Are quotas in place to reduce minority representation?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/10/are-quotas-in-place-to-reduce-minority-representation

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How to react to the claim that the Football Association once expressed disquiet to former England manager Graham Taylor about the possibility of too many black players being picked for the national team?

One should register Taylor’s reaction to the claim in Emy Onuora’s new history of black footballers, Pitch Black. First, Taylor told the Guardian he could not recall having the specific conversation in which he is alleged to have let the cat out of the bag, adding, it “doesn’t mean I didn’t say it”. Later, he issued a firmer denial. “I had no FA people coming up to me and … telling me which team to pick and to pick less black players. I would have remembered that.” Recall, then, that the author never actually said that the FA issued any specific instruction and freely highlights Taylor’s “fine record” in picking black players.

The next thing one might do is to throw back the head and laugh. For years, we have been told that there should never be quotas to boost the level of minority representation in areas of national life. Quotas are not the way to address this. Quotas are unfair. Now there is the suggestion of an unofficial quota designed not to boost minority under-representation, but to limit progress. Does this seem far-fetched? Not really. Consider the text messages allegedly sent by leading manager Malky Mackay to his associate when he ruled the roost at Cardiff City. One of the communications allegedly referred to a list of potential signings and included the pointed lament: “Not many white faces amongst that lot.”

There are questions here. Governments, quangos, social agencies talk up the need for diversity, but how much might they say is too much? If a team or a company seems unrepresentative with too few minorities, might some also see problems in having too many?

The argument against quotas – deployed with force against affirmative action in the US – is that diversity calibrations undermine the purity of decisions that should be made on the basis of merit. But what is suggested here is decision-making predicated on criteria that have nothing to do with extending diversity and still less to do with merit. That’s why allegations such as those in Pitch Black resonate and worry so many people. The decision-making process as described seems murky and prompts the question: what else is there to know that I don’t know?