Affirmative action is one of the weakest things we can do, but it's what we have now and I support doing what you can.
Btw, your point about AA helping privileged members in unprivileged groups rings true, which is part of why I think it's the weakest thing we could do.
Well...yes. No where did I say that affirmative action policies are the only or a permanent solution, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who did. But they are an immediate bandaid that at least in theory stops the feedback loop.
In other words, I agree, but I'm asking in the context of "is there anything that can be done in that funnel that is superior to affirmative action", and it appears that you also agree that the answer is no. In which case, it comes down to whether or not the outsized[1] benefit to privileged minorities is worth it.
[1]: And depending on your opinions of privilege, there's compelling arguments to be made that the benefit to otherwise privileged minorities isn't outsized, they'd just be even more successful. Also that often you don't care about the most privileged since they'd all "pass" anyway, but the marginal group. But that's a bigger discussion.
So, go back in time and ban redlining, to allow black families to live in the areas with better schools and build wealth through home ownership? Sweet bro.
E.g. affirmative action in university admissions assumes that members of traditionally underprivileged groups did not have the opportunity to display their full potential and will have higher peak performance than their current scores suggest.
While this is true on average and affirmative action is the best you can do if you are limited to influencing this single funnel in the pipeline, it also ends up unfairly benefiting privileged members within unprivileged groups.
If more wide-reaching changes are possible, e.g. ensuring that everyone has the same chance to actually learn something in school, affirmative action would soon become redundant, since the difference it aims to correct would not exist any more.