Affirmative Action Discrimination

One thing that brings race into affirmative action program is what concept of affirmative action is being used and discussed. When discussing white guilt and how it contributes to affirmative action, many people who experience the white guilt may be thinking about “affirmative action towards blacks versus affirmative action in general” (Swim and Miller, 1999, p513). This seems to resonate with the concept of color-blindness. There are two major settings of color-blindness concepts: color-blindness in general or color-blindness in regards to black and white relationship. When looking at the different expressions of color-blindness and individuals’ responses to how their color-blindness is process, there is implications of discussion of white …show more content…
The simple fact that affirmative action is based on ending and assisting discriminated groups, which is based on race and gender, demonstrates that there is not a race-neutral society, a color-blinded society. Instead it demonstrates that there are constantly new concepts that are being created to cover up the privileges of whites by saying that everyone has an equal opportunity. Affirmative action programs go against color-blindness because affirmative action believes that not everyone is one the same playing field while color-blindness believes that we are and thus does not push or encourage further interventions to end inequalities (Bonilla-Silva, 2015). The big picture argument for color-blindness is that race shouldn’t matter anymore and in some sense, it shouldn’t (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich, 2011). It shouldn’t matter in how you treat other people, it shouldn’t matter in how you judge someone, and it shouldn’t matter when you first approach an individual. Yet, it does matters because of the way in which race is used in our society. The appearance of an individual automatically says something about the individual even before they start talking. The skin color of an individual seems to already informed a person about the characteristics and experiences of the individual, which is not …show more content…
There are arguments that affirmative actions have done nothing to level the field because of the negative perceptions it created. There are also arguments that because of affirmative action there is now equal opportunity and no discrimination, resulting in color-blind racism. Even with affirmative action programs, the inequalities are still present because it takes time to change but it also takes more effort in creating more interventions that address the root of the inequalities. It also takes awareness of a person’s own privileges and acceptance that privileges exist that are also important. Even though affirmative action is highly associated to race, both class and gender are interconnected with race that it is also contribute to affirmative action outcomes for certain groups of people. These programs are not enough to end and stop inequalities but understand that some things that is supposed to help can actually continue to perpetuate it or create something else that only extends the