Point : Affirmative action programs are intended to enhance racial and sexual equality, but you can’t do that by treating people unequally. If equality is the goal, it must be the means, too. With affirmative action programs, you use racial and sexual considerations – but that is the very thing that has caused so much harm in the past and that affirmative action itself is hoping to get rid of.
Counterpoint : I admit that it is distasteful to have to take racial and sexual considerations into account when dealing with individuals in employment situations. I wish we didn’t have to. But the unfortunate reality is that in the real world racial and sexual factors go a long way toward determining what life prospects an individual has. We can’t wish that reality away by pretending the world is colorblind when it is not. Formal, colorblind equality equality has to be infringed now if we are ever to achieve real, meaningful racial and sexual equality