Every now and then it is useful to see how “affirmative action” is understood by people in other countries. This is one of those times, and here are the opening paragraphs from a recent article in The Navhind Times of India:
IN 1990, at the height of the anti-Mandal agitation in India
If officials and their backup in the colleges seek to overthrow the constitutional order because it prevents the equalization of the ‘half-caste’, they should try to prove that such castes exist here. Even if they could do so, it would not justify their real goal, the replacement of the bourgeois republic with dictatorship, and one that would be propagandastically devoted to the uplift of the disadvantaged minorities.
John:
There are those here who believe the U.S. is just like India, that we are a caste society where individual merit and accomplishment mean nothing
Why do you think that merit and accomplishment necessarily mean nothing in India, or conversely that the Black/Hispanic percentages quoted by the person in the article are a function of merit? Those percentages are almost certainly a function of affirmative action, given any reasonable objective metric (such as SAT-V scores or Howard Raines’ recent testimony re: Jayson Blair).
It may indeed be the case that talent is not equally distributed among every group in India. Certainly most of the computer engineers and so on – both in the US and India – are not Dalits or OBCs. (See here for some stats.)
Now for the sad news: An upper-caste person from India (esp. if female), who has been trained from birth to believe that only certain kinds of professional employment (esp. university teaching) are suitable for her caste, and that this has been divinely ordained from time immemorial, BUT who nevertheless is mediocre, can get affirmative action (diversity) preference over U. S. citizens in the USA.
Apparently, this is meant to inspire student – at least the ones who believe that they are divinely ordained.