Affirmative action does that. It casts aspersions on all of the genuinely qualified people who earned their places by hard work and diligence, like your friend’s father.
Those people are the casualties of the quota system as are the able who are pushed into institutions where they are not ready to succeed to fill a quote when they would have excelled at the spots their grades and intellects earned.
Thanks.
I will add and clarify to my above that both his father and then he, in his own right, were Judges of long tenure.