I agree that Affirmative Action was flawed, and it was never going to solve systemic racism, but I don’t think it perpetuated “negative racial stereotypes”. The people who believe racist stereotypes were going to believe them regardless or did before Affirmative Action was ever enacted. Seems like it would be a Right-wing talking point to blame racism on Affirmative Action.

Affirmative Action is a band-aid in a terrible system that needs to be abolished but it was better to have it than not. Under a better system where systemic racism is dealt with to an extent then we can have an objective focus on individual merit, but I don’t think it’s realistic to think racism won’t impact the subjective decision-making process under our current system and lead us back to where we started. Granted, astronomically high tuition rates which only continue to rise are already barring working class students and making university a possibility only for already-wealthy domestic students and increasingly for international students because of the higher revenue they bring for programs.