Here is your essay on the Balkanisation Argument !
It has been noted above that positive discrimination underlines class, caste and race differences and enhances social divisions, which are already acute in the Indian socio political system and in the United States of America. Affirmative programmes tend to consolidate a caste ridden and racially conscious society already divided into racial and ethnic groups, each entitled as a group to some proportionate share of resources, careers or opportunities.
In India, due to the history of partition and the resulting massacre of around one million people, the argument that positive discrimination tends to divide people revives the history of the tragedy of partition. The communal virus, which started with the Ramsay McDonald award, culminated in the partition of the subcontinent and the generation of issues which remain unresolved to this day.
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Even the history of positive discrimination has not been a smooth one. The extension of reservations, first for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and then to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) has already caused a lot of friction and led to tremendous recriminations. Now, the economically weaker sections amongst the forwards too are demanding reservations.
Demands by Christians and Muslims for reservations, though subdued now, are being made. That turns the whole concept of positive discrimination into a political tool, seeking to perpetuate the policy of reservations and dividing the people rather than encouraging them to stand on their own and compete in a world of excellence. All this leads to an acute kind of anxiety about the integrity of the country.
The proponents of positive discrimination respond to this type of argument by terming it as a displaced argument trying to discredit the affirmative action programme. Their argument is that failure on the implementation front should not be the reason to discard the policy itself.
Prof. Dworkin responding to the argument of balkanisation in the American context, dispels the fear that affirmative action programmes are designed to produce a balkanised America, divided into racial and ethnic sub-nations. They use strong measures to uplift the weaker and the deprived or else they will fail, but their ultimate goal is to lessen and not increase the importance of race in American social and professional life.
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Prof. Dworkin writes, “American society is currently a racially conscious society; this is the inevitable and evident consequence of a history of slavery, repression and prejudice.
Black men and women, boys and girls, are not free to choose for themselves in what roles or as members of which social group others will characterise them. They are black, and no other feature of personality or allegiance or ambition will so thoroughly influence how they will be perceived and treated by others, and the range and character of the lives that will be open to them.
The tiny number of black doctors and other professionals is both a consequence and a continuing cause of American racial consciousness… The immediate goal is to increase the number of members of certain races in these professions. But their long term goal is to reduce the degree to which American society is overall a racially conscious society.”