> For instance, one could imagine a utilitarian ethical system where you could discriminate against someone's race and cause a good much larger than the 'bad' of discrimination.
I can't imagine such a scenario. Maybe you could give an example?
Affirmative action is not measuring someone's achievements relatively to the external difficulties they faced. It's treating people differently because of their race. I.e. Racism.
You could give an advantage to people who grew up in poor areas, had poor parents, graduated from poorly preforming schools (or failed to graduate at all), etc. If you wanted to help people who faced more adversity.
Affirmative action discriminates in favour of the children of millionaires who had every opportunity to succeed but happen to be black, and against white and Asian kids who grew up in a trailer park and went to a school that couldn't afford books.
It's what happens when you target statistics without caring about people. People are individuals, not statistical representatives of demographic groups. You can't fix discrimination by discriminating, but you can hide it and that's what affermtive action seeks to do.
Racism (no matter what race is targeted) is wrong and unfair to the individuals affected, but I don't think it will have any real effect on job performance because I don't think the selection processes used correlate well with performance anyway.
Going back to using race and sex as a basis for selection is immoral and unfair, but it was the norm until recently. Many of the old white men at the top of government and corporate leadership now received more help on account of their race and sex than a young black woman is likely to receive today. I'm not saying this to justify racism today, just to say that I don't think we are likely to notice any difference by swapping one privileged class for another.
I can't imagine such a scenario. Maybe you could give an example?