Our 33rd prompt comes from AK. They ask:
Can affirmative action and meritocracy exist on the same page? Or does it have to be one or the other?
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AK,
Great question. It tends to be brought up whenever people encounter programs to increase the representation of marginalized peoples in places of power. For example, when girls have a lower entry requirements for university as compared to boys to increase the number of girls that go to university. Or when girls receive free sanitary towels so that they don’t have to miss school when they are on their period. Or when women are allocated county woman representative seats in parliament to ensure there are more women in parliament. Or when the constitution says that not more than two-thirds of the members of elective or appointive bodies should be of the same gender.
Affirmative action is a deliberate effort to eliminate the present effects of past (and continuing) discrimination using public policy and initiatives. This discrimination may be on the basis of colour, gender, geographical location, ethnicity, sexuality and so on. Affirmative action is proactive, and it recognizes that members of certain groups are under-represented in many institutions and do not occupy places of power due to past/ongoing discrimination.
Let’s look at girls, for example. They tend to face multiple hurdles when it comes to access to education/other opportunities for self-development. Many girls in Kenya are not taken to school because their parents think it’s a waste of time/money since they’ll get married as soon as they hit puberty. If they do go to school, they are expected to do both school work and chores at home, while their male counterparts tend to do fewer/no chores. They may drop out after primary school to get married, or because they have been impregnated (note that they are children, no matter what people try to say, and this should not happen). Say they do go to secondary school. They may also drop out because they have been impregnated, or because they have been married off. They may also be raped/assaulted by their teachers (usually male teachers). If they are in a day school, they continue to do a disproportionate amount of work at home compared to their male counterparts. If they are in a boarding school, the same tends to apply during the holidays. Say some of these girls do make it to Form 4 and sit KCSE. They likely have had less time to study in the four years of secondary school than their male counterparts. It is also likely that their dropout rate has been higher because of the factors I stated earlier.
If we are to cover our eyes and ignore the difference in circumstances between boys and girls when admitting them into universities, what happens? We will likely admit way fewer girls than boys because of the multiplication effect of all these instances of discrimination. First of all, fewer of them have completed Form 4 to begin with, and chances are high that their grades may generally be lower than those of boys. So, to adjust for this and ensure that we give more and more girls a fair shot at a better life, we lower the cutoff point. We acknowledge these ways in which they are discriminated against, and make an effort to fix it.
What happens then? More women get educated. More of them are able to earn an income. It becomes a commonplace thing for girls to be educated. Girls stop being married off as children. The education of girls becomes as prized as that of boys. It becomes normal for women to occupy places of power and to be represented in institutions. These women, and the people who have benefitted from them, champion the rights of women and girls. Our society moves closer to levelling the playing field.
I worry whenever people say that affirmative action contradicts meritocracy, which is the idea that power/opportunity should be given to persons exclusively because of their ability and talents. Meritocracy is a very noble sounding idea, until we consider that past (and continuing) discrimination prevents some people from being able to develop their abilities and talents, and that if we apply this idea blindly, we perpetuate the cycle of discrimination. Think of children from the former North Eastern Province. They are usually admitted into secondary schools with far lower grades than children from other regions. Why? Because they come from a hardship area. What if we didn’t do this? They would never make the cutoff for most schools, and would not attend secondary school. In a country/world where you have more opportunities when you are educated, we would be dooming them to a life of poverty.
For true meritocracy to exist, we would have to ensure that some people do not have an unfair advantage over others due to past discrimination. In our world today, white people experience more advantages over people of colour; men over women; people living in urban areas over people living in rural areas; the “ruling tribe(s)” over other tribes, and so on. The day we can honestly say that all of us have equal access to opportunities, then we can scrap affirmative action and live in a pure meritocracy. Please note how I said equal access to opportunities – this means that should you want to pursue an opportunity, you are able to, there are no systemic injustices holding you back. This also means that you can choose not to pursue said opportunities. But the choice should be available in the first place.
To me, affirmative action is a precursor to true meritocracy. It does well in correcting for economic, social and political disadvantage(s). It goes a long way in correcting systemic injustices. Of course, it should be accompanied by efforts to correct personal biases that often multiply when they are combined with systemic/institutional power. Its goal, after all, is its own irrelevance. I look forward to the day when we no longer require policy and formal initiatives to ensure that human beings have equal access to opportunities. Until that day, aluta continua.
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This post is part of a daily writing experiment that I’m running for a year. I’d love it if you took part! ?