Affirmative Action Around the Globe

The United States is not the only country that has faced the issue of systematic oppression throughout history. Other nations around the globe have all attempted to reconcile past racial and circumstantial discrimination through different means. As mentioned in my earlier blog posts, the United States began utilizing affirmative action in the early 1960s as a way to begin giving more opportunities to historically oppressed minority groups. Throughout the past several decades, the arguments surrounding affirmative action have increased as people began to claim that there is a lesser need for it today. Furthermore, the idea that affirmative action is a form of positive discrimination has also become a public debating point. This week, I plan to showcase how other nations have dealt with this issue, and how the United States could look to its international peers for advice surrounding the future of affirmative action.

It is important to note that in some of the countries I will talk about, racial discrimination has not played as large of a historical role as it has in the United States. For example, according debatepedia.idebate.org, Japan does not necessarily have an affirmative action program, but it does try and restrict discrimination. For example, a standardized test is utilized for many government and education positions, and race is not allowed to be stated on the form. For this reason, race is completely eliminated from the process, as only aptitude is viewed when making decisions.

In the United States, removing race from entrance exams may not entirely fix the issue. For example, many minority individuals come from backgrounds with less financially strong public education programs. For this reason, any standardized test scores of these groups of people may not accurately represent the amount of those students capable and deserving to attend certain institutions. Although not a perfect system, affirmative action represents a way to even the playing field by giving the same opportunities to people of color that may otherwise not get the chance due to systematic oppression. Only after a long amount of time and ample policy change will it become less necessary to aid these groups as they will ideally become equal in regards to public education.

In the United Kingdom, no positive discrimination is allowed. For this reason, quotas and selective systems are disallowed. The reason behind this was explained by a parliamentary release claiming that helping minority groups through reverse discrimination could actually make matters worse. For example, this could knit minorities closer together as outsiders instead of including them in the same process as everyone else. However, if this were implemented in the United States, this could lead to several issues. The instant removal of affirmative action due to an societal prediction would upset many groups of people and chaos could ensue.

Finally, the last country I investigated was Sweden. According to thelocal.se, Sweden recently voted to completely remove affirmative action from public universities. Instead, only academic merit would be utilized in determining a student's acceptance into a school. Many groups were upset at first, but it now seems clear that this may help remove dividing lines between individual groups of people over time. In the united States, however, this could end poorly as I previously talked about. Due to lower quality eduction provided in impoverished areas, minority groups in America are often disadvantaged when it comes to academically excelling.

Overall, the way other countries handle affirmative action is extremely important to understand how the U.S. can continue to improve the equality among all of its citizens. Although the U.S. has dealt with more racial hatred than many other countries in the world, it is still vital to begin thinking ahead to establish methods that take away dividing lines between groups of people.

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