They were talking about this on NPR this morning. They were explaining what's going to happen if the Supreme Court does away with AA. A lot of companies and universities will continue to diversify. Look for ways around it. For example, if you live in the Detroit zip code, you may get special preference because you come from a high poverty area. You could be white too. Just so happens most of the people in that zip code are black.
And as far as benefiting our society, AA has great benefits. Imagine there is no affirmative action so rich spoiled white kids are the only people who get into the best schools. Society doesn't benefit from them very much. Now imagine instead of Harvard taking all 10,000 whites, they take 2000 blacks because of Affirmative action. Those black people benefit their families and communities greatly. That's the best I can explain it but does that make sense?
If you let 2000 poor blacks from Detroit into UofM and Harvard and Yale, those 2000 Americans are going to benefit our society much more than if we go back to only letting whites with the best grades in. Rich white kids like my nephews who went to the best private schools, got the best tudors, who helped them take their SAT's and ACT's.
If we do away with AA, the gap between rich and rest of us gets bigger. It doesn't shrink. AA makes the gap shrink which is a good thing.
But the right wing supreme's will say it's unconstitutional.