Preferential treatment around the world

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Compassion Versus Guilt. pp. 197 - 199

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Preferential Treatment

If you think "affirmative action" is about preferential treatment for blacks, think again.

Blacks are only about 12 percent of the U.S. population. But more than 60 percent of all Americans are legally entitled to preferential treatment. Women alone are 52 percent of the population.

Moreover, the United States is not the only country with group preferences. Half the population of India is entitled to preferential treatment. So is more than half the population of Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

These preferential programs are all different. But they have certain results in common.

The first thing they have in common is that the preferences spread over the years.

Preferences in India began for the benefit of the untouchables, one of the worst-treated people on the face of the earth. But, over the years, preferences began to spread to all sorts of other groups. Together, these other beneficiary groups now greatly outnumber the untouchables.

Something similar happened in the United States. Blacks were used as the entering wedge. Then preferences spread to women, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians—and the end is not yet in sight.

Another similarity among preferential policies is that they usually end up helping primarily those people who were more fortunate to begin with.

In one state in India, the least fortunate groups—who were 12 percent of those entitled to preferences—received only about 1 or 2 percent of the jobs and college admissions given out by the preferential programs. The top groups entitled to preferences (11 percent) received nearly half.

In Malaysia, a study found that "at most 5 percent" of the Malays received benefits from preferential programs for all Malays. These tend to be the more prosperous, educated, and politically connected Malays. In Sri Lanka, preferential admissions to universities for people from backward districts went largely to affluent people living in these districts.

The story is not very different in the United States. Blacks with higher education and job experience have begun overtaking whites of the same description. Blacks without education and experience have fallen further behind than before.

People who believe in preferences and quotas claim that "equal opportunity" is just not enough. That is a very clever way of putting it. It does away with any need to compare the hard facts about the results of equal opportunity versus preferential treatment.

In the United States, minorities advanced more under equal opportunity policies than under preferential policies. A similar story can be found in Southeast Asia.

The Malays receive preferential treatment in Malaysia but not in Singapore. In both countries the Malays earn much less than the Chinese. But in Singapore the Malays are gaining ground, under equal opportunity policies, while in Malaysia the relative positions of the two groups are pretty much the same as before.

Preferences don't work—especially not for the masses.

But the fortunate few for whom they do work have made preferential policies a political sacred cow.

One of the most ominous parallels among the various preferential programs is that they all provoke "backlash" resentment. This backlash takes different forms in different countries.

In Sri Lanka, where the losers from these policies are geographically concentrated, there have been armed uprisings and demands for secession. In India, the backlash has taken the form of increasing violence against the untouchables. Hundreds are killed annually, amid rising denunciations of the preferences they are supposed to be receiving.

Malaysia keeps down open racial violence through extraordinary precautions. It is a federal crime even to criticize the nation's racial policies. The Malaysian government obviously knows that they are sitting on a powder keg.

We in the United States don't seem to realize that we too may be sitting on a powder keg. Preferential policies have not existed here as long as they have in other countries. We are still at the stage where there are only rumblings and a few disturbing signs—like racial hate groups gaining a foothold among the educated classes, or an openly avowed ku klux klansman winning a Democratic primary in California.

If—God forbid—this country ever goes the way of other countries torn apart by racial strife, those few people who gained from preferential policies will be the first ones on the jet planes out of here. The people in the ghettoes and barrios, who received little or nothing from these policies, will be the ones left behind to face the consequences.

—January 16, 1985

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In any society the right kind of treatment is just treatment. Injustice will breed trouble. Every person should be treated individually and receive as he deserves.

31 May 2024