How is Affirmative Action not racist?

I find the very idea of categorizing people based on color to be counterproductive to society. I believe that it reinforces the so-called importance of race when we should be moving away from every single method by which we further distance ourselves from on another based on ethnicity. How can you not see that it is patronizing, demeaning, and overly racist? And I am not referring to racism against whites or anyone else. I am saying that by pushing a profiling statistic to the forefront, you are being racist against humanity as a whole and furthering the very idea and concept of a racial divide.