America's vapid fixation with race is ridiculous especially since it uses race as a proxy for social stratum when it could just be addressing class issues directly instead. If only there were some history of forms that parents fill out every year showing their income to the government that is more-or-less vetted to some degree—too bad we don't have such a thing that students could use to prove social stratum! Plus, what the hell is race anyway? An unethical tip one could give to university applicants would be to claim membership to the most beneficial group because it's not like university admissions has any way of proving your "race". Construct any fabricated story that'll get the most approval and maximize your chances of getting into a top university.

The very real downside is if you just provide equal opportunity then you would still end up with an all white/East Asian/Indian class. You can argue that this is fair and meritocratic and you would be right but I believe there are a lot of people that see value in affirmative action that makes classrooms look more like the racial distribution of the country and provides an easy step up for traditionally poor/downtrodden communities to improve themselves. Affirmative action isn’t only an American thing btw, it’s in China, South Korea, India etc. as well.

See: when they banned guns because of the black panthers.