Affirmative Action Definitions


Quota
A quota is court-ordered by a judge sometimes when a company has committed a particularly egregious discriminatory action or series of actions against a particular race or sex, etc. For example, the judge may require a company to promote one black person for every white person it promotes until there are a certain number of black managers in the company. It is a rigid number that MUST be achieved.... or else. This is ordered by a judge, so, if the company fails to show it has made an effort toward following this quota (sometimes called a consent decree), the company can be fined a lot of money.

Per the text of the Bakke Decision - "The trial court found that the special program operated as a racial quota,
because minority applicants in that program were rated only against one another, and 16 places in the class of 100 were reserved
for them
 

"Boohabian: Yes, it does bother me when the term "quota" is used, becuz it if often done so to inflame the public, even when there is no evidence that rigid numbers are being applied. Having said that, however, it is true that defacto quotas are often in practice. But, I tried to avoid the "quota" argument due to its inflammatory nature."   -- Ward Connerly, Sept. 1998

How Big is Affirmative Action Anyway?
One of the things you never hear in arguments against affirmative action is the net economic impact. The reason? It's negligible. Follow this argument and see if you get the same perspective I did.