The problem is that not all people are born or treated equally, but the suggested outcomes and remedies are.
Thirty-five years ago, in my senior year,I got a new locker partner who had just moved over from Germany, where his father had been stationed. This was a young, African-American man. I am not sure of his fathers rank, but I got the impression he was higher ranking. In any case, when we started takling he stated that he was in the honors program in Germany and was planning on going to college. We only had one class together, and did not talk much. A couple of months later we were talking and I asked where he had applied at. His reply was shocking. As long as he got a 2.0 or better, UW had promised him a spot because he was black. The problem I saw with this was that they had closed down any applications for white students and we needed over a 3.0 grade average. My school was fairly mixed, with a lot of white students whose background and situation was a lot poorer. So, he was elevated over other students based off his race. At the time, it made little sense to me, as there were also other black students who needed help much more than he did. But, in fairness, years of discrimination needed to be remedied and making sure minorities got a leg up probably made sense.
Now, 35 years later His kids, and probably his grand kids, are still expected to be held down and needing help, based solely off race. It does not matter if they are rich or successful, only their race. This allows his grandchildren, which could be very well off, to step over poorer children both black and white. It does nothing but create racism in under achieving whites and does little to help disadvantaged minorities.
All the goals of affirmative action can better be reached by using class, income, location, and other factors.
For example....... limiting applications or scholarships to students from a particular school or district, with income guidelines, from single parent households, and are the from the first generation in their family to attend college.