https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_quota

Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of diminishing racial discrimination, addressing under-representation and evident racism against those racial groups or, the opposite, against the disadvantaged majority group (see numerus clausus or bhumiputra systems).

These quotas may be determined by governmental authority and backed by governmental sanctions. When the total number of jobs or enrollment slots is fixed, this proportion may get translated to a specific number.

United States

The National Origins Formula was an American system of immigration quotas, between 1921 and 1965, which restricted immigration on the basis of existing proportions of the population. The goal was to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the United States. It had the effect of giving low quotas to Eastern and Southern Europe.

Such racial quotas were restored after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, especially during the 1970s.^[5] Richard Nixon's Labor Secretary George P. Shultz demanded that anti-black construction unions allow a certain number of black people into the unions.^[5] The Department of Labor began enforcing these quotas across the country.^[5] After a U.S. Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Company, found that neutral application tests and procedures that still resulted in de facto segregation of employees (if previous discrimination had existed) were illegal, more companies began implementing quotas on their own.^[5]

In a 1973 court case, a federal judge created one of the first mandated quotas when he ruled that half of the Bridgeport, Connecticut Police Department's new employees must be either black or Puerto Rican.^[5] In 1974, the Department of Justice and the United Steelworkers of America came to an agreement on the largest-to-then quota program, for steel unions.^[5]

In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that public universities (and other government institutions) could not set specific numerical targets based on race for admissions or employment.^[5] The Court said that "goals" and "timetables" for diversity could be set instead.^[5] A 1979 Supreme Court case, United Steelworkers v. Weber, found that private employers could set rigid numerical quotas, if they chose to do so.^[5] In 1980, the Supreme Court found that a 10% racial quota for federal contractors was permitted.^[5]

Then in 1991, President George H. W. Bush made an attempt to abolish affirmative action altogether, maintaining that "any regulation, rule, enforcement practice or other aspect of these programs that mandates, encourages, or otherwise involves the use of quotas, preferences, set-asides or other devices on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin are to be terminated as soon as is legally feasible".^[6] This claim led up to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, however the document was not able to implement these changes. It only covered the terms for settling cases where discrimination has been confirmed to have occurred.^[7]

College admissions in the United States have had racial quotas; see Numerus clausus § United States for details. These have notably included blanket bans on African-Americans, Jewish quotas from 1918 to the 1950s, and an alleged Asian quota from the 1980s and ongoing as of 2017.

Opposition

Students protesting against racial quotas in Brasília, Brazil. The sign reads: "Want an opening? Pass the Vestibular (entry exam)!"

Opponents of quotas object that one group is favored at the expense of another whenever a quota is invoked rather than factors such as grade point averages or test scores. They argue that using quotas displaces individuals that would normally be favored based on their individual achievements. Opponents of racial quotas believe that qualifications should be the only determining factor when competing for a job or admission to a school. It is argued this causes "reverse discrimination"^[8] where individuals in the majority to lose out to a minority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_discrimination

Reverse discrimination is discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group. Groups may be defined in terms of disability, ethnicity, family status, gender identity, nationality, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation, or other factors.

This discrimination may seek to redress social inequalities under which minority groups have had less access to privileges enjoyed by the majority group. In such cases it is intended to remove discrimination that minority groups may already face. Reverse discrimination can be defined as the unequal treatment of members of the majority groups resulting from preferential policies, as in college admissions or employment, intended to remedy earlier discrimination against minorities.^[1]

Conceptualizing affirmative action efforts as reverse discrimination began to become popular in the early- to mid-1970s, a time period that focused on under-representation and action policies intended to remedy the effects of past discrimination in both government and the business world.^[2]

I'm not stating an opinion here. Just providing the background facts on this great topic.

I see both sides. 

Ideally, we should increase the number of minorities in areas of society that are most rewarding to the participants .......without having to lower standards in a way that causes that area to be less productive or functional.

You either support racism or you don't.   If you make any choice based on race,  you are a racist.

I understand your point Tim but that is not necessarily so.

Let's take race out of it and say its POOR people........because, basically that's who we are trying to help, poor BLACK people.

