Re: The just and the unjust ways to address modern racial inequality: affirmative act
While I understand your frustration and probably even agree that at some point affirmative action will be phased out there is a very valid, important and explainable reason why it was absolutely necessary.
To be consice... it was to avoid paying reparations (direct cash payments to individuals for their legitimate damages of being held and forced to work as slaves).
I understand it's hard especially if you're younger to truly understand the long term detriment that things like slavery and much more recently segregation, institutionalized racism, voter suppression & poverty plays in a groups academic development. It is a hard reality to grasp since except for poverty most hasn't been around in your lifetime. And since I don't think we've talked before I'm not Black I'm a 52 year old White male... so this isn't personal to me.
There are those that say affirmative action should have never happened or should have ended long ago. I would disagree with both those positions but do believe the time is near and yes I think electing a Black President of the United States helps move that point along.
I'm truly sorry this has affected you negatively because your grades and total package of accomplishments are truly admirable (I was a coach for many years so I've evaluated students & athletes).
Try to do this. From a removed position try to look at affirmative action as in this parable.
If you were in a terrible automobile accident hit by a drunk driver and so seriously injured partially paralyzed and would need intensive rehab to "maybe" someday be back up and able to work and earn a decent living...
Would it be enough for you to just have the practice of drunk driving stopped?
Or would you want your car replaced, all of your medical & rehab bills paid now & in the future and some compensation for all of your pain and suffering?
Slaves were brought to the new world either against their will (kidnapping) or by (fraud) & trickery, broken away from family (crime against children & kidnapping), lost everything they had at home, stripped of any property and valuables (theft), refused the right to return home (kidnapping), refused education (intentionally held down & discriminated against) and were forced to be slaves for years & years & years often beaten, raped & killed (felonious assault, rape & murder).
So you can see there were things done much, much worse than some legal attempt to give this group a chance to recover and get up to a reasonably close level to where they may have been had none of this been forced upon them.
Should the slave owners or the government just made cash payments to all former slaves at the start in an attempt tp wipe the slate clean at the original generation? A case could be made for that.
But they did not and racial inequality continued for many more years & years & years. Affirmative action was an attempt to help right a wrong that had never been addressed.
Again I'm sure you will still do extremely well in life. You have a lot going for. Best of luck!