> Why not just.. well, let poor people come first?
Data shows that poor white children fares better in life than poor black kids[0][1]. This pattern is not even exclusive to the US: Brazil, for example (a case I'm familiar with), faces the same problem[2] and this led the government to implement affirmative action racial quotas for admission in state-owned Universities since 2012[3] with very positive results[4].
But why is that? Wouldn’t the right answer be to identify and root out any systematic racism benefitting whites rather than implement explicitly race-based (one might even say “racist”) counter-measures?
The "root" is probably in the police, war on drugs, racist people on positions of power, neglected neighbourhoods, etc. The World has been trying to solve racism for decades now, if it was so easy, we wouldn't be talking about this right now.
Affirmative action makes sense because it's a policy that's simple, cheap and fast to implement to counterbalance this. And let's not forget that, in the past, the State legally discriminated against those people and no historical reparation has ever been given to them.
Data shows that poor white children fares better in life than poor black kids[0][1]. This pattern is not even exclusive to the US: Brazil, for example (a case I'm familiar with), faces the same problem[2] and this led the government to implement affirmative action racial quotas for admission in state-owned Universities since 2012[3] with very positive results[4].
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/12/black...
[1] https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/two-american-experiences-ra...
[2] https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/educacao/2022/10/pobre-preto-t... (article in Portuguese)
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/world/americas/brazil-ena...
[4] https://nacla.org/affirmative-action-brazil