Affirmative Action Around the World
Encyclopedia
Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study is a 2004 nonfiction work by economist
Thomas Sowell
.
or race-based hiring and promotion, Sowell, himself African-American, analyzes the specific effects of such policies on India
, Malaysia, Sri Lanka
, and Nigeria
, four countries with longer multiethnic histories and then compares them with the recent history
of the United States
in this regard. He finds that "Such programs have at best a negligible impact on the groups they are intended to assist."
A sample of his thinking about the danger of perpetual racial preferences is this passage from p. 7: "People differ - and have for centuries.... Any 'temporary' policy whose duration is defined by the goal of achieving something that has never been achieved before, anywhere in the world, could more fittingly be characterized as eternal."
According to Dutch Martin's review of this book:
Sowell concludes: "Despite sweeping claims made for affirmative action programs, an examination of their actual consequences makes it hard to support those claims, or even to say that these programs have been beneficial on net balance."
magazine praised the book as "terse, well argued and utterly convincing" and "crammed with striking anecdotes and statistics." For the Sacramento News & Review, Chris Springer asserts that Sowell's selection of countries for comparison to the United States and his use of evidence was skewed to reach an anti-affirmative-action conclusion. The same review charges that Sowell simply repackaged an earlier book of his, Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (1990), and "fobbed it off" as new material under a different title. Michael Bérubé
, writing for The Nation
magazine, agreed with Sowell's arguments that affirmative action has gone far beyond what the Civil Rights Act of 1965 intended and that preferential benefits for ethnic groups without historical oppression in the United States are unjustified but criticized Sowell's association of affirmative action with unrest in the countries selected for the study and pointed out the United States has never implemented the racial preference systems of those foreign countries.
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective...
.
Summary
Already known as a critic of affirmative actionAffirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
or race-based hiring and promotion, Sowell, himself African-American, analyzes the specific effects of such policies on India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Malaysia, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, and Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, four countries with longer multiethnic histories and then compares them with the recent history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in this regard. He finds that "Such programs have at best a negligible impact on the groups they are intended to assist."
A sample of his thinking about the danger of perpetual racial preferences is this passage from p. 7: "People differ - and have for centuries.... Any 'temporary' policy whose duration is defined by the goal of achieving something that has never been achieved before, anywhere in the world, could more fittingly be characterized as eternal."
According to Dutch Martin's review of this book:
- Among the common consequences of preference policies in the five-country sample are:
- They encourage non-preferred groups to redesignate themselves as members of preferred groups (1) to take advantage of group preference policies;
- They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. Black millionaires), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g., poor Whites);
- They reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best — the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile — thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole.
Sowell concludes: "Despite sweeping claims made for affirmative action programs, an examination of their actual consequences makes it hard to support those claims, or even to say that these programs have been beneficial on net balance."
Critical reception
The EconomistThe Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
magazine praised the book as "terse, well argued and utterly convincing" and "crammed with striking anecdotes and statistics." For the Sacramento News & Review, Chris Springer asserts that Sowell's selection of countries for comparison to the United States and his use of evidence was skewed to reach an anti-affirmative-action conclusion. The same review charges that Sowell simply repackaged an earlier book of his, Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (1990), and "fobbed it off" as new material under a different title. Michael Bérubé
Michael Bérubé
Michael Bérubé is the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches cultural studies and American literature...
, writing for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
magazine, agreed with Sowell's arguments that affirmative action has gone far beyond what the Civil Rights Act of 1965 intended and that preferential benefits for ethnic groups without historical oppression in the United States are unjustified but criticized Sowell's association of affirmative action with unrest in the countries selected for the study and pointed out the United States has never implemented the racial preference systems of those foreign countries.