"reverse discrimination" meaning in English

See reverse discrimination in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} reverse discrimination (uncountable)
  1. (law, ethics, public policy) The discrimination against members of a historically dominant or majority group, often in favor of minorities or disadvantaged groups, typically arising from affirmative action or equity policies aimed at remedying a past injustice. Tags: uncountable Synonyms: counterdiscrimination, positive discrimination Related terms: action [affirmative], reverse bigotry, reverse racism Translations (advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated): 逆向歧視 /逆向歧视 (nìxiàng qíshì) (Chinese Mandarin), positieve discriminatie [masculine] (Dutch), käänteinen syrjintä (Finnish), positiivinen syrjintä (Finnish), discrimination positive [feminine] (French)
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          "ref": "1965 July 9, “Statutes: Sex & VII”, in Time:",
          "text": "In one instance, Title VII authorizes reverse discrimination. The act gives employers ranging from Minnesota wild-rice farmers to New Mexico electronics manufacturers the option of hiring only American Indians.",
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          "ref": "2002, “Why Affirmative Action Does Little Harm to White Students”, in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, number 36, page 21:",
          "text": "Alan Bakke at the University of California At Davis Medical School, Karen Hopwood at the law school of the University of Texas, and Jennifer Gratz at the University of Michigan all have argued successfully in court that they were the victims of reverse discrimination because blacks were given preferential treatment in the admissions process at these schools.",
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        "(law, ethics, public policy) The discrimination against members of a historically dominant or majority group, often in favor of minorities or disadvantaged groups, typically arising from affirmative action or equity policies aimed at remedying a past injustice."
      ],
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          "roman": "nìxiàng qíshì",
          "sense": "advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated",
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          "sense": "advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated",
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          "word": "discrimination positive"
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  "word": "reverse discrimination"
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      "code": "cmn",
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      "lang_code": "cmn",
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      "sense": "advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated",
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      "sense": "advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated",
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      "lang": "Finnish",
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      "sense": "advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated",
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      "lang": "Finnish",
      "lang_code": "fi",
      "sense": "advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated",
      "word": "positiivinen syrjintä"
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      "lang": "French",
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      "sense": "advantaging minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated",
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      "word": "discrimination positive"
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  "word": "reverse discrimination"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-02-11 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-02-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 59dc20b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.