In theory but there is effectively already in many cases greater affirmative action for white people already. Lets look at Harvard as a case study.

43% of white students at Harvard are legacies, athletes, or related to staff and 75% of these 43% wouldn't have been admitted on merits.

Around 1/3 of white people at Harvard are there because of effectively white affirmative action.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-...

A drive to pick people solely on merits would sound more meritorious if we applied it to white people first. I say this as a white man who believes in theory colorblind meritocracy in an imaginary world where such a thing can actually exist.

I have nothing against moving the entire college admission over to be anonymous test based. Progressive people doesn't like it though.

So explain the drive to eliminate test based admissions at heavily Asian NYC and VA public high schools

I don't feel the need to as one doesn't negate the other.

> Since it’s selecting people based on race.

This can also apply to antiracism, which as I understand it [1] is policy that attempts to undo structural racism, not policy that is absent of race-conscious treatment. I think this question would also be more interesting to answer because everyone already agrees that affirmative action literally does factor in race. The more controversial part is whether it serves to reinforce or counteract some forms of systemic racism.

[1] From a modern viewpoint (e.g. Kendi), although I'm not sure if this word previously had different uses.

Racism. But we'll call it anti-racism!

From this perspective (Kendi, etc.), it is very much not the same as racism and is not just "racism" being rebranded. The term "anti-racism" really only makes sense when you consider this dichotomy using the more specific definition of racism.