Affirmative Inaction

Last week, local papers report, 347 men graduated from Qatar University. And 1,300 women. (The Peninsula, July 1, p. 3.)

So much for discrimination against women in the Middle East.

Canadian stats are not that far off.

Where is the cry for affirmative action for men?

Meantime, in Britain, that country’s race relations chief, Trevor Phillips, has just called for legal quotas to force the universities to take more students from “non-white” backgrounds (Gulf Times, June 23, p. 5).

Census figures show ethnic minorities make up 10% of Britain’s population.

Their proportion of the university student body nationwide? 16%.

Why is the cry not for quotas for whites?

The answer in both cases, of course, is vested interests; specifically vested bureaucratic interests.

Once you have appointed a bureaucratic structure to deal with a particular problem, you have guaranteed that that problem will never be (officially) solved.

Careers depend on it.