To say that it is "only now" trying to rectify racial disparities is to completely ignore the last 60 years at least.

The civil rights fight in the 60s and the following Nixon and Reagan administrations prove my point more strongly than yours.

The civil rights fight is precisely what I am talking about. The civil rights act, and subsequent legislative and judicial decisions based on that, have fundamentally altered our legal system and our bureaucracy. That a couple presidents tried to undue those changes does not undermine the profound impact to federal policy.

It's not a matter of so-called preferences. It's a matter of interests. The capitalist state, in aggregate, always serves the interests of capital. Chattel slavery was literally a system for producing commodities. Jim Crow laws were later enacted to undermine solidarity among workers in the south and maintain an official underclass ripe for exploitation by capital to produce commodities.