By Dan Froomkin
Washingtonpost.com Staff
October 1998

Affirmative action is the nation's most ambitious attempt to redress its long history of racial and sexual discrimination. But these days it seems to incite, rather than ease, the nation's internal divisions.

An increasingly assertive opposition movement argues that the battle to certain equal rights for all citizens has been fought and won – and that favoring members of one group over another simply goes against the American grain.

But defenders of affirmative action say that the playing field is not level yet – and that granting modest advantages to minorities and women is more than fair, given hundreds of years of discrimination that benefited whites and men.

This special report includes key stories from The Post, as well as select editorials and columns.

The resources and links section lists related Web sites and contains the text of President Clinton's 1995 address on the topic. You can share your thoughts in our talk area.

This essay provides an introduction to the following topics:

• What Is Affirmative Action?
• The Politics of Affirmative Action


What Is Affirmative Action?

Born of the civil rights movement three decades ago, affirmative action calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions.

Institutions with affirmative action policies generally set goals and timetables for increased diversity – and use recruitment, set-asides and preference as ways of achieving those goals.

In its modern form, affirmative action can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man. Affirmative action decisions are generally not supposed to be based on quotas, nor are they supposed to give any preference to unqualified candidates. And they are not supposed to harm anyone through "reverse discrimination."


The Politics of Affirmative Action

President Clinton, asserting that the job of ending discrimination remains unfinished, strongly defends affirmative action. "Mend it, but don't end it," he says.

Conservatives, however, see ending affirmative action as a powerful political issue. Heartened by recent Supreme Court decisions that have limited affirmative action – and by the passage in 1996 of a California ballot initiative abolishing sexual and racial preferences – Republicans are taking up the battle wherever they can.

The debate over affirmative action takes on a particularly bitter tenor in the trenches. "Angry white men" blame affirmative action for robbing them of promotions and other opportunities. And while many minorities and women support affirmative action, a growing number say its benefits are no longer worth its side effect: the perception that their success is unearned.

Judging simply by the results, the playing field would appear to still be tilted very much in favor of white men. Overall, minorities and women are in vastly lower paying jobs and still face active discrimination in some sectors.

At this point in our nation's history, does affirmative action make things better or worse? The debate rages on.

Dan Froomkin can be reached at froomkin@washingtonpost.com

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company


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What’s the deal with single action vs double action handguns? Well, it’s all about the trigger and exactly what happens when it’s pressed. The only thing the trigger of a single action (SA) handgun does is release a cocked hammer to fire the gun. With a double action (DA) handgun, pressing the trigger cocks and releases the hammer. We could leave the explanation there, but as they say in calculus class, it gets complicated. It gets complicated because both revolvers and pistols come as either single or double action, and because within these two distinctions there are variations that require some explaining. So, here is a full breakdown of single action vs double action handguns.

Single Action Revolver

How it Works

The single action revolver is the classic cowboy six-gun, epitomized by the Colt Single Action Army or the Ruger Blackhawk or Single Six. With a single action revolver, the hammer must be manually cocked before the gun can be fired. So, the trigger of a SA revolver has a single function; when pressed, it releases the hammer, allowing the gun to fire. Once you have fired a SA revolver, you must manually re-cock the hammer to shoot it again. If you’ve cocked a SA revolver and decide not to shoot, you can press the trigger while holding the hammer back and manually lower the hammer to a safe, half-cocked position. But you’ll have to cock the hammer again when you decide to shoot.

Single Action Pistol

How it Works

The trigger of a single action pistol works the same as the trigger of a SA revolver. But because the slide of a SA pistol must be manually retracted to load the handgun, and because the slide cycles to the rear after every shot, in both instances it cocks the hammer. So technically, you never really have to cock a SA pistol. But, if at some point you decide to manually lower the hammer, then, just like with a SA revolver, you must re-cock it to shoot it. Because most SA pistols are carried cocked, a manual thumb safety that “locks” the pistol and prevents it from firing, like on the Colt 1911, is generally part of the package. Because some shooters are nervous about carrying a “cocked and locked” pistol, they either avoid SA pistols or carry them with the hammer down, which means they must thumb-cock the pistol before they can shoot it.

Double Action Revolver

How it Works

For many years, double action revolvers like the Smith & Wesson Model 686 were the most popular sidearms for law enforcement. With a DA revolver, you have options, because the trigger has two functions. If the hammer is manually cocked, the DA revolver trigger works just like a SA revolver trigger; when pressed, it releases the hammer. But if a DA revolver is not cocked, you can pull the trigger and it will cock and release the hammer. This makes the double action revolver faster to shoot and better suited to law enforcement or for self-defense. Also, just like with a SA revolver, you can manually lower the hammer on a DA revolver after it has been cocked.

Double Action Pistol

How It Works

If a DA pistol is not cocked, a single trigger press will cock and release the hammer. You can manually cock a DA pistol for the first shot, but after a DA pistol has been fired, the pistol’s slide cycles and cocks the hammer for you. Many DA pistols have a de-cocker, a lever that un-cocks the hammer allowing it to safely fall and return the pistol to double action mode. The difficulty with managing DA pistols is that the first trigger press is long and hard because it has to cock and release the hammer, subsequent trigger presses are lighter and crisper because after the first shot the hammer remains cocked. Also, with some DA pistols, if the cartridge fails to fire, you can pull the trigger and try to fire that same cartridge again.

