Some opponents say affirmative action devalues the accomplishments of people who are chosen because of the social group to which they belong rather than their qualifications.
[3] Opponents also contend that affirmative action devalues the accomplishments of all those who belong to groups it is intended to help, therefore making affirmative action counterproductive.
[4]
Opponents
[5] further claim that affirmative action has undesirable side-effects in addition to failing to achieve its goals. They argue that it hinders reconciliation, replaces old wrongs with new wrongs, undermines the achievements of minorities, and encourages groups to identify themselves as disadvantaged, even if they are not. It may increase racial tension and benefit the more privileged people within
minority groups at the expense of the least fortunate within majority groups (such as lower-class whites).
[6]
Conservative commentator Dr.
Thomas Sowell identified some negative results of race-based affirmative action in his book,
Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study [7]. Sowell writes that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups (i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action) to take advantage of group preference policies; that they tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g., upper and middle class blacks), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g., poor whites or Asians); that they reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and that they increase animosity toward preferred groups.