Affirmative action entrenches division and bigotry

Earlier this week, both houses of Australia’s Parliament adopted a resolution to hold a referendum on a government initiative to re-racialize the Constitution by inserting a new chapter to give to Aborigines rights of representations that are not available to any other group.

In more proof that history does irony, on June 29, the US Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in the admissions policies of Harvard and North Carolina universities by 6-2 and 6-3 majorities, respectively. As Justice Clarence Thomas put it: “Universities’ self-proclaimed righteousness does not afford them license to discriminate on the basis of race.”

Human rights deal with the proper balance in relations between individuals, society, and the state. Universalizing the human rights norm was one of the great achievements of the last century.

The assertion of a human right is a claim on the state for protection from threats emanating from other individuals and groups or from the agents of the state themselves. The first-generation “negative rights” emerged from constitutional traditions that prevented the state from curtailing the civil rights and political liberties of citizens. The second-generation “positive rights” reflected the agenda of many postcolonial poor countries to prescribe an activist agenda of social and economic rights for their citizens.