Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity...an Imperative and a Myth
Does Affirmative Action Work?
The policy of affirmative action was, implemented with relative success all over the world and ironically, was also particularly successfully implemented in South Africa under the policy of Apartheid. While Apartheid, as a policy, was only introduced into legislation when the National Party came to power in 1948, various forms of job discrimination, or rather, job preference, was institutionalized within South Africa for hundreds of years prior to the National Party`s victory at the all white elections of colonial South Africa. While the colonial project preferred white colonials, read British, to occupy certain key positions within the economy, the National Party, sort to prefer Afrikaner colonials, within all key strategic positions within the economy and to deliberately create and implement policies that would provide this particular group, but whites in general, with an unassailable advantage in the process of accumulating wealth through the exploitation of black labour. The extreme disparity that this created, stands not only as a testimony to the brutal and exploitative nature of this particular brand of affirmative action, it also stands as a reminder that a firm political will by governments can lead to enormous structural changes to economies and the livelihoods of its people. The challenge of course is to ensure that government governs in the interests of all the people, not only in the interests of a minority.
Post Apartheid
The implementation of an Affirmative Action policy and legislation, was not only an imperative for any new government that inherited the most unequal society in the world, it was also completely unavoidable. Underpinned by the enormous historical disadvantage suffered by black people in general, but Africans in particular, the Apartheid system, recognized by the United Nations as a crime against humanity, had left an entire nation, under-skilled and under-educated, dispossessed of land and access to the means of production, in desperate poverty, and desperate for a brighter future. With a country that had just come out of a bloody fight for political power, the urgent need to provide opportunity to a hungry nation was unavoidable and in the end, served merely as a placebo. For even though the policy was adopted and the legislation enacted, it did very little to change the structural make up of the economy. The distributive effects of the affirmative action policy and legislation assisted in building a black middle class, but did nothing to change the unequal ownership of the means of production within the economy. It is in light of this that one might suggest that the implementation of an affirmative action policy might have been justified, but it certainly was not effective in changing the structural nature of the economy as had been successfully done in other affirmative action examples.
Does the policy need to be discontinued after a certain length of time?
In theory, a policy that seeks to redress past imbalances could and should be discontinued after a new equilibrium has been reached within society, not necessarily after a period of time. Suggesting that a policy can only be relevant for a period of time, without taking into consideration the objective conditions that necessitated the policy in the first place, is like suggesting that the mere fact that repairs to a motor vehicle happens for a determined period of time, that further repairs to the vehicle will no longer be necessary without taking into consideration if the vehicle had actually been repaired. A rational thought process would suggest that rather than the time spent working on the "repair”, it is far more important to consider the quality of the “repair”. Thus, the question is either phrased clumsily, irrationally or deliberately. Time, in the narrow Newtonian sense, has no bearing on policy, in that, policy is a reflection of material conditions, and material conditions should form the basis of a discussion regarding the future of any policy, not just the policy of Affirmative Action.
Why does inequality persist despite Affirmative Action?
The persistence of racial inequality within our society can be understood from a number of different vantage points. Some might point to the poor education system and resultant lack of qualified candidates; others might point to the selfish underlying rationale of the capitalist system that bestows society`s highest honours upon those who have made greed their sole purpose in life, and which all must emulate. Both would of course be right. The system has produced far too few graduates across the board, but particularly within the engineering fields. This has hampered the uptake within theses professions. However, the same cannot be said for the entire economy. The economy as a whole reflects an unchanged structure from the one inherited in 1994, bar a sprinkling a black faces within both ownership patterns and occupational professions. A part of the logic which precludes the full integration of black people into the South African economy, originates in the selfish rationale of capitalism. White wealth was built on greed. Unfortunately, greed and sharing are not very good bedfellows, and thus greed resists sharing at every turn and with all the power at its disposal. It is through this dialectical relationship, that change unfolds. Within South Africa, that change has not developed at the pace envisaged by policy makers and black South Africans in general and remains one of the drivers of social instability.
Equal Opportunity....the Myth
The idea of cultivating an “equal opportunity” society is a commendable one, but one which presents an idealistic vision of the future, rather than a practical workable reality within the current material conditions of a post-apartheid South Africa. Equal opportunity can be described as a political concept, which requires that all participants be treated equally, without preference or prejudice. It requires that a job for example, must be given to the candidate that is best qualified for the particular job without consideration of circumstance of birth, friendships, sex, race, caste, disability, or sexual orientation. The concept in essence requires a merit based approach and considers only the ability of the person to perform the job. It holds, as its central argument, that chances for advancement should be open to everybody interested, such that they have “an equal chance” to compete within the framework of goals and the structure of the rules established by society or a particular company or employer. This ideal, is widely upheld as a preferred standard by which all people may be able to access opportunities based on their ability, rather than any other arbitrary criteria, and underpins a truly free society. As an ideal, removed from practical reality, it appears, on the surface, as a reasonable and indeed, a preferable way in which to provide opportunity on an equal basis in society.
