Focus on Affirmative Action

Listen to the show accompanying this myth:

Part 1

Part 2

Today's Guests Are:

EVE ENSLER (Playwright/Performer/Activist), award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, creator of V-Day. The Vagina Monologues has been translated into over 45 languages and is running in theaters all over the world, including sold-out runs at both. Off-Broadway's Westside Theater and on London's West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment.) Her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Ms. Ensler has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. Today, V-Day is a global movement that supports anti-violence organizations throughout the world, helping them to continue and expand their core work on the ground, while drawing public attention to the larger fight to stop worldwide violence (including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual slavery) against women and girls. V-Day exists for no other reason than to stop violence against women. In just eight years, it has raised over $35 million and was named one of Worth magazine's "100 Best Charities."

GAY MCDOUGALL, former representative on the UN's Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination. Gay McDougall supervised the International Human Rights Law Group staff and the development and implementation of country and thematic programs and initiatives in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Americas. Ms. McDougall was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1999 for her "innovative and highly effective" work on behalf of international human rights. In 1998, she was elected to serve as an independent expert on the United Nations treaty body that oversees the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Ms. McDougall was the first American to be elected to the body of 18 international experts who oversee compliance by governments worldwide with the obligations established under the treaty. At its 1996 session, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights elected her to serve a four year term as a member (alternate) of the U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the Human Rights commission. In 1989, Ms. McDougall founded the Commission of Independence for Namibia, a bipartisan group of 31 distinguished Americans who monitored in detail the 12 month process to independence mandated by the United Nations. Gay McDougall earned her JD at Yale University Law School and her LLM in public international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

MYTH: Affirmative action is a domestic policy that reflects an obsession with race that is peculiar to America

FACT: Affirmative action is not the product of an American obsession with race. In fact, affirmative action is an international phenomenon and is fully supported by human rights principles, including the International Covenant for the Elimination of Race Discrimination. Around the globe, both historically and currently, many counties have pursued and embraced affirmative measures to address various forms of subordination and inequity that exclude or marginalize socially distinct groups. Furthermore, in an increasingly globalized society and economy, affirmative action is supported and used by corporations and by their clients who recognize the competitive advantages of a workforce comprised of people from diverse backgrounds with a wide variety of skills and cultural competencies.

Opponents of affirmative action are keen to portray it as a particular symptom of the American obsession with race. In this view, it can be neatly cabined as a peculiar invention grounded in a particularly vile history of racial discrimination. Critics of affirmative action warn other societies against proceeding down that perilous path. In fact, affirmative action is neither unique to the US, nor limited to the particular post-apartheid type of society that the US represents. Many countries around the world, each with different histories, ideologies and populations, employ various forms of affirmative action to advance social justice and the full utilization of its citizens. Let's examine some of them:

• South Africa's Constitution explicitly endorses affirmative action. Section 9 of the bill of rights is dedicated to equality. Section 9(2) provides: "To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken."
  
• India has a long history of using reservations to ensure that all classes are included in the representative government and in governmental positions. Article 330 of the Constitution requires that seats in the House of the People be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Article 332 requires similar set-asides of seats in the Legislatvie Assemblies of States. Article 338 establishes the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The purpose of the Commission is to participate in the economic development of these historically subjugated classes, and to assure the protection of their rights.
  
• Brazil is pursuing affirmative action in higher education and in corporate employment. In 2001, the State Legislative Assembly in Rio de Janeiro set aside 40% of the state university seats for black and brown people. Later that year, the Ministry of Justice mandated that no less than 20% of its high level staff, consultants, and subcontractors be Black. Moreover, the Federal Supreme court mandated that not less than 20% of the employees of subcontracting firms be Black. The following year, 20% of the Worker Assistance Financing budget was allocated to professional training for Blacks, particularly Black women. Read more HERE.

• Affirmative action is consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's equality clause lays the foundation for affirmative action, giving the government the power to create "any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability"
  
• Israel uses affirmative action to better integrate Arabs and Ethiopian Jews into their society by instituting affirmative action programs in government employment, education and through home and property buying assistance programs.