If we passed policies to help POOR people(raise taxes on the rich, provide more assistance from various programs) are we discriminating against RICH people?

 It's just not fair that a rich person has to give up 28% of their hard earned money and poor people get stuff for free. 

That's the only way you can have a society that works best for ALL people.

You provide additional assistance to those most in need. 

I have a problem with blaming slavery for everything and doling out reparations to a bunch of people hundreds of years later that are actually repeating massive benefits themselves because of their ancestors being kidnapped and brought here from what, is currently one of the most poverty stricken places on the planet.

Forget slavery completely.

We want blacks to participate fully in the American Dream and can see, that in most measures, they are not.  Society is not imposing things on them to hold them back but the dynamics of education, jobs, family and crime where THEY LIVE, which is urban areas and inner city, low income places........cause it.

So, if you care for less fortunate human beings........some born into the wrong family or the wrong place, we don't just think "tough luck for them, they can work hard like me and earn what they get"

When we are blessed with MORE than what we need, we should be willing to share some of it to those less blessed.

There is more to sharing than money. 

If you had a son that was down on his luck, lost his job or health and he asked you to help him, would you?

You know him and would feel emotionally connected by love which would motivate you to help him. Of course you wouldn't want him to be getting an allowance from you the rest of his life but you WOULD help him as much as possible. 

When its people that are complete strangers, we often don't see it that way. 

It feels very  unfair that they should get stuff for free that we earned with hard work. 

Yes, its good to have policies that motivate more people to work vs sitting on their lazy arses and having you and me support their lazy lifestyle. This is bad for them in some ways too. Almost everything worth having in this world took hard work to get.

Rich people that were born rich may have wonderful lifestyles but if they didn't earn it, they don't appreciate it that much. If they went to college and became a doctor to earn their money........there is tremendous reward.

Of even worked laying bricks and were smart with their money.

But not all people were born with the smarts and blue print to apply themselves that gets passed on by the family raising them.......unless they are unique, like my Dad that grew up in the inner city of Detroit, never met his Dad but was an Industrial Engineer at Ford for 39 years and the best dad/husband on the planet.

They don't make many like that........who are capable of breaking out of very bad environment. 

For the others that are not able to do that we try to help them. Not BECAUSE they are black, which slavery reparations does but BECAUSE they are human beings that are missing out on a lot of what we have from being poor or whatever. 

It so happens that blacks represent a much higher % of those that are poor and need help. OK, so if you fix the situation with jobs, education and crime where they live......you will also be helping all the  poor white people in those communities.

But we are not using poor people as the criteria,  We are using race,  regardless of ecostatus.

When you make race the criteria for any decision, you are practicing racism..  By Definition.

And taking money from one group to give it to another is as effective as taking buckets out of one end of the pool and dumping them in the other end of the pool in hopes pf creating a deep end. 

Create opportunity,  make sure everyone has an equal shot and that's the best you can do.  Income redistribution reduces opportunity and creates dependency and resentment.  Not a formula for success,  quite the opposite,

Johnsons great society has rewarded single parent homes and has probably been the single biggest detriment to the black members of our society.  The majority of the rest of the detriments are also liberal pie in the sky boondoggles.  

I agree Tim,

We should try as much as possible to NOT use race and focus on the needs of the poor and less fortunate................if there are more blacks in that population, then it takes care of the race thing without using race.

What makes less sense to me is reparations.

How do you compensate  a successful black man today that had slave parents for numerous generations vs one that is doing poorly?

Why would you compensate that person?

What about mixed race.  What % black do you need to be to get reparations?

The vast majority of blacks here are African Americans that got kidnapped for slavery but not all of them. How do you verify that?

How many people will have documents that prove their great, great, great, great grandaddy was a slave?

A Rising Share of the U.S. Black Population Is Foreign Born

A record 3.8 million black immigrants live in the United States today, more than four times the number in 1980, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Black immigrants now account for 8.7% of the nation’s black population, nearly triple their share in 1980.

metmike: So then, if we are helping blacks because they are black(outside of reparations), then do we need to help foreign born blacks too? Then why not browns in the same way.

Don't forget what we "took" from Mexico 150 years ago. 

