My main issue is that I was accused of "bringing race into the discussion", when it was already very much a part of the topic of the discussion (which you seem to agree). My points and explanation of dog whistles were aimed at that.
I want to be clear that I never accused the parent of being racist (and I don't have reason to believe he was being so). I just expressed that the specific choice of argument felt similar to rhetoric that racists do use, and that supporting it with non-racial evidence instead might better serve the argument. (I admit to also wanting to encourage readers to think critically about a topic so rife with racial tension on both sides)
>As a society we need to decide if we want to advantage some races over others. In my opinion it makes more sense to advantage people from poor backgrounds then it does based on race...
The justification for making it based on race is that it is a form of reparation to the collective racial communities, especially the black community, that have been negatively impacted by a deliberate effort by the government to keep them in a cycle of poverty (black codes, redlining, etc). The other goal is to have a broader ethnic representation in careers requiring a college-education, which is required to effectively remove the inherent internal prejudices in those circles (see also the push for getting women into STEM, and the backlash that they face upon entering due to the lack of women already there to set in-cultural norms).
An unfortunate side effects is that, taking only AA and diversity initiatives into account, a rich black person will have fewer opportunities than a poor Asian American, due to the already high proportion of East Asians in the relevant areas. That's more an issue of the extremely strong disparity of wealth and power in this country than an actual criticism of AA, however. Controlling for wealth, non-Asian POC will still often have fewer opportunities due the the strong influence of networking and in-group prejudice/bias on your career opportunities (which is one of the reasons that AA and diversity initiatives are required)
That being said, I don't know enough about the actual effects of said policies to judge their effectiveness, since I'm not a sociologist and assessing the real results of a policy with such complicated interactions is difficult. I can only speak confidently to the a priori justifications.