Is Affirmative Action ethical ?

Introduction

In the book “Honest Work”, several authors deal with Fairness and Justice at work… and it made me thinking about Affirmative Action at work but also in other fields. I wanted to go a little bit further and wonder if this kind of practice is ethical and fair. Affirmative Action refers to policies that take factors including color, religion, sex, national origin… into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination. The President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first to pronounce this expression in public and it was above all about the consideration of black people. Today, Affirmative Action has evolved and these practices are applied in a lot of countries such as in Europe, where it is called “Positive Discrimination” or “quota”, but also in Brazil with the President Lula Da Silva or in India... It concerns some very different areas such as Politics, Education or Employment where some categories of people are underrepresented. However, these practices are sometimes forbidden in some countries such as in the United Kingdom. So we can wonder if Affirmative Action, also called “positive discrimination” in some countries, is really ethical and the best way to fight against discrimination.

First of all, we will speak about the positive aspects of the practices of Affirmative Action by taking several examples of different fields. Then, we will see the negative points.
I. The purposes of Affirmative Action are ethical and praiseworthy Affirmative action has emerged that aims to correct the injustices of the past with reverse discrimination. In fact, it is an absolute necessity because schools, government agencies, businesses and our societies are built on a history and values which do not treat all people as equals. (If we have a glance at the unemployment statistics or at the employment figures, we will inevitably see