“Affirmative action” as a legal concept, at least in America, started in 1961, about 14 years before women in America had a legally-protected right to apply for credit cards.

Feel free to argue that affirmative action was a mistake or is complete or has overshot its goal, or that it’s used as a tool of corruption in some instances, but you are simply incorrect when you suggest that these reforms originated out of some spontaneous ambush on reformers’ “enemies.”