Affirmative action preferences have traditionally benefited four racial and ethnic group categories: African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. These categories may be overinclusive, masking important socioeconomic differences among nationalities within the categories. The problem of overinclusiveness is now being raised by post-Croson disparity studies and by courts evaluating those studies, particularly in the area of business formation rates. When the differences among nationalities are compared through census data and regression analysis, they show wide variations within the affirmative action categories and for White ethnic groups as well. This suggest that a discrimination hypothesis cannot explain all these variations. The affirmative action categories reflect bureaucratic convenience more than demographic realities.
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