Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements orquotas for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particularracial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of diminishing racialdiscrimination, addressing under-representation and evidentracism against those racial groups or, the opposite, against the disadvantaged majority group (seenumerus clausus orbhumiputra systems). Conversely, quotas have also been used historically to promote discrimination against minority groups by limiting access to influential institutions in employment and education.
These quotas may be determined by governmental authority and backed by governmental sanctions. When the total number of jobs or enrollment slots is fixed, this proportion may get translated to a specific number.
TheMongols divided different races into a four-class system during theYuan dynasty.
TheMongol EmperorKublai Khan had introduced a hierarchy of reliability by dividing the population of the Yuan dynasty into the following classes:
Several laws enforcingracial segregation of foreigners were passed during theTang dynasty. In 779 AD, the Tang dynasty issued anedict which forcedUighurs to wear their ethnic dress, and restricted them from marrying Chinese.
In 836 AD, Lu Chun was appointed as governor ofCanton. He was disgusted to find Chinese living with foreigners andintermarriage. Lu enforced separation, banninginterracial marriages, and prevented foreigners from owning properties.[1]The 836 law specifically banned Chinese from forming relationships with "Dark peoples" or "People of colour", terms referring to foreigners, such as "Iranians, Sogdians, Arabs, Indians, Malays, Sumatrans", etc.[2][3]
By 1935, the French government enacted a series of racial quotas on certain professions.[4]
SeeNazi boycott of Jewish businesses.
TheNational Origins Formula was an American system of immigration quotas, between 1921 and 1965, which restrictedimmigration on the basis of existing proportions of the population. The goal was to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the United States. It had the effect of giving low quotas to Eastern and Southern Europe.
Such racial quotas were restored after theCivil Rights Act of 1964, especially during the 1970s.[5]Richard Nixon'sLabor SecretaryGeorge P. Shultz demanded that anti-black construction unions allow a certain number of black people into the unions.[5] TheDepartment of Labor began enforcing these quotas across the country.[5] After aU.S. Supreme Court case,Griggs v. Duke Power Company, found that neutral application tests and procedures that still resulted inde facto segregation of employees (if previous discrimination had existed) were illegal, more companies began implementing quotas on their own.[5]
In a 1973 court case, a federal judge created one of the first mandated quotas when he ruled that half of theBridgeport, Connecticut Police Department's new employees must be either black orPuerto Rican.[5] In 1974, theDepartment of Justice and theUnited Steelworkers of America came to an agreement on the largest-to-then quota program, for steel unions.[5]
In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled inRegents of the University of California v. Bakke that public universities (and other government institutions) could not set specific numerical targets based on race for admissions or employment.[5] The Court said that "goals" and "timetables" for diversity could be set instead.[5] A 1979 Supreme Court case,United Steelworkers v. Weber, found that private employers could set rigid numerical quotas, if they chose to do so.[5] In 1980, the Supreme Court found that a 10% racial quota for federal contractors was permitted.[5]
In 1990City University of New York was accused of discriminatory hiring practices against Italian-Americans.[6]
In 1991, PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush made an attempt to abolishaffirmative action altogether, maintaining that "any regulation, rule, enforcement practice or other aspect of these programs that mandates, encourages, or otherwise involves the use of quotas, preferences, set-asides or other devices on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin are to be terminated as soon as is legally feasible".[7] This claim led up to the creation of theCivil Rights Act of 1991; however, the document was not able to implement these changes. It only covered the terms for settling cases where discrimination has been confirmed to have occurred.[8]
College admissions in the United States have had racial quotas; seeNumerus clausus § United States for details. These have notably included blanket bans onAfrican-Americans,Jewish quotas from 1918 to the 1950s, and an allegedAsian quota from the 1980s and ongoing as of 2017[update].
Local trade unions commonly use the term "Absolute representation" in this regard.[9]
Opponents of quotas object that one group is favored at the expense of another whenever a quota is invoked rather than factors such as grade point averages or test scores. They argue that using quotas displaces individuals that would normally be favored based on their individual achievements. Opponents of racial quotas believe that qualifications should be the only determining factor when competing for a job or admission to a school. It is argued this causes "reverse discrimination"[15] where individuals in the majority to lose out to a minority.
Some affirmative action programs openly involve quotas such as the admission program of theUniversidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.[16] (See also:Vestibular exam#Racial quotas.)
The law student organizationBuilding a Better Legal Profession developed a method to encourage politically liberal students to avoidlaw firms whose racial makeup is markedly different from that of the population as a whole. In an October 2007 press conference reported inThe Wall Street Journal,[17] andThe New York Times,[18] the group released data publicizing the numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans at America's top law firms. The group has sent information to top law schools around the country to encourage students who agree with its viewpoint to take the demographic data into account when they choose where to work after graduation.[19] As more students choose where to work based on firms' diversity rankings, firms face an increasing market pressure to change theirs.[20]
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U.S. Labor Department .. Italian-Americans have yet to benefit .. identified in 1976
