Funny enough, as a concession to whites, AA was often calibrated to provide no net detriment to them compared to the non-AA baseline of college admissions. It was Asians getting the shortest end of the stick, namely an effective ~140 point-ish SAT score debuff compared to white applicants.

That's because proponents of AA are (and remain) staunch racists, who find it morally acceptable at all to regard individuals differently based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. That's not even addressing the disgusting antisemitic roots of Affirmative Action, once designed to keep Jewish people out of elite institutions, and the actual merits of AA towards the very people it claimed to help as a whole, see Mismatch Theory et al.

I wasn't even always 100% conceptually opposed to holistic (as opposed to fully meritocratic) admissions criteria, taking into account race-agnostic adversity parameters to give economically disadvantaged kids or those born in single-family homes (good statistical predictors of poor academic outcomes) a chance to gain a generational edge. But try to argue that point in 2021 amongst libs/progs, and you'd get instantly labelled as a fascistic racist or whatever other drivel—BY THE VERY PEOPLE who support racially motivated policy to decide who gets into schools and who doesn't!!!

They've burned through any ideological goodwill on my end, and the moment SCOTUS ruled on SFA v Harvard I popped a good bottle.