Abstract
Affirmative action was born in the United States. It was originally designed to favour Black people, whose ancestors where slaves. Then, such programs extended to other underprivileged categories of the population: the disabled, the women, the Latinos. The first to use the phrase "Affirmative action" was President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1961. The core idea was that despite civil rights laws, increasing equality required to promote Black people to upper social categories, for instance through an easier access to university. At that period were also created some jobs reserved to ethnic minorities. Nevertheless, quotas were never used to enforce this policy. The Supreme Court even stated in 2003, that quotas are against the constitution. Indeed, the federal government had to plan pro-minorities laws, without ever using the quotas. The results that came out of this policy in the United States seem to be cheering. Indeed, in 1960, only 13 % of the Black people in the United States belonged to the middle-class. Today, this figure amounts 66 %.
