Políticas de ação afirmativa e justiça: uma análise do entendimento dos discentes do curso de direito sobre a reserva legal de vagas para acesso ao ensino superior

Affirmative actions reflect the ideal of achieving equal opportunities and represent the realization of cultural transformations in order to reduce the effects of historically accumulated inequalities. Such actions are capable of implementing a greater representation of minority groups in the most diverse domains of public and private activity. In the case of quotas instituted to guarantee minority access to higher education, the reservation of vacancies is one of the forms of social justice that tries to guarantee a minimum level of education to the most disadvantaged, trying to compensate and equate the opportunities of access to education. This research aims to analyze the perception of students of the ISECENSA Law course about the affirmative action policy, with emphasis on the quota modality that promotes the legal reserve of places for the so-called “minorities”. To this end, the methodology used will be qualitative and will have the bibliographic review as the starting point to place the quota policy as an object of the field of socio-legal studies. Documentary analysis of laws dealing with the theme will be carried out, as well as field research, through which the questionnaire will be used as a data collection instrument to verify the position of ISECENSA law students on the quota policy and to identify whether students understand the meaning of the quota policy. The expected results of the present research consist in the achievement of goals that focus on the contribution in the debates about the quotas policy in the educational environment from the ISECENSA experience and to the search for elements that can help in the adoption of strategies capable of making the law of more understandable quotas for society, generating awareness of the reasons and effects of its implementation. Thus, with the realization of the research, it is expected to analyze the perception of ISECENSA law students about the quota policy and, further, to raise awareness of the reasons and effects of the implementation of that policy, contributing to the humanization of educational institutions at starting from the incentive to diversity in order to build a society that respects difference, seeking the achievement of peace and equality.

Racial and Ethnic Ancestry of the Nation’s Black Law Students: An Analysis of Data From The LSSSE Survey

While the Supreme Court upheld some affirmative action programs as constitutional in 2003, the wisdom of affirmative action as a policy decision remains hotly contested. In the law school context, the challenge is to determine how affirmative action policies affect law schools, law students, and the legal profession. This paper takes up one strand of this challenge, estimating how minority students would fare in a world with different affirmative action policies than those currently implemented. I posit a model of law school performance that controls for entering credentials and allows for a mismatch between student and school (where the student is outmatch by his fellow students). The model also allows for differences in the law school experience for students of different races, which may be the result of discrimination or other differences in the way that law school cultures affect students. The results indicate that, if anything, reverse mismatch boosts the performance of students with low credentials. Using monte carlo simulations of graduation and bar passage with bootstrapped standard errors, I find that removing affirmative action policies decreases the number of new black lawyers each year by 13.4% ± 5.2%. This is in direct conflict with a recent study by Richard Sander that estimates an increase in the number of new black lawyers. Sander, however, assumes that there is no discriminatory effect on law student performance, and therefore confounds discriminatory effects with the mismatch effect in his analysis. Finally, recognizing that the data upon which I and others rely is imperfect and unable to provide a definitive answer regarding whether the mismatch theory applies in the law school context, I suggest some experimental additions to the data to correct for these problems.

The general thesis of Walter Feinberg’s On Higher Groundis that affirmative action is a distinctive policy for the promotion of equal opportunity, based on distinctive historical considerations, and reserved for distinctive groups. Feinberg is clear that affirmative action is by no means sufficient for equalizing opportunity, let alone for achieving social justice more generally. He contends the strongest and most unconditional case for affirmative action can be made on behalf of certain “target groups:” particularly, women, African Americans, and Native Americans. A weaker and more limited case can be made in his view for extending affirmative action policies to also include groups such as Spanish-speaking people who became residents of the U.S. through the conquest of Mexico, as well as for persons with disabilities. Feinberg is motivated by two primary aims: defending affirmative action against those who would dismantle it and, just as importantly for his analysis, preventing it from suffering evisceration at the hands of those sympathetic critics who would subsume affirmative action under more general principles, responding to need and promoting diversity, in particular. Basing affirmative action on these general principles, Feinberg contends, would render it so broad in scope that even certain White males ‐ those who are poor and working class, for instance ‐ would be included among the groups legitimately within affirmative action’s purview. In the process, its ability to eliminate the special injustices suffered by proper target groups would be significantly diluted. This provides a brief sketch of the position Feinberg stakes out. In what follows I try to provide the reader with enough additional details to get a reasonably good feel for the character and contents of the book as a whole. But my emphases do not in all cases parallel Feinberg’s. Rather, I zero in on what I take to be the most central and, as it turns out, most problematic, thesis of Feinberg’s book: the “historical debt” argument. This will be from the perspective of someone who generally agrees with the kind of affirmative action policy that Feinberg supports, but on different grounds. In Chapter 1, Feinberg provides an overview of affirmative action as a policy, including some its legal history, its role in higher education, and the current backlash against it. Feinberg also broaches different interpretations of affirmative

