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In this article, Carmen M. White analyzes the debate about affirmative action policies in education in Fiji and explores the impact of colonial discourses on the debates. She asserts that, much like in the United States, affirmative action policies in Fiji have been intended to correct past injustices to minority and underprivileged groups. She shows how proponents of affirmative action use a colonial discourse that undercuts the power of their argument and yet paradoxically fails to acknowledge the historical roots of the lower educational attainment of the Fijian population. In considering similarities of debate on this issue between the United States and Fiji, White offers an additional perspective from which to understand the affirmative action debate.
Given the political and economic implications of disparities in educational attainment in polyethnic societies, the discussion of differential access to formal education is inevitably influenced by a broader discourse on inequities across ethnicity, "race,"] class, and gender. This is patently illustrated in debates about the legitimacy and efficacy of legislative practices devised to remedy such inequities. Affirmative action has been adopted in the United States and other societies that face complex socioeconomic inequities. In Fiji, affirmative action policies have received an ambivalent response and related debates have been couched in a colonial discourse that pervades the discussion of group differences in the society. A historical perspective is necessary to understand how debates on racial disparities in educational attainment and socioeconomic status in Fiji have been influenced by colonial discourse.
Affirmative action - a term with U.S. origins2 - has attained generic status as an expression for policies designed to redress the historical exclusion of minorities from education, business, employment, housing, and other arenas brought on by de jure and de facto discrimination in segmented societies.3 In the United States, deliberation on "race-based" affirmative action is a multilayered discourse that typically pits proponents against opponents along lines of liberalism and conservatism,4 reflecting positions assumed in wider national debates about the persistent or declining significance of race in U.S. society. Proponents cite the historical record and its legacy in fomenting current socioeconomic disparities that intersect with race and gender; critics deny the historical impact of de jure and de facto discrimination on the contemporary experiences of subordinate groups in education,...