There are, however, a number of examples throughout the world, in which, despite the legislation of laws prohibiting discrimination based on arbitrary criteria such as race and sex, the practical outcome of the equal opportunity approach has not worked. In Japan, where legislators banned gender specific job placements and banned gender discrimination in employment practices, it was found that this did not make a significant difference to the employment of women and their lack of employment in specifically management positions did not change. In the United States of America it was discovered that despite legal obligations on employers to apply non-discriminatory employment practices, some companies such as Kaplan, used the credit history of African American applicants to discriminate against them. In South Africa, despite a raft of laws aimed at ensuring equal opportunity employment, White owned companies have found a range of loop holes and excuses to resist equal opportunity employment. As is, and was the case in other countries that experienced similar difficulties, the argument of equal opportunity is often used as a barrier to entry rather than as a facilitator of entry.
It would be a lot more useful for a broader definition of equal opportunity to be considered when trying to provide society with a fair and equitable distribution of opportunity. When considering how opportunities are distributed throughout society, the criteria must include the consideration of indirect discrimination and must be based on substantive societal considerations. Such considerations must include the substantive issues that acknowledge the unequal development of a society and the comparative advantage or disadvantage of the members of that society. Failure to acknowledge these realities will only lead to a greater polarization of society between the haves and the have-nots and will in essence serve only to reinforce an unequal opportunity society rather than an equal opportunity society.
The global society has been characterised by a huge disparity in wealth creation, accumulation and development in general, and by this definition, society has developed in a most unequal manner that belies the efficacy of an equal opportunity society. What has been described as equal societies, hides an underlying inequality based on the ability of members of those societies to access the means of production and wealth creation. Some estimates have noted that United States society has an underbelly of inequality, poverty and exclusion which today affects close to 100 million people within the US, amounting to a third of the population. An ever increasing divide between rich and poor, within the developed world has been accentuated by the latest economic crises and Europe has seen a steady increase of unemployment and a growing underclass of poverty within those societies.
Within the developing nations of the south, these disparities are even more acute and efforts to reduce or reverse the growing inequality within these societies have not met with any significant success. The increasing phenomenon of migration has further highlighted the importance of, and lack of, equal opportunities within societies. The reality within all of these societies, but especially the developing nations, has seen the marginalisation of citizens based on race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation and a range of other arbitrary identifiers. Those countries who lead the world in terms of economic growth have fared no better than most other countries in addressing the discriminatory nature of opportunity distribution. In China, work and employment opportunities are determined by a sort of “pass system” which allows rural workers to only access certain kinds of jobs and only within certain areas and time periods. Indian society is still firmly rooted in a caste system which actively discriminates against the Dalit caste. Brazil, despite its phenomenal growth over the last decade, still systematically discriminates against black Brazilians and remains firmly within a paradigm of race superiority. It is South Africa, with its “miracle” reconciliation and entry into the “democratic” world, which best epitomises the continued influence of negative discrimination within a fallacy of “equal opportunity”. The dawn of a new democratic dispensation, promised an equal opportunity society in which all were allowed to progress based on their ability not only on the colour of their skin. Nineteen years later, that dream remains a mirage which appears to be unobtainable in the short, medium and long term. The pace of redistribution of opportunities within society has proceeded at a snail’s pace and some would even argue that redistribution has all but stopped altogether. Growth of opportunity has mainly manifested itself within and through the state, while change within the private sector has been virtually nonexistent. Most corporate boards and ownership structures within South Africa are still unchanged and growth of diversity within management structures has barely shifted over the last decade, despite a myriad of laws and codes to facilitate and incentivise opportunity distribution.
The essential determinant and common element of all these world economies are that they are based on greed and self interest as advocated and elucidated by the father of capitalism, Adam Smith. Smith argued that, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” It is this dictum which has informed the modern capitalist economy and which underpins all economic effort.
Thus, it could be argued that equal opportunity laws have a limited impact within societies in which the core drivers of economic activity is based on greed and self interest. It can further be argued that in true critical fashion, it is not as important to address the symptoms of an illness or deformity as to address the underlying cause. If we are ever to address the question of equal opportunity as a society, we cannot find a better place to start, than to address the conflict that exists between the core underpinnings of our economic system, which encourages greed and self interest, and the need to build an economic system which emphasises community and societal well being.
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