Clarifying The Nature Of Affirmative Action

Business, like any other aspect of human life, is not an amoral thing.  At times, fierce ideological conflict appears because of this, with affirmative action being one such source of ethical controversy.  Affirmative action is an intentional effort to include people in an organization or industry who might not otherwise be able to become parts of it.  In American society, it is aimed at allowing women and racial minorities access to various jobs.  Some misunderstand or despise it, claiming that it is hypocritical (I will elaborate below), while others treat the matter as a very complex one with no apparent answers.  The issue is nowhere near as complicated as some make it out to be, as usual, for reason simplifies the navigation of controversial waters.

There is a dangerous myth, sometimes perpetuated by conservatives in particular, that affirmative action is itself inherently sexist or racist, thus involving the very injustices it is supposed to eradicate.  This is a rather blatant misrepresentation of what affirmative action (at least legitimate affirmative action) is intended to bring about.  It is not conducted so that white men will be forced out of the corporate world, but so that certain groups that have been historically discriminated against on a systematic level will have the opportunity to enter the corporate world.

The objective is to enable qualified women or members of racial minorities to obtain positions they might otherwise be excluded from, not to reverse historic norms so that industries are dominated by women and exclude men in the same way they once excluded women, or so that there is only a handful of white people in a given business.  Are women or racial minorities who want to participate in an industry being discouraged or excluded?  Then affirmative action in those industries is just.  Is a business or industry that caters to a broad ethnic range being systematically run by only those from one ethnicity in a way that prohibits leaders from representing the clients accurately?  Then affirmative action in that business or industry is just.

Affirmative action only becomes sexist or racist when it is applied longer than there is need for it.  If a firm persists, after the aforementioned two kinds of imbalance have been corrected, in hiring people on the basis of gender or race (even if those people are qualified), then the hiring mechanism of that firm is guilty of sexism and racism.  This is not the same as using affirmative action when there is a genuine need for it, since it might be what dissolves barriers of worthless traditions.  Of course, getting conservatives to distinguish one use from the other can be quite frustrating.

Correcting the social mistakes of past generations is not always a pleasant process, since many who cling to the mistakes might think the errors are actually good, or they might recognize them as errors without having the desire to actively oppose them.  Sometimes even egregious evils are tolerated or prolonged because the process of eliminating them is considered too costly, difficulty, or upsetting.  Avoiding what is right because it is difficult is a sign of intellectual or moral inferiority, not a sign that moral progress should be postponed or ignored.  If affirmative action is called for in a specific case, then it is obligatory to uproot sexist or racist attitudes or hiring tendencies, even if the corrections will be mislabeled sexist or racist by ignorant detractors.