Racism says an ethnicity is better or worse than another intrinsically.
This is recognizing a section of our population has been, by and large, historically kept from making those connections and intentionally favoring them, not just for their sake but for the sake of their children’s children, by working to get them the same levels of connections the privileged class has historically had.
There are plenty of eg, black doctors who raise privileged black children, and plenty of eg, poor rural whites who grew up in poverty.
Race-based affirmative action based on race doesn't do a good job of addressing the systemic problems with economic opportunity, and just causes rifts within society.
The historical lines correlate strongly (though yes, not 100%) with race so the white kid who's in the program as a result of the affirmative action who grew up in a poor area with poor schools is going to blend in with the "regular" whites whereas the black kid who was the child of doctors is going to still be judged on the first thing people notice about them - their skin.
Fixing our past sins will take both proactive action AND continual vigilance by all of us to fight our snap judgments and first impressions.
But I believe it would be MUCH better than today's "merit" based systems which just create insane amount of pressure on kids starting in middle school or even earlier, to pad resumes and compete for the best schools, etc. That's a race to the (mental health) bottom of a whole different sort.
Asian communities face less discrimination from the white community as there hasn't been a lot of reinforcement of negative stereotypes relating to any of the Asian communities. Compare that with the history and treatment of the black community and you can trace a direct line from slavery to where many communities are today. A lot of propaganda regarding black people had been fed to whites for hundreds of years in order to justify their enslavement.
The black community has seen Asians as a "preferred minority" who has benefited from their civil rights work and at the same time given opportunities they didn't have without giving back to black communities.
There is a lot of nuance in there, but that's the super short version.
Being white in America, or really anywhere else in the world comes with its privileges. If you haven't taken advantage of them, that's your own fault.
Suppose we created a national social graph, and gave each person a value in it. High prestige, high social access people automatically get a certain high rating, and other nodes are given fractional social access ratings dependent on their neighboring nodes. The devil's in the details here, but you get the idea.
Affirmative action could then be targeted depending on your level of social access. The less you have, the more affirmative action you get. This would allow for a lot more mixing of the social graph and result in a gradual leveling over time.
Is this appealing, in lieu of race-based affirmative action?
Racism also doesn’t presuppose any particular motive. There are many reasons that somebody could choose to be racist, and if you look at real world racists, you’ll find that they offer a wide variety of justifications for their views. Just as you have done in this comment. You are making the argument that your racism is morally righteous, and that it will create positive outcome (which, coincidentally, certainly isn’t an uncommon position for racists to take).
You’ve also made the mistake of presuming that the problem you describe requires a racist solution. It absolutely doesn’t. If wealth creates more inter-generational wealth, and poverty creates more inter-generational poverty, then you need a solution for social mobility, not to artificially elevate people based on ethnic group membership (which of course also disadvantages others based on their different ethnic group membership). A poor white or Asian kid, who’s family has always been poor, is going to face the same socio-economic disadvantages that you’re describing, and a wealthy black kid isn’t going to be facing them at all. The solution your offering (aside from being racist) doesn’t solve the problem you’re describing. In many cases, it actually makes it worse, because if you look at how such systems operate, you’ll find that a decent portion of the people who benefit from them actually come from relatively well off families.
