Affirmative action scholarship is dominated by legal and philosophical analysis, not empirical study

Evidence

If one examines any collection of books or syllabi on the subject of affirmative action over the past 25 years, one observes two phenomena - a huge outpouring of legal and philosophical analyses of its merits and a paucity of empirical examinations of its mechanisms and effects. The legal and philosophical analyses range from passionate assertions that quotas are essential in order to mitigate American racism, to equally fervent arguments that any racial or gender-based preference violates core American values of equality of personhood and opportunity. One can even find a few carefully nuanced intermediate positions that subtly distinguish among recipients, procedures, triggering circumstances, and the like (e.g., Appiah and Gutmann, 1996). Without denigrating the energy and creativity of many of these efforts, I believe it is fair to say that the core legal and philosophical positions were laid out in the first few years of this debate. With the exception of the recent claim about the intrinsic benefits of diversity for an organization, the succeeding volumes have mostly developed or elaborated upon these original claims. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1949

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: has this imbalance shifted in the quarter-century since wrote? Are there now robust empirical studies of affirmative action mechanisms?