What do you mean we’ve always been allowed to discriminate? I disagree; being “allowed” is what’s legal, that’s different from what’s socially acceptable. Discrimination by race in employment hiring has been illegal by law explicitly for 50 years and implicitly for 150 years. Yes many people have discriminated by race anyway and gotten away with it. Some still are. A major goal of affirmative actions are to try to get what’s socially acceptably wrong to move toward what’s legal and ethically right.