On June 29, the United States Supreme Court terminated affirmative action programs (affirmative action) in universities, attacking admissions procedures on campuses that take into account the skin color or ethnic origins of applicants. This decision has reignited the controversy around hiring policies in Quebec establishments, in particular because of the equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI) plans implemented by Ottawa since 2017 as part of the Canada Research Chairs (CRC). Measures, it is important to remember, which have their origins in a tradition of the federal state, since the royal commission of Judge Rosalie Abella in 1984 and the Employment Equity Act of 1986.
In the conservative camp, voices openly support the opinion of the American judges, seeing in it a happy return to the status quo as if the inequalities were going to disappear by a miracle, and that it was possible to dispense with means of correction. Others are worried, on the contrary, about the possible repercussions of this decision on this side of the border. In a context of racism and colonialism fueled by “white male privilege”, some, like the philosophy professor at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières Naïma Hamrouni, in THE Duty of Saturday July 8, do not hesitate to say that positive action is “one of the possible instruments of a progressive sexual and racial desegregation of our society”.
Such a point of view obviously lends credence to the idea that Quebec would suffer from a model of segregation, a notion that is difficult to handle, which deserves to be rigorously defined and documented as its use is inseparable from the history of certain societies, starting with the United States and South Africa. But we are especially surprised by the efficiency that this kind of remark lends to the famous EDI plans. Because a somewhat attentive examination of their criteria immediately shows their limits.
It is important to point out that the federal government introduced the EDI plans through the CRC program, that is to say using a very narrow window, the only one it actually had, to interfere in the jurisdictions in provincial education. We can of course hope that these plans correct the inequalities of the university environment, which, to date, remains to be demonstrated. On the other hand, it is doubtful that they lead to broader and deeper changes, especially since they do not take into account the migratory and demographic, economic or social specificities of each province.
Failures
This diversity policy was thought from the top and not from the base. The justice in question here concerns above all the teaching staff and even more a limited segment of this body, the holders of research chairs. Additionally, EDI plans are largely gender and race focused. They completely ignore socio-economic disparities. Their avowed aim is to encourage the recruitment of people from groups that have been discriminated against throughout their history, interim measures that must be achieved by universities by 2029.
In the usage established since Justice Abella’s report, these are women, Aboriginal people, people with disabilities and from visible minorities, to which is added in practice the case of LGBTQ communities. However, none of these categories are on the same plane. “Indigenous” and “women” can hardly be compared. While very useful, the idea of ”group” in particular continues to be problematic.
For example, do women really form a group? Let us first recall, against popular belief, that some women may be socially more advantaged compared to men. Then and above all, women among themselves are not equal. They do not have the same chances of accessing a job because of the educational, cultural or economic capital that each one has.
Similar reasoning can be applied to visible minorities. It is common to say that they are under-represented within universities, which have the tools to correctly quantify this phenomenon. The argument has even become commonplace among the elites. It is taken up by the political class or in business, especially for managerial staff, visible or high-responsibility jobs. We still hear it in the media and the world of culture.
However, as the economist Thomas Piketty has clearly shown, the under-representation of visible minorities proportionally conceals their over-representation within the working classes. It is therefore not certain that positive action policies are capable of correcting such a gap insofar as they often only affect a small percentage of people within the target populations. Not only can racial injustices be inseparable from social injustices, but both require a more ambitious egalitarian policy: a policy for all and not elite justice.
So who benefits from EDI measures? Is it to the target groups, or is it not rather to the institutions that promote diversity? The question deserves to be asked and debated.