I read your entire comment, and understand that it contains more nuance than the first statement - but that does not diminish the fact that this position is explicitly racist.
You can either want people to be treated without regard for their race, or you can try to use racist policies to "push the needle the other direction". They are mutually exclusive perspectives.
A "racist" idea would be that one race deserves more than another because of some inherent flaw or virtue.
The idea of affirmative action is the objective fact that racist policies have already been created, and to decide to "go colorblind" would be de facto support for those racist policies that are already in place.
The position you quoted is explicitly antiracist, because it suggests the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences.
This is like saying it's unfair to help someone with a broken leg because it takes time away from people with other injuries. The problem is that someone broke the person's leg, not that their leg needs attention from a doctor.
Your justification for being racist doesn't prevent your actions from being racist.
Going to Yale is not the focus here, it's "being granted chances to excel in life."
You continue to ignore the actual problem here (that minorities are disproportionately failing to excel academically and in society), and I'm beginning to wonder if you even see that as a bad thing...
You can’t say this after claiming someone “admitted to Yale may have no other opportunities at the kind of life a Yale graduate might receive.” What evidence do we have that this is uniquely enabling for a person of one race and not another? Yes, it may be uniquely enabling for the affirmative action candidate. But that doesn’t rule out it being uniquely life changing for someone else.
> I'm beginning to wonder if you even see that as a bad thing
Shoddy form. (And self defeating.)
And yes, we’re dealing in aggregate. Trying to cite specific counterexamples to the statistics is a waste of time because the whole point is that it’s, overall, better. Nobody is arguing that it’s strictly better 100% of the time… but you knew that, and made your argument anyway.
Fundamentally, do you care that certain minorities are massively underrepresented in many aspects of prosperity or not? There’s nothing self defeating about wondering if you’re one of the many people on the Internet who don’t care. You’re acting a lot like you don’t care, so the question is valid.
This is a massive, life-changing assumption you’ve made.
> do you care that certain minorities are massively underrepresented in many aspects of prosperity or not?
Yes. The consistent counter argument is this is a destructive way to address that problem.