“So if you’re not a white male you’re a semi-literate token?”
Usually, because of the design of affirmative action. For example, while members of “protected classes” may qualify as a lieutenant in the army, affirmative action takes those candidates and makes them captains. Those that would qualify as captains are pushed up to major, etc.. The same occurs in higher education: candidates that would be qualified for a county college are admitted to state schools, work that would qualify for a bachelor’s degree is taken for a master’s degree, and so on. The problem is that the “beneficiary” is always out of their league, surrounded by better-qualified & trained people, and in most cases, they know it. It is a recipe for failure, and results in real dishonesty in appraising such workers/students.
In college I watched “preferred students” who would have never graduated high school in a “white” system spend a semester looking confused in a state college before dropping out; nobody did them any favors (whatever the intentions/goals were).
That is the very sad part about affirmative action. Promising students are admitted to schools for which they are not prepared. They get beaten down by the system and wash out. It’s a shame because some of these students end up feeling like losers for the rest of their lives when, in fact, they were among the best.