Both preferred and non-preferred groups have modified their own behavior and attitudes
in response to preferential policies and the rationales for such policies.
While members of the officially preferred groups who already have the complementary
factors needed to take the fullest advantage of preferences can do so, those who lack these
factors often feel less incentive to acquire them, now that entitlements are available
as substitutes for achievements.
The development of job skills, for example, may be deemphasized.
As a leader in a campaign for preferential policies in India’s state of Andhra Pradesh
put it: “Are we not entitled to jobs just because we are not as qualified?”
A Nigerian likewise wrote of “the tyranny of skills.”
In Malaysia, where group preferences exist for the majority population, “Malay students,
who sense that their future is assured, feel less pressure to perform.”
In the United States, a study of black colleges found that even those of their students who
were planning to continue on to postgraduate study showed little concern about needing
to be prepared “because they believe that certain rules would simply be set aside for
them.”
Both preferred and non-preferred groups can slacken their efforts—the former because
working to their fullest capacity is unnecessary and the latter because working to their fullest
capacity can prove to be futile.
After Jamaica gained its independence from British rule, many whites living there no
longer bothered to compete for public office because they “felt that the day of the black
man had come and questioned why they had to make the effort if the coveted job or the
national honor would go to the blacks, despite their qualifications.”
While affirmative action policies are often thought of, by advocates and critics alike,
as a transfer of benefits from one group to another, there can also be net losses of benefits
when both groups do less than their best.
What might otherwise be a zero-sum game can thus become a negative-sum game.
In some countries, complete physical withdrawal from the country by those in non-preferred
groups has occurred in the wake of preferential policies which reduced their prospects.
The exodus of Chinese from Malaysia, Indians from Fiji, Russians from Central Asia, Jews
from much of prewar Europe, and Huguenots from 17th century France in response to discrimination
drained all these countries of much-needed skills and talents.
In short, preferential policies represent not simply a transfer of benefits from one
group to another, but can also represent a net loss, as both groups respond by contributing
less than they could to the society as a whole.
Not all incentives are economic or even tangible.
Honors are among the most powerful of incentives in many situations, especially where dangers
and death must be faced, and where money is less effective than a sense of honor, as in
the military.
In less dire circumstances as well, honor and the respect of peers play important roles,
not only as rewards for achievements, but also as factors helping to make individual
achievements possible in the first place.
The cooperation and collaboration of colleagues can be important in a variety of occupations
from scholars to policemen—and that cooperation and collaboration can be compromised by group
preferences.
For example, minority professors on American campuses have complained that being thought
of as “affirmative action” professors by their colleagues has led to less intellectual
and research interaction, which in turn reduces the minority faculty’s development as scholars.
This can be a serious handicap in achieving one’s potential.
In life and death situations, such as those faced by the police, firefighters, and soldiers,
mutual confidence is even more important.
Yet black police sergeants promoted in Chicago over white policemen with higher test scores—as
a result of a court order—found themselves taunted as “quota sergeants” when they
made mistakes.