Affirmative action has been arguably the most politically divisive topic of the post-Civil Rights era. President John F. Kennedy originally coined the phrase in an executive order to eliminate discrimination -- past and present and primarily suffered by blacks -- based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In concept, the initial rationale was based on the idea that the affirmative action policies would be temporary and limited in scope. In practice, however, they have expanded into a pervasive system of goals, timetables and numerical quotas to include other "aggrieved groups," with a focus on equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity. This phenomenon is not unique to the United States.
 
In Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (Yale University Press, 2004), Thomas Sowell takes a global view in examining group preference polices in the U.S., India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria. Whichever term is used -- affirmative action in America, "positive discrimination" in India, preferences "reflecting the federal character of the country" in Nigeria, or "sons of the soil" preferences in Malaysia -- Dr. Sowell looks at the similarities in the rationale behind these countries' policies, and focuses especially on the actual outcomes.

Among the common consequences of preference policies in the five-country sample are:

-- They encourage non-preferred groups to redesignate themselves as members of preferred groups to take advantage of group preference policies;

-- They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. black millionaires), often times to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g. poor whites);

-- They reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best -- the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile -- thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and

-- They engender animosity toward preferred groups as well as on the part of preferred groups themselves, whose main problem in some cases has been their own inadequacy combined with their resentment of non-preferred groups who -- without preferences -- consistently outperform them.

This last point is particularly instructive. Despite the fact that ethnic groups indigenous to the Indian states of Assam, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh were granted preferential treatment, they were nonetheless outperformed by non-indigenous groups or "outsiders" in free market competition, educational institutions and the job market. Despite starting at the bottom economically, the frugality and work ethic of the minority Chinese population in Malaysia enabled them to surpass the native bumiputeras ("sons of the soil") of Malaysia, despite the latter group's governmentally mandated preferred status. The professional and educational dominance of the Tamils over Sri Lanka's indigenous Sinhalese population was the precursor of a bloody civil war from which the country still has not fully recovered. 

One of the most damaging outcomes of affirmative action in American higher education is the abysmal graduation rate of minority students admitted to elite colleges and universities under lowered admissions standards. What makes this phenomenon even more disheartening is that many of these students would be perfectly suited to succeed at schools that are academically less rigorous, yet they are "pervasively mismatched" into schools for which they are not adequately prepared, and thus are setting themselves up to fail. To quote the author:

Dr. Sowell shows how the notions, rationales and assertions supporting affirmative action are widely accepted without being tested empirically. When they are put to the test, they usually do not pass muster, and the mounting evidence of their negative consequences is either suppressed or altogether ignored. Case in point: those pesky low-income-yet-high-performing Asian Americans. As Sowell puts it:

Any citizen desiring an objective, unvarnished understanding of the actual consequences of affirmative action policies would be served well by reading this book. Dr. Sowell sheds much-needed light on a critically important -- yet often ignored -- aspect of one of the most emotionally-charged issues of our time.

Affirmative Action Around the World is available on Amazon.com.
 
Dutch Martin is a columnist for The Right Report and a member of Project 21, an African-American leadership network based in Washington, D.C. This review originally appeared on TownHall.com.

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