Don't Mexican Americans deserve some reparations for the loss of their land?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Cession

Mexican–American War

Main article: Mexican–American War

A map of Mexico, 1835–1846, with separatist movements highlighted

Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México were captured soon after the start of the war and the last resistance there was subdued in January 1847, but Mexico would not accept the loss of territory. Therefore, during 1847, troops from the United States invaded central Mexico and occupied the Mexican capital of Mexico City, 

when you start a business, or operate a business, you want to hire the people that make your business profitable.

If you force mandatory diversification down people's throat, the first business that would go bankrup is the National Basketball Association.

If you force mandatory diversification down people's throat, the first business that would go bankrup is the National Basketball Association.

I really like that.  I hope you don't mind when you see me using it  :-)

I used to be against affirmative action policy until I realized that I lived in a country imposing White affirmative action policy.

I used to volunteer as a tutor for poor black high school students.   I liked teaching these kids because they worked hard.  This was after all, an afternoon program.  I learned from these kids that "career day" was coming up at the high school they attended.  When I inquired, I was told that people from a variety of professions come to the school and speak in front of an assembly for 10-15 minutes about their careers.  Loving the commodity futures business as I did, I readily sought to volunteer.   The only extra catch was that I had to have a summer job opportunity for the star students to interview for.  NOT GIVE THEM THE JOB.  NOT SHOVE A POLICY DOWN SOMEONES THROAT.  Just an opportunity to interview for the job.  

Who would be given this interview opportunity?  Only the best of the best from this inner city Chicago school.  They had to have excellent grades, excellent attendance, and no incidents behavioral problems at the school. 

I thought this was going to be easy.  At the time I wasn't in a position of hiring authority but I knew 2-3 floor managers who were.  Summer jobs for high school and college students were often available due to people taking vacations.  Firms would hire these kids to be runners or phone clerks to pick up the slack.  It was how I got my start and I was excited to participate and possibly light a fire in some young student's spirit.

I went to the managers that I knew personally and everyone gave me the same answer.  "Oh, the boss from upstairs says I have to hire his niece from college who is home for the summer."  Or, "my neighbor has a son who is graduating high school and I promised him the job."  Do I have to tell you the color of EVERY summer hire?  Of course it was only white kids.  They didn't have to interview for the job mind you.  A simple introduction was sufficient.  

I was unable to get anyone even an interview.   So I couldn't speak at career day.  The black kid with straight A's and perfect attendance doesn't even know that he was denied a chance at an opportunity.  He/she was not denied BECAUSE he was black.  The white managers were not racist as far as I know.  It's just that the only people they knew in their lives were white.

So am I against affirmative action?  Yes I am.  When you come up with a better policy than the current one which addresses the White affirmative action we have in this country, I am all ears.

I get that JOJ. I really do.    But it's not really a form of "White Affirmative Action"..  Your example may be anecdotal,  but it is a widespread form of anecdotalism (Is that a word?  If not, it should be).

Now I bet, if you check in on that Straight A good kid 10 years later,  he's probably doing pretty well.  I've hired several over the years. The problem is, he is emerging from a culture that seems to discourage that sort of behavior and encourage the opposite.  And that's where we need to be focusing our attention .

Unfortunately, there are many who consider frank discussions of this nature "Racist",  and that may be the biggest problem of all. 

joj

This is a great story, not just because it's your experience but it made me think about something I have thought about in the past but was completely forgetting/ignoring in this discussion.

It's more than something to think about.............it's a reality which reminds me of why, at times I have felt that affirmative action(sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination) is very justified to level the playing field.

I have another anecdotal, personal account that actually flipped my opinion from being for affirmative action to not being as much for it(at the time).

My dad was raised in the inner city of Detroit and  back in the 50's/60's pushed racial justice(writing letters to the editor) even before the main civil rights movement caught fire. I guess he felt a kinship with the black community(although, when he grew up in the 1920's/30's it was before the biggest part of the Great Migration of blacks from the south to escape Jim Crow and get high paying jobs(in the auto industry in the Motor City in this case).

Funny but his neighborhood as a kid(that was 100% black when I was a kid) was known as 'The Irish Ghetto".

