A race-conscious policy is a policy that aims to improve the conditions of

racial minorities The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...

. In the United States, such policies are typically aimed at improving the status of

African-Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

. Many different kinds of race-conscious policies exist, ranging from nondiscrimination policy to strict numerical

racial quota Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular Race (classification of human beings), racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of ...

s. Their main purpose is twofold: to compensate for past discrimination against the target race, and to increase

equality of opportunity Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences, except when particular distinctions can be explicitly justified. The intent is that the important ...

Education

In the United States, race-conscious policies like

desegregation busing Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing, Integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was the practice of assigning and student transport, transporting students to schools within or outside their local s ...

have long been used to counteract

school segregation School segregation is the division of people into different groups in the education system by characteristics such as race, religion, or ethnicity. See also *''D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic'' *School segregation in the United States *Single- ...

. The

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

ruled in favor of these measures more in the 1960s and the 1970s than it has since then.

International variations

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, unlike many other Western European countries (including

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

), has avoided adopting race-conscious policies. Variations in these policies between Britain and France are in large part due to the different frames through which the policies were portrayed in the two countries.

Public opinion

Whites are the least supportive of race-conscious policies, while African Americans are the most supportive of them. Latinos and Asian Americans take intermediate stances in their opinions of these policies. This pattern persists after controlling for measures of

racial prejudice Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

, class status, and other factors. Among white liberals, racial resentment predicts support for race-conscious programs only for black students. In contrast, among white conservatives, racial resentment is closely related to opposition to such programs regardless of the recipient's race.

References

{{Reflist Race and law Racism Politics and race Social policy