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Jared Taylor has argued that the consequences of strong affirmative action are overwhelmingly harmful to black Americans and to American society. He writes as follows:

If anything brings down the American experiment, it will be the notion that deliberate race consciousness can lead to racial harmony, that reverse racism can eliminate racism. Affirmative action, minority set-asides, and double standards are well-meant folly. If America really were boiling with white racism and the nation's most urgent task were to stamp it out, what more insanely inflammatory policy could one invent than to discriminate against whites because of their race?

Taylor goes on to indicate why he believes that explicit racial distinctions will cause harm.

Racial distinctions replace the principle of individual merit with that of group rewards. If blacks get favors simply because they are black, it encourages them to think of themselves neither as individuals nor as Americans, but as blacks. How can blacks help but think of themselves as a separate people when society, at every turn, treats them as a separate people? In turn, how can we expect whites not to respond in kind to 'ethnic aggressivity'? And finally, how can blacks be expected to believe in ability and hard work when society rewards them for being black instead?

Reference: From Jared Taylor, Paved with Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America, p. 356.