Affirmative action was always the means to take from one person and give such to anyone who claimed they had rights and privileges due them because of past inequities. Forgotten intentionally was that many persons over the years of settlers in the US was that most immigrants worked their butts off during the depression and great war years to earn being part of the US exceptionalism.
Yes, it’s true that settlers worked their butts off. And yes, affirmative action was about giving preference over those who ostensibly were more deserving. What I didn’t know was if that was really the case. I believed that a person deprived of a proper education would almost automatically perform more poorly than one who had had an adequate or above average education.
Even today, I know that slots at Harvard are going to blue bloods. They can give them to whomever they want, they’re a private institution. But even a public one would have trouble trying to balance this stuff.
I know that giving a kid baseball lessons with Pete Rose is for the most part giving him an advantage over some kid receiving baseball lessons from me.