[someperson]

Racial groups are themselves not homogeneous.

There are plenty of eg, black doctors who raise privileged black children, and plenty of eg, poor rural whites who grew up in poverty.

Race-based affirmative action based on race doesn't do a good job of addressing the systemic problems with economic opportunity, and just causes rifts within society.

[majormajor]

Opportunity-based affirmative action is something that I think would be desperately useful, but ... it would run into a lot of the same perceptual problems as race-based programs.

The historical lines correlate strongly (though yes, not 100%) with race so the white kid who's in the program as a result of the affirmative action who grew up in a poor area with poor schools is going to blend in with the "regular" whites whereas the black kid who was the child of doctors is going to still be judged on the first thing people notice about them - their skin.

Fixing our past sins will take both proactive action AND continual vigilance by all of us to fight our snap judgments and first impressions.

But I believe it would be MUCH better than today's "merit" based systems which just create insane amount of pressure on kids starting in middle school or even earlier, to pad resumes and compete for the best schools, etc. That's a race to the (mental health) bottom of a whole different sort.