Affirmative Action attempts to ensure that women, people
from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and people of colour
are included to a greater extent in the decision-making facets
of our society, including higher education and higher-paying
jobs. Most people have an opinion on it, and a strong one.
This debate has been sustained for two decades.
On one side of the issue – the proponents – you
find the argument that affirmative action is necessary because
marginalization and exclusion still exists. Look at the data
and one can find considerable evidence showing how conventional
standards of selection for entrance into schools and the
workforce often exclude a large percentage of the population.
Critics, on the other hand, claim that the practice of being
required by law to hire or accept a certain quota of women
and people of colour into a school or organization, is fundamentally
undemocratic. The argument typically cited against affirmative
action takes the case of “John Doe,” a police
officer or firefighter, who receives a higher score on the
civil service exam and interview rating process, but loses
out to a woman or a person of colour who did not do as well,
but by their race or gender alone gets the job. The situation
is unfair for Doe, who is considered to be more qualified
for the job and is, by this merit, entitled to the position
they applied for.
Defenders reply to this argument by saying that the standard
procedure – typically a score on a paper-and-pencil
test – is in itself unfair. In education, it restricts
opportunities. In employment, it restricts applicants due
to inadequacies in conventional screening processes.
Merit and Fairness
The John Doe story is interesting because it takes merit
and interprets it in a couple of different ways. One, that
it is a matter of deserving something, and two, that to
deserve something, you have to earn it. No argument here.
Traditionally, merit is defined as such: a person merits
acceptance to university or a job if he or she possesses
the qualities needed to perform well. Sounds simple enough.
Yet how does a person demonstrate this? In the education
system, it is revealed through scores on standardized testing
such as the SAT. The basic premise behind standardized testing
is that it is a fair and valid test of merit. The higher
the score, the more deserving the applicant is to higher
education and gainful employment. By this "yardstick," institutions
know what they are looking for, how it is measured and how
to rank people within this system. Under scrutiny, however,
this yardstick - seemingly objective or not - reveals some
flaws. Take a look at the notion of
fairness.
To be fair means to treat everyone the same. In a competitive
sense, it means allowing everyone to apply for a position,
and evaluating each person’s results the same way.
If everyone takes the same test that is marked in the same
way, then the evidence is conclusive: the results are fair.
The method itself seems to be the best compromise for the
task, yet the questions remain to be asked: how, exactly,
are people being tested, and is there a predisposition in
the test itself that leans towards valuing one method of
thinking, or methods of applying problem solving, over another?
Do these tests truly give everyone the chance to demonstrate
their abilities?
By this assessment, then, the notion of John Doe deserving
to be employed as a member of the police force because he
scored higher on the exam is speculative.
It is found, for example, that men often perform better on
the SAT than women. Yet in first year of college or university,
women will usually gain equal, and often higher, grade
point averages. Which is the better, or fairer, indicator – an
individual’s performance to gain entrance into a
school, or their capabilities to perform as a member or
student of an institution? The same question can be applied
to job performance. Which is the more valuable employee – the
one who performs better on paper, or the one who excels
in performance-based, on-the-job learning?
These are questions that are hard to qualify. And while conventional
and standard methods of screening applicants will select
and satisfy a short-term aim – to fill a job or vacancy
in a classroom - often these methods do not give an accurate
indication of how applicants chosen in this short-term selection
are going to respond in the long run. Initiative and drive,
for example, are often cited by educators as being the best
predictors for achievement in life.
Standardized testing, with its emphasis on fairness through “sameness,” will
often exclude innovative, creative thinkers – people
who think differently and will have different responses to
higher education programs or a job task.
But creativity and interpersonal skills are hard to measure.
What could be more effective is performance-based testing,
where applicants demonstrate their abilities through performance,
relying less on traditional tests. Personality indicators
could also be effective.
Where does affirmative action play in all of this? The main
issue with affirmative action is that we shouldn’t
have to do it. It is a proposed – and enacted – solution
to a problem that needs to be phased out, and for many reasons.
What person feels good knowing that they were hired or accepted
into a school to fill a quota?
One of the ways to do this is to change the methods, and
by nature the concepts, that we use to test and grant people
access to higher education and higher-paying employment.
If women, poor people and people of colour are continually
being excluded from opportunities because they score less
on an exam or perform poorer in a conventional screening
process, then this is a problem. This is when concepts of “merit” and “fairness” are
being used to perpetuate a status quo. And it’s hardly
democratic.
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