Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (William Morrow, 192 pp., $17.95). According to Professor Sowell, the ultimate goal of preferential policies around the world—including affirmative action in the United States—is to see all groups in a society represented within all institutions and professions more or less as in their proportion in the population at large. Indeed, such a statistical approach is required to demonstrate “patterns of discrimination,” the precursor of set-asides, preferences, quotas, and the like. If we can just give temporary preference to lagging group A, the rationale holds, it will start to join, at appropriate levels, Profession Z, from which history had excluded it. To explain the absurdity of the statisticians, Professor Sowell mentioned a study in which the author—determined to explain away innate difference—observed how lucky Jews were to have immigrated to America just as the needle trades began to flourish. “It’s like saying,” Professor Sowell mused, “ ‘How lucky of Henry Aaron to have come up to bat just as all those home runs were about to be hit.’ ”
Around the world, governments have felt compelled, sometimes by social injustice, sometimes by political self-interest, to institute special programs to give preference—in hiring, in education, in welfare—to particular groups. In America, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka, Professor Sowell found that such policies (a/k/a “compensatory preferences,” “reverse discrimination”) had similar unfortunate and unintended consequences. Once established, affirmative action tends to expand, and specific mandates and time limits tend to evaporate. Such policies usually end up most benefiting the most fortunate within the preferred group; they lead to polarization, even to violence, occasionally deadly violence; they encourage people not actually qualified to claim membership in the preferred group; and, finally, only the rationale of preferential policies is understood and discussed, never the actual results.
Comments