Diversity resulting from affirmative action enhances college campuses by bringing a wide range of backgrounds and experiences into the environment. An increase in diversity on campuses gradually reduces racism and discrimination as students begin to learn about each others' similarities. Everyone is part of the same community. Prejudices, which are grounded in ignorance, are eliminated through diversity.
Affirmative action hopes to accomplish distributive justice, which states that both the burdens and the benefits of society should be distributed equally. Affirmative action increases opportunities for those who have been discriminated against in the past, such as women and minorities. In this way, affirmative actions seeks to right society's past wrongs. Affirmative action programs seek to reduce the discrimination that has occurred and in some cases still occurs on college campuses.
Affirmative action ideally delivers compensatory justice as those who have been previously discriminated against are compensated. Minorities and women are victimized by discrimination when they are bypassed for educational opportunities. When reviewing applications, colleges take into consideration that many minorities lack the resources and opportunities that are afforded to white males. Affirmative action policies seek to even the playing field by giving a slight advantage to minorities.
Advocates for affirmative action believe that its outcome is the redirection of educational opportunities to those who need them most. This reduces poverty and its costs to society. By increasing diversity on college campuses, affirmative action negates stereotypes that women and minorities are inferior to white males. Those who benefit from affirmative action become role models for other members of minority groups and raise awareness about minority needs. Diversity as an outcome of affirmative action exposes students to the hardship and injustice suffered by others from a variety of perspectives.