GLOBAL BUSINESSES, AND BUSINESSES AROUND THE GLOBE SUPPORT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Many international companies support affirmative action as a way to meet their global business needs. A group of 65 U.S. based global businesses joined together to support the University of Michigan’s race based admissions policies challenged in the Supreme Court fin the Grutter case. These companies indicated that:

Because our population is diverse, and because of the increasingly global reach of American business, the skills and training needed to succeed in business today demand exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints. Employees at every level of an organization must be able to work effectively with people who are different from themselves. [We] need the talent and creativity of a workforce that is as diverse as the world around it. (Click HERE to read more from these major employers)

Joining in the brief was 3M, a $16.7 billion manufacturing and technology company with operations in more than 60 countries and customers in nearly 200 countries. Another was, Boeing, which makes 70 percent of its commercial airplane sales to international customers. Procter & Gamble, another supporter of affirmative action, sold a branded product to more than 2.5 billion people across the world in 2002, yielding more than $40 billion in sales. Similar figures could be provided for many of the companies participating in the amicus brief as they operate and compete in a global environment while serving and working with diverse peoples and cultures.

Given that employers draw portions of their workforce from American colleges and universities, they also support affirmative action in higher education. For example, DaimlerChrysler, a Michigan employer, was able to employ a diverse workforce largely because of affirmative action programs at places like the University of Michigan. Similarly, Microsoft Corporation goes further than simply supporting affirmative action, they invest in such programs as well by spending millions of dollars each year to provide financial and other support for minority students to participate in undergraduate and graduate programs. For each of these businesses, "diversity is an increasingly critical component of their business, culture and planning.”

BUSINESSES IN OTHER COUNTRIES SUPPORT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Non-US based companies are similarly investigating, supporting and developing affirmative action-type programs in education and in hiring. For example, French companies have created initiatives designed to increase opportunities for groups that have been excluded from mainstream society. Spurred to action after post-September 11th attacks on North Africans, and later by riots in North African Parisian districts, 175 leading French companies have signed onto a “Company Diversity Charter." In 2004, the Institut Montaigne published a call for the introduction of U.S.-style affirmative action policies to end discrimination against "visible minorities" -- French nationals of North African or African origins.

These companies recognize the significant discrimination faced by visible minorities and the need for affirmative measures to counteract such obstacles. For example, a study commissioned by a the Zurich temporary employment company, Adeco, showed that white French job applicants get three times as many offers as minority applicants with the same qualifications. Although Arab and African minorities represent more than 10% of the population, they are all but absent from France's elite institutions. There is, for instance, not a single Arab representative in the Parliament.

The Diversity Charter signals a “commitment to ethical and social diversity within [their] organizations.” Among the signatories are private and public companies, including leaders of the national economy: BNP, RATP, Carrefour, L’Oréal, Total, Airbus, PSA Peugeot Citroën, PPR, France Télécom, Schneider Electric, SNCF, Rhodia, Société générale, Pernod Ricard, etc. These signatories have made a commitment to “respect and promote the application of the principle of non discrimination” in the “employment, training, advancement or professional promotion of collaborators”. By signing, they signal a commitment to “endeavour to reflect the diversity of French society and in particular its cultural and ethnic diversity in [their] workforce, at different levels of qualification”. Read more HERE.

In addition to the Diversity Charter, the Institut report called for:

• Recruitment of electoral candidates to ensure that elected officials reflect the ethnic diversity of the country
• The institution of admissions criteria that target communities of “visible minorities” living in segregated areas
• The modification of recruitment criteria at top universities to increase the diversification amongst future French elites.
• The promulgation of an “anti-ghetto” law to put an end to the concentration of social and ethnic minorities in the districts.

For English language summaries of the Institut Montaigne reports, click HERE.

BOTTOM LINE:

Affirmative action is a global project with global implications and global benefits.

Given that numerous countries have recognized the need to take affirmative steps toward inclusion and have created a variety of affirmative action programs toward that end, it is impossible to to conclude that affirmative action is an American export. In the area of affirmative action, the United States is not the leader but an outlier, given our recent renegement on the promise of the American dream. When we look at affirmative action in a global context, we must wonder, what's going on with us? It seems that the "American race obsession" argument is really about resistance to equality. America's obsession is not with race, but with IGNORING race, ignoring racial inequalities, ignoring our nation's history racial subordination, and ignoring the reality that such subordination cannot be curbed without affirmative action.

Mythbusting Homework:

Founded in 1996 as a media-monitoring think-tank and information clearinghouse, the African American Policy Forum works to bridge the gap between scholarly research and public discourse related to inequality, discrimination and injustice. The AAPF seeks to build bridges between academic, activist and policy-making sectors in order to advance a more inclusive and robust public discourse on the challenge of achieving equity within and across diverse communities.

Please visit us at aapf.org