I would like to point out that any discrimination based on race (and thus affirmative action) is forbidden by law in lots of other countries, for example Germany.
The example you give, Germany, has its own form of affirmative action codified under the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz which permits employers to give preferential treatment to ethnic groups subject to structural disadvantages or underrepresentation. Germany uses the term "Positive Action" in their legislation:
http://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/77201/93329/F6...
Article 3 of the German constitution (Grundgesetz):
"No person shall be favoured or disfavoured because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavoured because of disability."
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...
Job ads in Germany often state that disabled applicants will be favored because this is explicitly allowed.
Interesting how they never call it "racial discrimination" when it's something they like. I guess they had to come up with a euphemism to avoid the Pavlovian response they instilled.
What's needed is not affirmative action but a more honest appraisal about what the real obstacles are for Black and Hispanic students. And perhaps we'll discover that those obstacles cannot in fact be legislated out of existence.
Different cultural and ethnic groups value different things. Virtually nobody who clamors for more black and Hispanic representation in Harvard's undergrad class, for example, also clamors for more Asian representation in the NFL, even though that disparity is much, much greater, with only a single-digit number of current players.
There is a problem--but it's a matter of why they aren't as qualified. Pretending they are isn't going to fix the actual problem.
Redlining, a discriminatory practice prevalent in the mid-1900s, systematically denied access to housing loans and opportunities to minority communities based on race. As a result, neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by minorities were deprived of investment, economic growth, and wealth accumulation. This created a cycle of limited opportunities and limited access to resources that persists today.
Over time, this has led to a significant wealth gap between racial groups. Affirmative action seeks to address this imbalance by providing opportunities for marginalized individuals to overcome historical disadvantages and achieve upward mobility.
In programmer terms, racial affirmative action is a very lossy hash of reality, which leaves a lot of room for injustice both in terms of who it helps and who it doesn’t.
As an aside, I’ve always been confused about the dynamics of redlining. Wouldn’t refusing to give any mortgages for a neighborhood reduce the cost of buying a house there? Is the idea that it was purchased by landlords and everyone was made to rent instead of buying? Lowering housing costs for a group generally doesn’t seem like a bad thing…
As for redlining--while it certainly existed in the past I noticed something when there was a flap about it a while back. There was a very detailed article in the local newspaper about local "redlining". However, it didn't make sense--why would bankers only discriminate against black neighborhoods with low-down mortgages? If black is relevant why not all mortgages?
How about a simpler explanation that fits the facts? Something stood out to me about their map--the map of the "redlined" zip codes exactly matched an earlier article about appreciation. Suppose the bankers are looking at the chance a house ends up underwater a few years down the road? That gives no inconvenient inconsistencies in their behavior. Yes, it hurt the neighborhood but there's no racism involved, just simple economics.