I used to be really resentful of affirmative action by the way. "Just treat everyone equally now in the present" makes common sense, particularly as a young person in the precarious situation of working through college. It can be truly difficult to count one's blessings when trying to navigate one's particular difficulties. So to see other people getting aid just for "the color of their skin" breeds resentment - it's a significant optics issue, I'll give Scriver that!
I suggest that it's kinda like triage after a disaster. If I'm badly hurt and in a lot of pain, but I get a low-priority code and the medics focus on other people, then it's perfectly natural for me to be hurt, confused and resentful of the medics and their patients. One can even conceive of a situation where I'd be correct! They could actually be persecuting me, and I could literally die because of that! Or, potentially, those other people could have more critical injuries. I don't know, I'm not a medic and I'm a bit distracted trying not to die.
Imagine how I might feel if the medics were clearly spending more time on people of some evident group. A common religious group even. Those [X] medics must be looking after their own first, as always...
Then later, looking back, I might (IF my conclusion was wrong!) find out that the disaster was an anti-religious hate crime. That those victims needed more care because they were the primary target of the attack. My situation was still awful, but theirs was statistically much worse, and so they were prioritized for care.
I hope this didn't come off as condescending, I'm just trying to workshop accessible metaphors because optics and rhetoric are more important than changing minds on this forum. I also want to point out and maybe explain why I understand resenting affirmative action and, indeed, resenting people of color for their special opportunities. I obviously don't stand by that now, but I think I understand why *I* and many others felt that way.
A simpler, popular metaphor is of a footrace where one runner is hindered at the beginning, then unable to catch up later once allowed to run freely. It doesn't really capture the vicious cycle of poverty and the self-sustaining wealth of land ownership (the loans for which were denied) - things are actually *worse* than it depicts - but maybe it helps show why focusing only on the present is not inherently fair.