An Unintended Consequence of Affirmative Action

Thomas Sowell in his book Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study argues that one of the unintended consequences of affirmative action policies designed to benefit minority groups is that they incentivize more people to identify as the preferred minorities. This can end up diluting the benefits which were designated for the intended marginalized populations. Around the world, some people with varying levels of mixed ancestry change their racial identity when the government offers privileges to a specific group. For example, Sowell says that the size of the Native American population dramatically increased after the establishment of various affirmative action policies in the United States. A cohort of 50,000 Native Americans between the ages of 15 and 19 in 1960 increased by roughly 60% to become 80,000 strong in 1980, which Sowell calls “a biological impossibility made possible on paper by redesignations of the same individuals” (p. 8). Some people claiming racial minority status “have included blond-haired and blue-eyed individuals with official papers showing some distant ancestor of another race.” (p. 8). There were similar increases in the ethnically preferred groups in the 1980s among Australia’s aboriginal population and among China’s ethnic minorities in the 1990s. Some Chinese citizens would go back hundreds of years in their ancestry to qualify for government privileges reserved for ethnic minorities.

Reference

Thomas Sowell (2005). Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study. Yale University Press.