| I also generally agree that Aff. Action is wrong. However, on your specific points (for ease, I'm focusing primarily on ethnicity. You could stretch most of the points to fit all forms of aff. action though):
1) Racism is essentially omnipresent. It isn't going away anytime soon. What we can do is limit discrimination through policy/media/etc that affects society and how it works. We can't change very directly how people feel about each other, but we can change whether they are allowed to express these feelings into physical or legal means. Yes, discrimination is wrong today, and things are going against it. Aff. Action, though a form of discrimination, may defeat it in the long run.
2) This is stupid, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. The most effective way that the government can combat something is through passing laws and changing policies, not twiddlings its thumbs and hoping something happens. Aff. Action lets the government do something to combat (past or present) discrimination and ethnic barriers, and not just sit there.
3) I can't come up with much of an argument against this. I will say that the focus is more on the "actioned-in" guy than the "actioned-out" though, and that the policy is focused on helping the ethnically disadvantaged and not harming others.
4) This does make some sense. However, increasing the welfare of disadvantaged groups would also help society in making it more mixed and diverse in all of its levels. It also keeps wealth from simply being passed down through advantaged groups and lets previously disadvantaged ones rise, either through an education or a better job. This would help society. I don't know which of our points would be better though. |