the Dalit , the so-called untouchables. They also only need to achieve lower scores in aptitude and recruitment tests. In view of the poor labor market situation, this has led to a massive disadvantage for highly qualified applicants from the upper castes and to operational problems.

Processing in the film

The 1986 film comedy Soul Man takes up the subject of affirmative action in an ironic and critical form: A white man who is admitted to Harvard University sees no other way to finance his studies than a scholarship that is only awarded to blacks , coloring his skin with tanning pills and receives the scholarship. The subject is also addressed in the films LA Crash and So High .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quotation on page 22 below: "Affirmative action is often also called positive discrimination". In: Benjamin Wacker: Affirmative Action. ISBN 3-86931-121-5 , p. 22. Limited preview in Google Book Search
  2. ↑ Kathrin Meier-Rust (NZZ) (1995): Interview with Wade Henderson: What can support for minorities do?
  3. ↑ Mark Bell: Positive Action - Introducing the Concept. In: European Commission, Realizing Equal Opportunities: What Role Should Positive Action Play? Luxembourg (Office for Official Publications of the European Communities), 2007, p. 5 f. ( online (PDF file), accessed March 27, 2008)
  4. ↑ ZARA civil courage and anti-racism work: Know Your Rights ( Memento from December 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ Borgna Brunner, Beth Rowen: Timeline of Affirmative Action Milestones
  6. ↑ John Fobanjong: Understanding the Backlash Against Affirmative Action . Nova Science Publishers, Huntington / New York 2001, ISBN 978-1-59033-065-4 , p. 17 ff. Limited preview in the Google book search
  7. ^ Christiane Höhn: Between human rights and conflict prevention. Springer, 2005. p. 54.
  8. ↑ Federal Administrative Court: Women may be given preferential treatment for master start-up bonuses under BVerwG, Az .: 3 C 53.01, seen on December 10, 2013
  9. ↑ German Anti-Discrimination Association: Positive Discrimination ( Memento from March 26, 2008 on WebCite ). Seen on March 26, 2008.
  10. ↑ Mark Bell: Positive Action - Introducing the Concept. In: European Commission: Realizing Equal Opportunities: What Role Should Positive Action Play? Luxembourg (Office for Official Publications of the European Communities), 2007, p. 6 f. ( also available online , accessed March 27, 2008)
  11. ↑ Jochen Leffers: Judgment on "affirmative action": US universities are allowed to continue promoting minorities. In: Spiegel Online . June 23, 2003, accessed January 4, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Susan This House: Boston Case Raises Questions on the Misuse of Affirmative Action In "New York Times" on 9 October 1988th
  13. ↑ Elçin Kürsat-Ahlers: Where is the promised anti-discrimination law? The immigrants are waiting for effective legal equality claims. In: Berlin Republic. 2001, archived from the original on February 18, 2006 ; Retrieved April 7, 2014 .
  14. ↑ By Christine Prußky: Immigrants to the universities: sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf calls for a quota of migrants. In: Spiegel Online . September 21, 2007, accessed January 4, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Susanne Vieth-Entus: Berlin high schools should accept more students from poor families. In: tagesspiegel.de . December 29, 2008, accessed January 4, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Take the problem of positive discrimination against colored people as an example: Jakob Schissler, Hartmut Wasser, Werner Kremp in “USA: Economy. Society. Politics. ”, P. 185:“ May race be constitutionally the basis for state action; Doesn't the principle of "color blindness" apply to "affirmative action" - compensatory measures? Doesn't "positive discrimination" for blacks also mean "negative discrimination" for whites? "
  17. ^ Gerhard Spörl: Race instead of class . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 2003 ( online ).
  18. ^ Richard H. Sander, Stuart Taylor Jr .: Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. Basic Books, Kindle edition, 2012
  19. ^ Richard H. Sander, Stuart Taylor Jr .: The Painful Truth About Affirmative Action. In: The Atlantic , online: [1] , October 2, 2012.
  20. ↑ Soutik Biswas: Is affirmative action in India becoming a gimmick? In: bbc.com, January 10, 2019.
  21. ↑ Eric D. Snider: Eric's Time Capsule: Soul Man. In: film.com. October 24, 1986, archived from the original on December 5, 2008 ; accessed on April 7, 2014 (English).
  22. ^ Anne Peters, Noah Birkhäuser: Affirmative Action à l'Américaine - Model for Europe? ( Memento of January 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 8.2 MB), Journal for Foreign Public Law and International Law 65, 2005, pp. 1–34