Deconstructing the Affirmative Action Categories
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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764298041007005Collections
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Show full item recordDate
1998-04-01Type of Work
14 pagesText
journal articles
Citation of Original Publication
GEORGE R. LA NOUE and JOHN C. SULLIVAN, Deconstructing the Affirmative Action Categories, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 41, No. 7, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764298041007005Rights
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.Subjects
racial and ethnic categoriesdiscrimination
bureaucracy
federal affirmative action programs
Abstract
Affirmative action preferences have traditionally benefited four racial and ethnic group categories: African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. These categories may be overinclusive, masking important socioeconomic differences among nationalities within the categories. The problem of overinclusiveness is now being raised by post-Croson disparity studies and by courts evaluating those studies, particularly in the area of business formation rates. When the differences among nationalities are compared through census data and regression analysis, they show wide variations within the affirmative action categories and for White ethnic groups as well. This suggest that a discrimination hypothesis cannot explain all these variations. The affirmative action categories reflect bureaucratic convenience more than demographic realities.