I have a Latino attorney friend who has had to fight this battle repeatedly over the years. He HATES affirmative action (and would have easily been accepted at his law school without it — speaks several languages fluently, is brilliant, extremely good public speaker, etc., etc.) His final solution: start his own practice, where he is doing VERY well.
On the other hand, both he and I have worked with sub-standard minority attorneys and engineers who were admitted to their schools and even at least partially got their degree purely because of their race. Those people REALLY tick my buddy off, because THEY are the reason he has had to put up with this invisible (and sometimes not-so-invisible) racism.
In sum, affirmative action has MAJOR negative consequences and helps to keep racism alive. Unitended consequences, or completely intended by the libs (i.e., keep the race issue alive as an issue)? Hard to tell, probably a bit of both...
Think about what you said....and affirmative action and med schools.....kinda makes ya sick, doesn’t it?