Background/Context Although frequently associated with the United States, affirmative action is not a uniquely American social policy. Indeed, 2003 witnessed review and revision of affirmative action policies affecting higher education institutions in both France and the United States. Using critical race theory (CRT) as a theoretical lens, this text compares the affirmative action programs and lawsuits litigated in both nations in 2003 and their impact on the educational and social experiences of people who are racially or culturally non-White. Purpose This article examines and compares affirmative action policies and lawsuits directed at higher education in France and the United States. Faced with similar challenges, controversies, and racial concerns, these courts offered somewhat diverging opinions on the purpose, meaning, and impact that affirmative action policies should have in this millennium. Research Design This article employs legal hermeneutics, a specific form of documentary analysis, to examine affirmative action policies and related court decisions recently issued in both France and the United States. U.S. court decisions such as Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and affirmative action program self-study reports published by L'institut d'etudes politiques, or Sciences Po, serve as the primary sources for the text. Conclusions The 2003 rulings in both France and the United States provide the legal impetus needed for affirmative action programs to continue. However, none of the court decisions or programs on either side of the Atlantic makes any real attempt to address the larger racial issues that created the need for affirmative action from the start. With the exception of the limited use allowed in affirmative action programs, all forms of diversity in the United States have basically the same value and, accordingly, have virtually the same impact on social arrangements. Likewise, France accepted the CEP (Conventions éducation prioritaire [Priority Convention Education]) program as an affirmative action measure while giving no thought to the need to reform the overall ideology of the nation, which dictates that all citizens are French and no forms of heterogeneity exist. In essence, the affirmative actions programs upheld in these court rulings fail to enforce the equality principles imparted in the French and U.S. constitutions by inhibiting discussion and deconstruction of racial inequalities.

To understand the impact of equality and affirmative action policies it is necessary to understand some of the key concepts that underpin the translation of intentions and ideas into action. It may be useful to try to draw a distinction between equal opportunities policies and affirmative action policies. There are no hard-and-fast definitions of either, although affirmative action is often thought of as being an American version of equal opportunities. One of the major differences between equal opportunities policies and affirmative action policies is that affirmative action policies are generally thought of as being backed by some element of compulsion. For example, employers are compelled by law to employ a specified percentage of people from ethnic minorities, or a specified percentage of women. Equal opportunities policies, on the other hand, tend to rely much more on employers acting without formal legal compulsion, though it should be noted that in the US the use of law to compel employers to enforce equity is not as common as people may imagine. A useful definition of affirmative action policies suggests that: Affirmative action is a generic term for programmes which take some kind of initiative either voluntarily or under compulsion of law, to increase, maintain, or rearrange the number or status of certain group members usually defined by race or gender. (Johnson 1990, p. 77) KeywordsEthnic MinorityAffirmative ActionEqual OpportunityEthnic Minority GroupDisadvantaged GroupThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The current study examines attitudes toward affirmative action. Hypotheses related to self‐interest concerning perceptions of the benefits of affirmative action and hypotheses derived from procedural justice research regarding the structure of policy statements both received support. A survey completed by 387 undergraduate and graduate student participants found greater perception of benefits resulting from affirmative action policies, defined in terms of increased opportunity (concrete benefit) and increased satisfaction (abstract benefit), related to greater support for affirmative action. Policies presented with justification received more support than did policies presented without justification. Ethnicity did not directly affect support for affirmative action; however, ethnicity did affect perceptions of the benefits of affirmative action. Perceptions of the benefits of affirmative action mediated ethnicity effects. Suggestions for increasing support for affirmative action are provided.

