Affirmative Action

 

Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive

You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mr. In-between

Is Affirmative Action positive?

When my firm was preparing a sample of shippers for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, PANYNJ, to establish the behavior of shippers, at first there was a random sample of shippers based on their mailing address and size.  After the first sample was prepared, and obviously not every shipper was, nor was it expected to be, surveyed, as responsible survey designers we compared the sample to the general population of shippers.  It was found that very large shippers were underrepresented in the survey sample.  This was not unexpected.  Because they are a small subset of shippers, it was expected that the large shippers might have been missed in a random sample of any size.  An oversampling of large shippers was undertaken to ensure that the sample looked like the population of all shippers  to ensure that the sampling of behavior was consistent with the overall population of shippers.

When you come right down to it, isn’t this exactly what is being done in affirmative action programs.  The first sample of qualified candidates who would meet the original selection, sampling, procedure might result in a sample that is NOT consistent with the general population. If the goal is to have a sample that IS consistent with the general population, then affirmative action is appropriate.

No one claimed that in the shipper choice survey, that special treatment was being given to large shippers because they were being oversampled.  No one claimed that those small shippers who were not part of the original selection, were being discriminated against. In the same manner there is no discrimination against those in an affirmative action selection process who were NOT part of the original selection.  If the result of the original, is not consistent with the population that is intended, over sampling, affirmative action, of the targeted population is appropriate.

There is no judgment against the original sampling, selection plan.  In the Knights of Columbus, the membership is not expected to be Protestants.  The Ku Klux Klan is not expected to have BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ members.  The B'nai B'rith is not expected have Catholics in proportion to the general population.  But if a result is expected to be consistent with the general population, such as the civil service, police, Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, etc., then oversampling, affirmative action, is not only a good thing, it is the correct thing, accentuating the positive.