So Dad graduated from the University of Detroit in 1950 and became an industrial engineer at Ford Motor. He was a time study guy, using math constantly at the Rouge Car Assembly Plant to try to design jobs in the plant, especially on the assembly line that would maximize the quantity of work without it resulting in a loss in  quality. 

Many of the hourly workers knew who he was and his job was to make their job harder, so he has tons of great stories, sometimes featuring him getting booed by guys on the line when they saw him. The hourly workers were 95% black and management was, maybe 80%? white. 

One would think that getting booed and disliked by all the blacks would take a toll on you but, at least to me growing up, he maintained his racial justice position and in the 1970's and for sure supported Affirmative Action policies initially.

Then around 1980 he told me a story about what just happened to him that changed his mind.

Part of his job was to train others guys to do his job. After 2 decades of doing it, he was pretty seasoned. I will guess that the vast, vast majority of those that he trained were white as they required an engineering degree. 

So he gets what might have been his first black guy to train. This guy had an engineering degree from  Purdue University and was fresh out of college. Of course Dad didn't know for sure if they were trying to fill a quota but considering most in his department were white, it made sense. 

Dad told me that this guy just could not do the job right. He said the guy could not do basic math. They both tried hard  but he was just incapable of doing that job according to my Dad. 

Dad insisted strongly, that he thought the Purdue engineering degree on his resume was fraudulent. How could a person get an engineering degree and not be able to do basic math, he stated?

metmike has an engineering degree........and he's right. But regardless, this is an example of the counterproductive nature of this policy..........sometimes.

Not just to the company but to the guy that is getting the job he's not qualified for. It's the recipe for the black guy to FAIL and end up worse than he was before getting the job. 

I have another anecdotal story that tells the opposite side.

This relates exactly to joj's story.

I had a lawn cutting business, starting in 8th grade that Dad assisted me with(in the early days I had a push mower without a mower-tough work). My best birthday present was the power mower I got in 10th grade. 

With hundreds of houses within walking distance, all smashed to together and lawns that needed to be cut, it was the perfect, entrepreneur business for a kid. This is actually not the story but relates to having the right parental guidance for getting a great start in life and since there are/were many, many more white parents with that blue print to share with their kids than black parents, being born into a white family was a huge advantage.

When I turned 18, I was still in high school but immediately became old enough to work at the Dearborn Assembly Plant where dad was in management.  He used his influence to immediately(as in the week after I turned 18) get me a job working on the assembly line there. It was the easiest job in the plant but I think that was a coincidence. Regardless, since 95% of the workers there were black, one assumes that another black guy would have gotten that job, instead of me(you don't need quotas when you already have 95% of the jobs).

While I was going to college, Ford had a program for college kids to work Mon and Fri only(pay day was Thu and many of the hourly workers would party with the money and not show up for work on Fri, then keep the party going on Mon). 

So they would take 2 college kids to do one job(since it was only for that one night and 1 person could not possibly be trained fast enough to do it). Sometimes, they didn't even need all of  us and we would hang around for 4 hours, then go home early. Other times it was hard work. 

I only remember 1 black college kid doing this and it was probably because many of the white boys had dads like mine. 

There were also college Summer jobs there and I did many of them for several years and recall that almost all the other boys doing it were white. .........even though 95% of the employees were black. There were maybe 2% women. Maybe some discrimination but there really were some tough, physical jobs. 

Speaking of which, my dad's job was to make those jobs tougher(on the assembly line), to use less people and be more efficient for the company. This caused his white power/influence to sort of back fire one Summer.

I started out with what was clearly the toughest job in the department I was in on the assembly line. I was in top physical shape and used that to my advantage but there was tremendous skill needed on top of that to master the numerous things that had to be done quickly within 60 seconds, before the next car came by. 

During the first couple of days, while in training you did the job with somebody else assisting, until you mastered it. I had NEVER failed at anything in my life but this particular job was just too much for me. I was on my own after a couple of days and just could barely keep up. I would finish one car and have to run to the next one to start...........there was no time for a pause and I made mistakes or didn't have time to finish on occasion, which meant extra work to finish the job after the car came off the line. 