IN an article published in this review (Antman & Duncan, 2015), we document how racial identity responds to state affirmative action policy. A coding error was recently brought to our attention that resulted in 0.55% of our sample being misclassified in terms of their African ancestry.1 We regret and apologize for this error. Although the error affected only a tiny percent of the overall sample, the correction changes the conclusion of how individuals with multiracial African ancestry respond to state affirmative action bans, from a negative and statistically significant effect to a positive and statistically significant effect. The corrected table 3 shows the updated results. The coefficients for college-aged individuals with African ancestry reported in table 5 are also now positive, but are no longer statistically significant at conventional levels. Correcting the error does not change the conclusions for individuals with only African ancestry or no African ancestry. None of the Asian ancestry classifications, and thus none of the results for individuals with Asian ancestry (table 4 and the last two columns of table 5), were affected by the coding error. There are no meaningful changes to the summary statistics in table 2 except in the column for those with multiracial black ancestry. The most notable change is the fraction of individuals with multiracial black ancestry who self-identify as black: 49.37% in the original table and 90.86% in the updated table.2 (For further explanation and a complete set of updated results, see Antman & Duncan, 2019.) We continue to find that racial identity responds to state affirmative action policy, albeit with a different conclusion for multiracial blacks, and we are now able to distinguish stronger effects for multiracial individuals with more distant connections to their minority group.This is the original abstract: We link data on racial self-identification with changes in state-level affirmative action policies to ask whether racial self-identification responds to economic incentives. We find that after a state bans affirmative action, multiracial individuals who face an incentive to identify under affirmative action are about 30% less likely to identify with their minority group. In contrast, multiracial individuals who face a disincentive to identify under affirmative action are roughly 20% more likely to identify with their minority group once affirmative action policies are banned.We modify this original abstract as follows: We link data on racial self-identification with changes in state-level affirmative action policies to ask whether racial self-identification responds to economic incentives. We find that after a state bans affirmative action, multiracial individuals who face an incentive to identify under affirmative action are about 2% to 5% more likely to identify with their minority group. In contrast, multiracial individuals who face a disincentive to identify under affirmative action are roughly 20% more likely to identify with their minority group once affirmative action policies are banned.

Affirmative action (AA) policies are among the most effective means for enhancing diversity and equality in the workplace, yet are also often viewed with scorn by the wider public. Fairness-based explanations for this scorn suggest AA policies provide preferential treatment to minorities, violating procedural fairness principles of consistent treatment. In other words, to promote equality in the workplace, effective AA policies promote inequality when selecting employees, and the broader public perceives this to be procedurally unfair. Given this inconsistency underlies negative reactions to AA policies, we argue that better preparing individuals to deal with inconsistencies can mitigate negative reactions to AA policies. Integrating theories from the fairness and cognitive styles literature, we demonstrate across 4 studies how dialectical thinking-a cognitive style associated with accepting inconsistencies in one's environment-increases support for AA policies via procedural fairness perceptions. Specifically, we found support for our propositions across a variety of AA policy types (i.e., strong and weak preference policies) and when conceptualizing dialectical thinking either as an individual difference or as a state that can be primed-including being primed by the framing of the AA policy itself. We discuss theoretical contributions and insights for policy-making at government and organizational levels. (PsycINFO Database Record

This article concerns an issue that often remains implicit within the public debate about affirmative action and related race-conscious education policies: What role do contested moral ideals play in the disagreement about affirmative action? As background, the article first outlines what a moral disagreement is and then goes on to examine the roots of the disagreement about affirmative action. A case is made for the importance of illuminating and understanding the moral disagreement about affirmative action to inform the public deliberation about related race-conscious education policies, especially given that affirmative action policies are being challenged once again in the public political arena.

