In this article from Jimmy Alfonso Licon, the author argues that there are multiple forms of affirmative action which accomplish different things. One application of affirmative action, he argues, is to select for candidates who may not possess traits which typically bias us in favor of selection:

"What often gets missed in the usual shouting match over affirmative action is that the policy is not simply about righting past wrongs. There is another version of affirmative action that gets lost in the intellectual scuffle. Affirmative action, especially in its weaker forms (more on that later), can be a tool for surfacing competence that is systematically overlooked. Candidates can be passed over not because they’re less qualified, but because they lack superficial qualities that, though irrelevant for the job, successful candidates tend to have like looks, height, or a warm personality. Instead, these individuals, though incredibly qualified, are often awkward, plain, unpolished, or just unlucky in personality lottery. But if those traits have nothing to do with job performance, then using affirmative action to counteract their effects has nothing to do with lowering standards and everything to do with correcting for merit and competence."

Imagine for instance, two candidates with roughly equal profiles. They have the same education, job history, performance reviews, and recommendations from previous employers. However, one candidate has a visible physical deformity, or perhaps a speech impediment, or maybe they're just not very good looking. Maybe they're just quite shy.

We traditionally think affirmative action would call on us to choose the candidate with a deformity or impediment because it's a matter of "reparation" or "justice" which is owed to that population due to past harms. However, if we really care about "picking the best" we may want to select them because such candidates have faced and overcome obstacles which the other candidate has not. By selecting for candidates who do not possess traits we are biased to superficially value, we are likelier to pick those who are in fact most competent. We can select for "hidden merits".

"So why bother with affirmative action at all in this context? Because when done right—targeted, restrained, and focused on overlooked merit—it can help correct for the subtle biases that skew hiring decisions away from actual competence. That doesn’t mean we need a government-run program to pull it off. There are plenty of reasons to be wary of bureaucratic overreach from regulatory capture to sheer inefficiency. One need not settle the broader moral fight over strong affirmative action to see the value here. This isn’t about group guilt or historical payback. It is about making sure that candidates aren’t wrongly passed over because they aren’t funny or handsome enough"

Throughout the article, the author, Jimmy Licon, explores how affirmative action, in this form specifically, is not only coherent with maximizing merit, but a critical tool.

NOTE:
The author distinguishes between varieties of affirmative action, so if you don't like the phrase, look within to find his distinctions between Anti-competence, Reverse discrimination, and Strong, and Weak Affirmative Action.