Race Crowds Out Genuine Disadvantage

Affirmative‑action programs as implemented often treat race as a dominant, automatic credential rather than one of many indicators of disadvantage, causing admissions to privilege racial markers over socioeconomic or experiential measures and producing predictable winners and losers (e.g., certain Asian subgroups). The mismatch between voters' resistance to race‑based preferences and elite defensive arguments suggests the policy design — not the principle of compensating disadvantage — is the problem. — If true, this reframes the affirmative‑action debate from a binary of 'for' or 'against' race‑based preferences to a policy design question about how to measure and weigh disadvantage without entrenching new inequities.