Every day, at the dinner table I would say the same thing to my dad. "Dad, you have to get me off this job, it's just too much" Dad would NEVER accept an explanation like that.........never. He assumed that I just needed to work/try harder.

So after around 2 weeks of this and it not getting much better...............he finally got me off that job(to another tough but doable job).

And with a huge apology later on!

Turns out that this particular job was one that my dad personally designed and the foreman in that department insisted could not be done.

The 2 guys doing that job prior to me..........quit(I would never quit) but Dad, being very stubborn, insisted on not changing anything.

So, when the time study guys son got hired in that department for a Summer job, the foreman saw the perfect opportunity. Give the impossible job to his son and lets see what happens now. Of course Dad knew this and must have been thinking "my son can do this, I'll show them now!" Keep in mind, that these were all young black men in great physical shape doing all the tough jobs, not old ladies that I could show up. 

After 2 weeks of me continuing to beg Dad to get me off that job...........he did and he changed that  job after that for everybody that followed.

But there's another side to it. The 2 black guys that quit before me did not have a Dad that could move them to another position. So even though white privilege caused me some unique havoc at first............it saved me/bailed me out in the end.

	Ten Myths About Affirmative Action

https://secure.understandingprejudice.org/readroom/articles/affirm.htm

metmike: I found this point to be a strong one. It relates to the importance of family and the profound need to strengthen the black family unit in order for it to provide the advantages(or reduce the disadvantages) that children of other races often have growing up. 

Myth 6: If Jewish people and Asian Americans can rapidly advance economically, African Americans should be able to do the same.

This comparison ignores the unique history of discrimination against Black people in America. Over the past four centuries, Black history has included nearly 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legalized discrimination, and only 50 years of anything else. Jews and Asians, on the other hand, are populations that immigrated to North America and included doctors, lawyers, professors, and entrepreneurs among their ranks. Moreover, European Jews are able to function as part of the White majority. To expect Blacks to show the same upward mobility as Jews and Asians is to deny the historical and social reality that Black people face.

There were a few decades that the Irish were treated at least as badly as blacks.  We  interned the Japanese during WWII, many of them losing everything, including family members.

Tim,

You are exactly right. Discrimination was the rule not the exception until recent times.

For all sorts of things.

It's hard to believe that woman, only got the right to vote 101 years ago.

I know that slavery is a unique situation that is totally different than the others but why not have reparations for brown people?

For sure women deserve reparations. They worked their butts off doing the most important job of all................raising their kids for free, while society treated them as less competent and worth less compensation than men outside of the home!

........ok, that might not work because most white married women  are partners with the evil discriminators, who would also benefit.

So one point with regards to this is that our system of treating all people equal was blatantly messed up royal until recent years.  Blacks from 200 years ago got the worst deal. 

The fix isn't to try to ascertain an impossible to figure out value of what that was worth...........which is going to be completely different between successful and failing blacks when viewing the realities and impossible to verify and calculate other dynamics.

The fix is not to ignore what happened.............do learn from the history and forgive that society and those that lived in it for being primitive because of ignorance of human rights that we cherish today

The fix is to apply rules TODAY  that effectively address the disparities, in a way that favors those who need assistance the most...........regardless of the cause.

What if slavery never existed and everything was the same in this country........more poor, less educated and higher crime committing blacks.

Should the attitude then be "It's their own fault, they had the same opportunities as the rest of us"

VS

"We caused it by slavery 200 years ago, so we owe it to them.

Why not, some people in this country are clearly disadvantaged by their current environment/circumstances.  We should be looking at the reason for the disadvantage TODAY and addressing it with policies TODAY to give them more advantages to offset that if necessary.

Also, when the tide rises, it lifts all boats. A stronger economy benefits all races with more jobs. A better education system.

Reducing crime would be, so much  better for black families than whites that its insane that we aren't spending much more time on trying to solve that key problem. 

Work on fixing the BIG PICTURE which will continue to pay dividends for all of society permanently/longer term, especially blacks vs targeting a small group in society with a  main objective of compensating them for losses that ends up being more of a short term benefit.