Double Action Only Revolver

How It Works

Complicating the single action vs double action conversation are double action only handguns. They are a little different—but only a little. Let’s start with DAO revolvers. The only difference in a double action only (DOA) revolver and a DA revolver is that the hammer cannot be manually cocked because it has no “cocked” notch, because it’s been bobbed, or because it’s shrouded or concealed. A bobbed, shrouded, or concealed hammer is less likely to catch on clothing during the draw stroke, and that’s really the only advantage a DAO revolver offers. The inability to cock the hammer on a DAO revolver circumvents the lighter trigger action associated with firing a revolver in the SA mode, and some believe this makes DAO revolvers safer. The truth is, it’s well-trained humans that make guns safe.

Double Action Only Pistol (DAO)

How It Works

The trigger of a DAO pistol it cocks and releases the hammer—every time—and since there’s no “cocked” notch on the hammer you cannot manually cock it. After you fire a DAO pistol, the slide recoils and pushes the hammer back, but as the slide goes forward, the hammer follows it to a “safe” un-cocked position. Like some DA pistols, most DAO pistols have re-strike capability. If the cartridge in the chamber does not fire you can pull the trigger for another attempt. It’s debatable if this is an advantage or a drawback. In most cases if a cartridge fails to fire, it will not fire in subsequent attempts and that can waste time. A better approach is to get the dud out of the gun as quickly as possible. As with DA pistols, DAO pistols have been largely replaced by striker-fired pistols.

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Of course, there are plenty of action movies to choose from. There are the classics like Enter the Dragon and Top Gun, superhero films such as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Shazam! Fury of the Gods and spy movies like Casino Royale — which all promise thrilling story lines, intense fight scenes and nonstop excitement.

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When discussing diversity in the context of candidate selection, even those leaders who in principle support Affirmative Action often struggle with the following question: how do we justify selecting a member of a minority (be it gender, race, sexual identity, creed, physical ability, etc.), while rejecting a seemingly more qualified candidate who is a white man?

The next time you hear this argument, here are some reasons why you should reject it.

1. Other Candidates May Have Been Favored For Different Reasons

To a certain extent, complaining about hiring a lesser-qualified candidate is an attempt to appeal to one’s “sense of justice.” However, applying this thinking in a direct comparison between two candidates overlooks the existence of other common biases that favor the privileged. For example, in situations where multiple candidates are evaluated and selected, such as entry-level hiring or college admissions, certain candidates may have been selected because they went to the same school as a senior executive, or perhaps because of a recommendation by mutual friends, even though they may have been less qualified than other candidates who were rejected. Hence if one wishes to appeal to fairness, that same reasoning must be applied consistently, recognizing that

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2. Removing Favoritism Is Not Enough To Fix Legacy Imbalances

Even if all forms of favoritism and other biases were eliminated, as we have shown in a previous article it will take an extraordinarily long time to undo the existing imbalances that resulted from legacy biases. And, as long as these imbalances exist, your ability to attract and retain talent will be impaired. Hence if you believe that diversity will give your organization a competitive advantage, it is not enough to remove biases: And that means that a candidate who may seem less qualified to fill a specific role, may nonetheless be more valuable to your organization.

3. Candidate Ranking Is Imperfect

Whether or not you believe that diversity can benefit your organizations, there are quantitative reasons to reject the notion that it is unfair to select less-qualified candidates. First, the notion that anyone can objectively measure and rank the quality of candidates is questionable. This isn’t to say that companies can’t recognize an excellent candidate from a mediocre one, but selection processes are typically based on metrics that are often rooted in qualitative, subjective evaluations, and therefore cannot truly discriminate between two candidates that are not radically different from each other. Even when using a quantitative metric, such as SAT scores and grades, numerical superiority does not certain performance superiority.

4. Optimizing Selection Does Not certain Optimal Results

Even if the metrics used to rank candidates were accurate, always choosing the better candidate would not certain optimal results. In the field of optimization, algorithms that always choose the best solution at each step are called “greedy,” and there are mathematical proofs that for most real-world problems, greedy algorithms yield sub-optimal solutions. As an analogy, suppose you are walking through a foggy valley, trying to walk to the highest peak in the area: if you only take steps that move you higher than your previous position, you will climb to the top of the first hill you encounter and get stuck, and you may never find the taller peaks that break through the clouds.

5. Direct Comparisons Ignore The Bigger Picture

Leaving aside issues of accuracy and optimization, candidate selection metrics typically focus on alignment with a specific role, but neglect to consider the bigger picture of how that person may contribute to the organization as a whole by balancing the qualities of other employees. An analogy might be financial portfolio management, where a high-yield asset is balanced with an asset that has lower yield, but also lower risk. An example closer to talent management is a baseball team that may choose to trade a promising young pitcher for a catcher to fill an anticipated defensive gap, even though in a direct comparison the pitcher may seem to be more valuable.

6. People Make Bad Judgments When Considering Individual Cases

Finally, research has revealed the existence of cognitive biases that lead experts to make bad decisions when they focus on individual cases, sometimes contradicting the decisions they make when they consider a broader context. Michael Lewis’ recent book, The Undoing Project, describes the groundbreaking work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who showed that these biases affect even leading experts across a variety of disciplines. For example, when asked about the impact of antibiotics on the general population, physicians agreed that overprescribing antibiotics is a bad idea because it leads to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.” However, when faced with individual patients, the same physicians would frequently overprescribe antibiotics. Similarly, even leaders who believe in the value of diversity may be lulled into making a bad decision if they focus on direct comparisons between candidates, rather than thinking about the well-being of the entire organization.

Conclusion: Linking Diversity To Performance

Asking whether it is fair to reject a better candidate in favor of a lesser-qualified minority candidate is a red herring. A better question would be whether the reasons for choosing any candidate are based on a sound, quantifiable understanding of how the blend of characteristics of your human capital influences the overall performance of your organization. And the only way to answer this question is to understand and quantify the link between diversity and performance.