Agreed. Affirmative action was a bad idea.

We should never be giving special advantages or holding someone back based on their race.

I think everyone would agree that blacks shouldn’t have been enslaved and white people not conferred special advantages during the Jim Crow era, yes.

The question is such things did happen. How will you resolve the disparity, if at all? Clearly a very inflammatory topic.

> How will you resolve the disparity, if at all?

Look for other signals of this disparity aside from race; this isn't a new concept.

Why would you look for other signals when race in this example was the signal used for discrimination?

Suppose you use income. There are more poor white people than black people period. You could certainly help them instead of any black person. That may be more optimal depending on what your goal is, but if the goal was to combats racial inequality clearly that’s not useful.

Were slavery, Jim Crow, etc based on other signals aside from race?