Affirmative Action
ENN103F – Assignment 1
Section A: (1) No, the affirmative action policy is not morally defensible. This policy is “unsettling, needless and discriminating”. This policy is based on race, gender and physical abilities rather than the socioeconomic status of a person. Thus it does not matter whether you have the higher/better qualification, if you do not have the correct race/gender or if you are not disabled. According to this policy the basic discrimination is justified by looking back at the past injustices. How far back does one have to look? The past should be seen as a learning curb rather as a reason to discriminate. I believe that this policy should be rectified so that it will encourage all people equally to work harder at their goals in life.
(2) In my opinion the United Kingdom has best implemented such a policy. In the UK, any discrimination, quotas or favouritism on the grounds of sex, race and ethnicity is generally illegal in both education and employment. They succeed because of some specific exceptions such as the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which required the Police Service of Northern Ireland recruit equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants in order to eliminate the service's perceived bias towards Protestants. The Labour Party passed the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, allowing them to use all-women shortlists to select more women as election candidates. The UK Civil Service also discriminates in favour of ethnic minorities and people from low-income households, in that it runs a summer internship programme that only BME Britons may apply for. So as seen by all these examples of exceptions they specify in which fields “Affirmative Action” is needed and it all has good reasons, unlike South Africa’s front of past injustices that justifies its implementation of Affirmative Action.
(3) In my opinion the South African government chose to implement the Affirmative Action Policy to rectify the past
Section A: (1) No, the affirmative action policy is not morally defensible. This policy is “unsettling, needless and discriminating”. This policy is based on race, gender and physical abilities rather than the socioeconomic status of a person. Thus it does not matter whether you have the higher/better qualification, if you do not have the correct race/gender or if you are not disabled. According to this policy the basic discrimination is justified by looking back at the past injustices. How far back does one have to look? The past should be seen as a learning curb rather as a reason to discriminate. I believe that this policy should be rectified so that it will encourage all people equally to work harder at their goals in life.
(2) In my opinion the United Kingdom has best implemented such a policy. In the UK, any discrimination, quotas or favouritism on the grounds of sex, race and ethnicity is generally illegal in both education and employment. They succeed because of some specific exceptions such as the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which required the Police Service of Northern Ireland recruit equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants in order to eliminate the service's perceived bias towards Protestants. The Labour Party passed the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, allowing them to use all-women shortlists to select more women as election candidates. The UK Civil Service also discriminates in favour of ethnic minorities and people from low-income households, in that it runs a summer internship programme that only BME Britons may apply for. So as seen by all these examples of exceptions they specify in which fields “Affirmative Action” is needed and it all has good reasons, unlike South Africa’s front of past injustices that justifies its implementation of Affirmative Action.
(3) In my opinion the South African government chose to implement the Affirmative Action Policy to rectify the past