I didn't know affirmative action was a thing. Being a minority who entered/graduated University, I hate to think that I could possibly have been admitted into University because of my status as an ethnic minority rather than because I was actually qualified.
Dirty little secret... a wide range of people experience imposter syndrome at elite schools.
I knew I was surrounded by many people who are way more smarter than me but I still thought I was well above average; at least for the first couple of years.
1. Race is, for the most part, relatively easy to determine. Some of the other groups you mention are less easy to determine.
2. The laws came into being in a time that very (extremely?) qualified minorities were being passed over for basically racist reasons. Once an entitlement like this is given in the US (to anyone), it is typically difficult to take away. Fwiw, I personally don't believe that we are at a race-blind state such that taking away preferences should be eliminated, but I believe that these preferences will persist even after a point that we become "race blind" just due to the nature of the system. Any politician who votes to end affirmative action is essentially condemning themselves to the label of "racist" (rightly or wrongly). This will only potentially be resolved, imho, when being mixed is the norm "race", so racial identity will largely be an anachronistic concept. I'm not sure when we will see that state, if ever.
3. If something like low socioeconomic status (SES) is considered, then whites will again likely be over-represented. While some races might be disproportionally low SES, white people have a higher absolute number of low SES members. The difference is that an aspirational white person who wants to social climb has a much easier time of it than a person from other races.
4. Note that race is not the only factor in affirmative action. There is an implied consideration of being discrimated against, being low SES, etc. This is why Asians are typically not considered "oppressed minorities". Interestingly, race blind admissions tend to favor Asians more than whites by a lot. Check data on Berkeley and Stuyvesant for data on this topic.
If people want to fight against racism we'd be better off with groups that are fighting against people being treated differently because of their race--regardless of what race they happen to be. Imagine an organization that is just as upset about Asians needing higher test scores to get into Ivy League schools as they are about a black person being treated worse by the police than someone with lighter skin in the same situation.
Sure. For instance: the NAACP is actively working to improve conditions for black people. The reason they do that is that as recently as my own birthday (I'm 40), African Americans were actively excluded from American life; for instance, they were redlined out of neighborhoods across Chicago and concentrated into lower-income neighborhoods that were allocated poorer services. And that's just what happened within my lifetime. Go back just a few years earlier and black people couldn't reliably vote, and were beaten and attacked with dogs for marching for their own rights.
It's not surprising that someone without African American heritage would look at this and see only an effort to improve outcomes for black people. Obviously, that's what it is. Also, though, what it is is necessary: a corrective for multiple centuries of --- let's call it what it is, I guess: institutionalized oppression.
It sounds you feel that the way to right the wrongs of racism against blacks in the past is to practice racism against other races today. I know you aren't alone in this view, but I disagree for the following reasons:
First of all, if we agree that racism is morally wrong, then I don't see how practicing racism today can be considered a morally right solution to racism in the past.
Second, even if we can morally justify penalizing the descendants of slave owners in order to create benefit for the descendants of slaves, categorizing people based on the color of their skin isn't a good way to do this. There are white people whose lineage had nothing to do with owning slaves and there are people whose African ancestors owned, captured and sold people into slavery.
Poor academic and other performance is just one small symptom of larger systemic issues.
In order for the US to move in a positive direction broken social divisions must be smoothed, opportunity for all must be increased, and the military industrialization of community servants must be reversed to return those groups to helping instead of harming citizens.
Like culture, which is sadly, by choice.
There are plenty of studies and articles out there on the effects of systemic racism if you are interested.
I do agree that we can do better in acknowledging and enacting policy to recognize and minimize the difference between economic classes.
First, the numbers for underrepresented students are pretty terrible. I spent some time doing outreach programs for graduate students, so I'll speak to that. AMS runs a survey of recent Ph.D. graduates in math and I just pulled the report for the 2013-2014 year (http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/2014Survey-...). During that period, 920 U.S. citizens received a Ph.D. in math. Of those, 25 were African-American and 29 were Hispanic. That means that of those that graduated, 2.7% were African American whereas they comprise 13.2% of the population and 3.1% were Hispanic whereas they comprise 17% percent of the population. Clearly, there's a disconnect here, which should raise eyebrows.
As to why the numbers are that bad, it's complicated. In truth, it's hard to sell graduate school to underrepresented students since they tend to be poor. Imagine if you're the first person in your family to graduate from college with a technical degree. You can go out and immediately start making something like $60-70k/year on a job or make $25k/year as a graduate student for the next eight years. Eventually, a graduate degree pays itself off, but it's a hard sell especially with family pressure. That said, this does correlate with poverty.
In addition, there is a bias in admissions in favor of students who went to tier-1 research or Ivy League schools. Students from schools like Columbia are seen as better candidates than students from state schools. This hits underrepresented students hard in two ways. One, fancy schools are expensive and they tend to be poor. Two, family structures are such that it's less accepted for a student to move that far away from family, so they go to a state school and perhaps get a wonderful education, but they have a disadvantage getting into graduate school since they didn't go to a fancy school.
Also, as I alluded before, family and cultural issues different between races. Successful recruitment needs to be mindful of family structures and how to engage the family into making the transition to a graduate school that is likely not in their hometown easier. Candidly, we don't have good research universities in every town and family ties and values differ between races.
Now, bringing a student into a program that they're not qualified for is terrible for everyone around. It's bad for the student since it crushes their confidence and waists their time if they fail. It's bad for the department since it saps what little money they have for stipends. Good outreach programs spend their time and money looking for qualified students and encouraging and sometimes helping them to work through the process. That takes time and money, which is why these programs require funding.
As a last note, also be aware that in the past, there was explicit segregation based on race at the university level and that kind of imbalance takes a very, very long time to rebalance. For example, Rice University disallowed non whites from attending until 1964. Though, for a time, certain Asians were seen as white enough to make the cut. How long it takes to rebalance that equation is certainly up for debate and I personally don't know how long. That said, there is a moral argument that certain institutional disadvantages require rebalancing and that we may not be finished with that process.
So, yes, there are bad programs out there, but I contend there are some really good programs that have found some diamonds in the rough. Getting these students into school has been good for the community and country. Yes, this costs money. Yes, this money could be allocated elsewhere. I will contend, though, that many programs have paid off their tax dollars in spades.