Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of diminishing racial discrimination, addressing under-representation and evident racism against those racial groups. Some individuals consider racial quotas reverse racism. Racial quotas are closely linked to notions of group rights, and special rights.

These quotas may be determined by governmental authority and backed by governmental sanctions. When the total number of jobs or enrollment slots is fixed, this proportion may get translated to a specific number. In education, this kind of quota is also known as Numerus clausus.

Racial quotas in the United States began to be implemented with government approval after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, especially during the 1970s.Richard Nixon's Labor Secretary George P. Schultz demanded that anti-black construction unions allow a certain number of black people into the unions. The Department of Labor began enforcing these quotas across the country. After a Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Company, found that neutral application tests and procedures that still resulted in de facto segregation of employees (if previous discrimination had existed) were illegal, more companies began implementing quotas on their own.

Andrew Maxwell Haden (born 26 September 1950) is a former New Zealand rugby union player, who was a lock-forward for Auckland and New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s.

Born in Wanganui, New Zealand, he made his All Black debut in 1972, and his Test debut against the British Lions in 1977 – going on to make 41 appearances and scoring 2 tries. He played club rugby for Auckland, Harlequins in London and Algida in Italy.

Haden was a controversial player, who was accused of cheating and unsporting conduct by opposing players. The most infamous occurrence of this happened in a match against Wales at Cardiff Arms Park in 1978. The score was 12–10 in Wales's favour, when Haden and another New Zealand player, Frank Oliver, suddenly fell to the ground as if pushed. The referee awarded a penalty in the dying moments of the match, which Brian McKechnie kicked, winning the game for New Zealand. Later, Welsh legend JPR Williams wrote that Haden should have been sent off. Despite the controversy however, the referee subsequently stated that the penalty had actually been awarded for an actual infringement against Oliver and not the Haden 'dive' as was thought. Haden doesn't however deny that the attempts to cheat the referee were pre planned, something also confirmed by his captain Graham Mourie. The match happened on the same day as the annual 'Miss World' competition, which prompted Welsh cartoonist Grens to create a picture of the 'Miss World' event, but with Miss New Zealand lying on the floor, pretending to have been pushed. Haden made his last Test appearance in 1985 against Argentina.

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001. A leading conservative, he helped organize and fund the conservative resurgence in the 1970s, aiding Ronald Reagan's quest for the White House and helping many local and regional candidates.

A journalist by training, Helms was the longest-serving popularly-elected Senator in North Carolina's history, and was widely credited with shifting the one-party state dominated by the Democrats into a competitive two-party state. The Helms-controlled National Congressional Club's state-of-the-art direct mail operation raised millions for Helms and other conservative candidates allowing Helms to outspend his opponents in most of his campaigns.

An unreconstructed Southern conservative, he began his political career in the Democratic Party in the days when many white Southern politicians championed racial segregation. He moved to the Republican party in the 1970s. Helms was the most stridently conservative politician of the post 1960 era, especially in opposition to federal intervention into what he considered state affairs (integration, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act). Helms tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.