“On the contrary, more blacks graduated from the system after the ban — for the very common sense reason that they were now admitted to University of California campuses where they qualified, rather than to places like UCLA and Berkeley, where they had often been admitted to fill a quota, and often failed.”
I saw this firsthand at a state university, and it was very sad; the blacks that should have been admitted were pushed further ahead (out of their league), while my school admitted students they shouldn’t have; in the end, the demoralized students drop out. They quickly realize that most students around them are much better prepared, and even if the professors give them “gentleman’s Cs” they weren’t learning.
In the 1970s a TV drama (the Bold Ones?) depicted an affirmative action physician tracked into a specialty beyond his competence. The script posited that he could have succeeded in something other than neurosurgery. (You couldn’t air such a script today. Sharpton would come down hard on Hollywood.) Help folks succeed to their abilities and let them study and work where that leads and then let them thrive.