There are a few very clear advantages to affirmative action. Firstly, affirmative action aids diversity in areas that are likely to lead to socioeconomic mobility. If admittance to colleges and hiring were totally race-blind, then it is likely that the demographics for their students would be heavily skewed towards Asian and white Americans. It may not seem that diversity is an inherently desirable thing, but diversity itself exposes people to more cultures, ideas, and points of view besides those that are most similar to their own, and normalizes cross-cultural interaction. This is essential to not only cultural transactions but also the diffusion of ideas and the development of society. When disadvantaged people are given this boost, they are being offered an opportunity to attend schools or be hired for jobs that they would not otherwise be frontrunners for, which comes with an obvious advantage for them and a more subtle advantage for society: social mobility. If people are more able to move from lower status to higher status, then a country is better off. Furthering education is not always attainable for minorities, who have higher rates of impoverishment, and therefore affirmative action is needed to balance this. In addition to this, affirmative action promotes work and study among those that it helps. Not only are those that are beneficiaries of affirmative action more incentivized to participate in these actions after admissions but making education and work more attainable to an entire subsection of the population also incentivizes them to work to achieve these things that are now reasonably within their reach. If people have an attainable and concrete goal in mind it stands to reason that they will try harder to achieve it than something that was historically held from them, especially if they see that people that are very similar to them who come from similar backgrounds are beneficiaries.
Although there are many good externalities of affirmative action, there are a few potential costs to society. The first of these is that affirmative action is very race-conscious, and in this way, is a form of reverse discrimination that can further widen the rift between groups in society. Within the last 0 years, it seems that there has been a great
increase in cases of police brutality, race-conscious reporting, and anti-minority political rhetoric. While this pales in comparison to the era before the civil rights act that started affirmative action, it appears putting race at the forefront of policy and political thought has a negative effect on perceptions of minorities. Many people disagree with affirmative action because it is essentially a form of reverse racism, where minorities are favored over the majority. This brings me to my next point, which is that affirmative action may not remedy stereotypes and racism because of the idea that admissions for minorities are not based on merit, but rather race. Giving a comparative advantage to some races over others means that the reality of admissions is that the bar is simply higher for one group than it is for another. With any admission or hiring process comes rejection for some, and the emotions involved with you or someone you know not getting into a college or university of their choice can be intense. It would be easy to take the blame out on the group that is favored over you, especially given the fact that these colleges and universities are not very transparent in their admissions, opening the door for speculation and feelings of being cheated simply because of your race, much like those same minorities were prior to the Civil Rights Act. It is important to note that this feeling can go both ways as well, as people of color can often feel as if they have cheated the system and only were admitted to schools because of their race, increasing feelings of alienation and resentment. Although there are many other pros and cons I will end with this one: it is not clear whether affirmative action even achieves one of its goals of creating diversity of opinion and viewpoint, because it operates on the assumption that people of color have different viewpoints from others and that they are similar in their backgrounds. There are plenty of affluent people of color that benefit from this policy, and I would argue that wealth is often a better indicator of diversity of viewpoint and opinion than color can be. I would also argue, however, that people of color are disproportionately underrepresented in the upper echelon of wealth in the United States.