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I know in Québec it's a method that has been used by the government for a few years now. In Montréal, they pushed it so far that they created a special program for minorities to get trained to be police officers, so they can cut the "farking white police" image, but all it did, for now, was change the image to "farking police filled with white wannabees". The schooling program of the special program is only half the length of the usual college program, so the "beneficiaries" of positive discrimination end up stuck into offices, since their bosses don't consider them apt to do the same job as the others. The solution only created a new problem. (I hold that from friends, black and white, in the police force of Montréal)
On another hand, racism can seriously cut your chances to get a job. A journalist sent job applications under different names (Quebecer and Arabic) with the same qualifications and the call back was greater under the Québec name than under the Arabic name. I did the same experiment (I'm from Ukrainian decent and have the last name to prove it) at 2 different places and got called twice under the fake name I used and once under my real name.
It's also hard to rent a place. One of my best friend is black and speaks French (and English) with no accent. She'll call somewhere, get an appointment to visit an apartment, then once she gets there, she'll be told it's already rented, leave, and see someone else (white) get in and visit with no restriction. But her take (and I agree with her) on positive discrimination for renting apartments is that it creates ghettoizing and leaves the town split in sections corresponding to race - and it's already a natural tendency in Montréal, I really don't think we should encourage more cleavage.
I don't tend to approve of positive discrimination, but think it might be a necessary solution as long as negative discrimination is existing, but then again, it's rarely applied in a functional manner, even if with good intentions.
Interesting but complicated issue, really.
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