Reverse discrimination

Reverse discrimination is discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group. Groups may be defined in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, or other factors. This discrimination may seek to redress social inequalities under which minority groups have had less access to privileges enjoyed by the majority group. In such cases it is intended to remove discrimination that minority groups may already face. The label reverse discrimination may also be used to highlight the discrimination inherent in affirmative action programs. Reverse discrimination can be defined as the unequal treatment of members of the majority groups resulting from preferential policies, as in college admissions or employment, intended to remedy earlier discrimination against minorities.

Conceptualizing affirmative action efforts as reverse discrimination began to become popular in the early- to mid-1970s, a time period that focused on underrepresentation and action policies intended to remedy the effects of past discrimination in both government and the business world. The concept of reverse discrimination has two different meanings. In the broadest sense, it refers to discrimination against Whites or males in any area of life, including employment and education. In a narrower sense, it refers to the specific negative impacts Whites or males may experience because of affirmative action policies. The two meanings are often conflated, which leads to confusion and misinformation.

The law in some countries, such as the UK, draws a distinction between "equality of provision" and "equality of outcome", based on the idea that identical treatment may sometimes act to preserve inequality rather than eliminate it. Opponents of this distinction may label it as an example of reverse discrimination.

When members of a particular group have been barred from a particular employment, it is said that this group has received less than its fair share of employment, in question, and deserves to receive more by way of compensation. Thus, this group is being compensated for past lack of employment. Therefore, a group already existing in the workplace will be discriminated against, even if they’ve never been denied employment previously. If the point of reverse discrimination is to compensate a wronged group, it will hardly matter if those who are preferentially hired were not among the original victims of discrimination. Moreover, the current beneficiaries of reverse discrimination are not often the same persons as those who were harmed by the original discrimination, and those who now bear the burden of reverse discrimination are seldom the same persons as those who practiced the original discrimination. Because of this, reverse discrimination is said to be both irrelevant to the aim of compensating for past injustices and unfair to those whose superior qualifications are bypassed.

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