Positive Discrimination -- Do We Need it?
For centuries, the global community has strived to eliminate discrimination against minority groups. For centuries, women had been emotionally and/or physically abused; they were prohibited from voting and working. Today, they are allowed to work outside the household, but they are still paid less than their male counterparts. Additionally, the responsibility of raising the children and completing the household chores remains heavily preponderant among the female categories.
The women represent one of the most obvious categories of people discriminated against; but they only represent a mere fraction of the overall population subjected to discrimination. And the grounds for the discrimination are multiple, to include anything and everything from gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political and religious appurtenance, age or disability.
The modern day society is making intense efforts to ensure that discrimination is eliminated -- or at least decreased to the minimum level possible. Much still remains to be done, but positive results are obvious at all levels of discrimination battles. One important step in these battles was represented by the development and implementation of laws that protect the minority populations, which prevent and punish any act of discrimination. Still, aside from the actual laws, an important role is also played by the consciousness of the populations, revealed specifically at the level of ethical and moral conduct.
In light of the substantial evolutions made at the level of eliminating discrimination, a new situation is observed in which the community strives to compensate for the discrimination to which a specific category had been subjected in the past. Through this approach, the community will grant the individual merits based on their appurtenance to a minority group that had suffered discrimination in the past. This situation is know as positive discrimination, and the current project strives to assess whether it is necessary or not within the modern day society.
2. Discrimination and positive discrimination
In order to better discus discrimination and positive discrimination, it is first necessary to define the two terms. In this order of ideas, discrimination is generically understood as a situation in which the decisions made regarding an individual are made based on criteria that would not be normally relevant for the decision, such as religious appurtenance, gender, sexual orientation and so on. The lines below reveal some relevant definitions of the concept, as identified within the specialized literature.
"When economic differences arise because of irrelevant personal characteristics, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, we call this discrimination. Discrimination typically involves either (a) disparate treatment of people on the basis of personal characteristics or (b) practices (such as tests) that have an adverse impact on certain groups"
"According to UN Human Right Committee, discrimination is any distraction, exclusion, restriction or preference which is based on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other stats, and which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by all persons, on an equal footing, of all rights and freedoms"
Positive discrimination is different from discrimination in the sense that it includes actions and activities aimed at compensating for the discrimination that had existed against the individual. It has a rather corrective nature, perceived as retribution for a wrongdoing of the past. Erika Ann Carr at the Western Michigan University states that positive discrimination is an affirmative action designed to:
"Remedy past discrimination, remedy present discrimination, […], eliminate discrimination and disadvantages, eliminate / prevent / reduce discrimination etc."
"Positive discrimination is a form of affirmative action designed to directly redress the disadvantage that groups of people have experienced in the past. It is based on the premise that justified discrimination is needed in some situations for disadvantaged people to have the opportunity to become equal within society" Making Multicultural Australia.
"Positive discrimination implies applying different criteria for selection to representatives of different groups as a way of addressing the existing social inequalities. It can be distinguished from positive or affirmative action which implies taking proactive steps to encourage certain groups to participate in the social, economic, and political life of a country"
3. The case of positive discrimination
Positive discrimination is derived from the concept of affirmative action, which basically refers to the effort completed by various members in the society to right the wrong done for specific categories of the population. While the specialized literature has yet to reach a universally accepted definition of positive discrimination, this is often perceived as occurring "through programs...
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