I meant the other way around. If you are using affirmative action to benefit minorities[1], try not to benefit folks who are already well off (for a reasonably

I meant the other way around. If you are using affirmative action to benefit minorities[1], try not to benefit folks who are already well off (for a reasonably high definition of "well off"). This issue would be a lot less contentious then. I don't know the stats on this, but anecdotally speaking (this also seems to be a commonly held belief), the majority of the folks who benefit from these things are much, much better off than many of the folks who don't benefit. (Note that the total reservation of seats is around 50% in most places, often more). Of course, it's not as easy as simply filtering by income by setting a threshhold. In some cases you may want a income-agnostic reservation, too, to prevent caste-based discrimination (not so common in cities, but it still exists), in cases where there are strong human elements in the selection process (i.e. it's not just based on the results of a test, but where there are people in the pipeline who may discriminate). This is something that may need to be handled in a nuanced way. (Not that I'm saying that reservation is the only solution, just saying that if we want to stay within the confines of this system, it can be improved a lot) [1] FWIW, in India, everyone is technically a minority, though of course not all minorities have been downtrodden. In this specific case a possibly-non-downtrodden (as far as public opinion goes, this group is in general quite well off) minority is requesting special treatment, which is receiving opposition.