Debate surrounding the concept and goals of affirmative action is growing in the United States and other countries. This article explicates and compares the conceptual tenets of affirmative action as they have been operationalized in the U.S. and South Africa. It critiques the positions on equity and affirmative action stated in South African policy documents and by key government policymakers, university executives, and faculty. It also presents case study data on the relationship between affirmative action and institutional change at four South African universities, identifying emerging paradigms for democracy in that nation's higher education system. INTRODUCTION Much of the development of affirmative action concepts, policies, and programs-along with much of the debate-has been centered in the United States. However, other countries have used this mechanism to redress societal inequities. In South Africa, the transformation from apartheid to democracy has highlighted the roles of institutions of higher education. The development of a critical knowledge base and the preparation of students to assume key professional and policymaking roles in various sectors are central purposes of universities. Unfortunately, the presence of Blacks (Africans, Indians/Asians, and Colored groups) and women of all races and ethnicities in South African universities as students, faculty, and professionals is still limited in various disciplines, faculties, and administrative areas. Herman (1995), for example, reports that 51 out of every thousand in South Africa's White population were enrolled in postsecondary institutions in 1991 compared to 35, 13, and 9 out of every thousand for the Indian/Asian, Colored, and African populations, respectively. The 1996 Green Paper on Higher Education Transformation, one of the South African government's major working policy documents, details staff composition trends showing that Whites and men still hold those positions with the greatest prestige, status, and influence in the nation's academy (National Commission on Higher Education, 1996b). The Green Paper further reveals that in 1993, South Africa's historically White universities (HWUs) produced 83% of all research articles generated by the nation's scholars and 81% of all master's and doctorate graduates. To change these realities, redress or affirmative action has become a salient mechanism. Increasing the percentages of underrepresented groups and women is a primary emphasis of affirmative action in higher education. Other prominent ways to redress inequities and to diversify colleges and universities include: professional development for junior professionals, academic bridge programs for students who are underprepared to engage in university work, and the equitable distribution of financial resources to the historically (Black and) disadvantaged universities (HDIs) that have served the nation's Black populations. Various levels of resistance have been encountered in the implementation of such changes in South Africa. Several reports and pieces of legislation written or passed since the 1994 democratic elections have articulated rationales and ways of ensuring fairness and equity throughout the South African university system. After presenting a brief glimpse of the disparate education provided to South Africans of various racial/ethnic groups during the apartheid era, the present article explicates and compares the conceptual tenets of affirmative action as they have been operationalized in the United States and South African contexts. It also critiques the positions on equity and affirmative action expressed by various South African educational policy documents and government officials. To portray the relationship between affirmative action policy and institutional change in the nation's HWUs and HDIs, this article presents relevant findings from the authors' qualitative study of the history and goals of four South African universities. …

MotivationAffirmative action policies have attracted significant academic and policy interest worldwide. One of the key criticisms of such policies is that they undermine meritocratic principles, but there is little evidence and analysis on how such policies are being implemented and shape meritocracy, particularly in low‐ and middle‐income countries.PurposeDrawing on a case study of an affirmative action policy designed for the inclusion of members from marginalized groups in Nepal’s civil service, the article critically examines whether this erodes meritocracy and productivity.Methods and approachThe article draws on empirical insights and data collected through a critical policy analysis, complemented by surveys and interviews with civil servants benefitted from affirmative action and other civil servants, including policy analysts and public intellectuals.FindingsOur findings challenge a narrative that affirmative action in the form of reservations or quotas erodes meritocracy and reduces the quality of public services. Rather, we argue that an affirmative action policy can enrich meritocracy by addressing its inherent deficits, including its blindness to horizontal inequalities and forms of social exclusion, which tend to sustain the monopolization of bureaucracy by a dominant group in an already unequal society.Policy implicationsReconceptualizing an affirmative action policy applied in Nepal’s civil service as a tool of “meritocratic inclusion,” we argue that it rewards competence and promotes workforce diversity and social justice. Our evidence suggests that affirmative action, when it is carefully designed, can be an effective policy tool both to enhance representative bureaucracy and enrich meritocracy.

This study examines the perceptions of university students from inter-ethnic marriage families (hereafter as multicultural students) on their experiences with affirmative action policy. Ten university multicultural students who entered leading universities through affirmative action amidst the highly competitive higher education entrance exams in South Korea were interviewed. In the context of South Korean society, where educational competition is intense and the social system is predominantly governed by the discourse of meritocracy, the participants tended to interpret their affirmative action experiences more from the perspective of social efficiency. Despite the underlying tension between the affirmative action policy embedded in social integration discourse and the meritocratic discourse, they paradoxically sought to justify their affirmative action experiences by reframing them through the lens of meritocracy. This study demonstrates how the socially integrative logic of affirmative action can be appropriated from a social efficiency perspective in a competitive society dominated by meritocracy.

In order to decrease inequalities in tertiary education attendance, many Brazilian public institutions implemented affirmative action policies in the last decades. In particular, a bonus policy was implemented at UFMG in 2009, which was substituted by a quota policy in 2012. Besides, other policies also implemented by this and other public universities in Brazil may have had an indirect effect of promoting an increase in minorities’ attendance, such as the Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities (Reuni) policy and the use of the National Exam of the Secondary Level (ENEM) as a tool for tertiary education student’s selection. This paper analyzes the determinants of the performance in the entrance exam of Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), between the years of 2009 and 2013, with a focus on these policy changes. Affirmative action and Reuni policies did not affect remarkably the performance of minorities at the UFMG´s selection process. However, the use of ENEM as the first stage in this process relatively decreased the performance of minorities. Moreover, differences for skin color were dwarfed by other inequalities, such as the household income, the parent’s educational level or the type of the secondary school attended by the student.

The Spiritual Dimension of Social Justice