Not in most universities, especially public ones. You don't get admitted to University of Texas or Texas A&M because your dad went there, that's against state law! You don't see the legacy nonsense much outside of private universities that cater to the 1%. I'm for abolishing legacy admissions, but really it affects only a tiny fraction of people.

Affirmative action didn't apply to most universities, anyway. It was mostly universities that catered to the 1%.

The low tier public university I went to explicitly stated that if you were a member of certain races the SAT requirements were reduced by ~200 points. They may be less blatant about it now, but from what I've heard affirmative action is still widely practiced. That's why you hear about white kids pretending to be other races(see Elizabeth Warren), but never the other way around.

By 2015, apparently in Texas really only UT Austin considered race in admissions. Under 20% of public schools did nation-wide.

For Elizabeth Warren, she didn't get into school on the back of that claim, I think it was more a social kudos thing.

You’ve actually seen Asian kids claim they are white as the standard is lower in many cases.

When you see the test results needed by Asians vs other races it’s jaw dropping.

I have a good mechanic. A bunch of locals discovered we have a good mechanic in the neighborhood, and the guy got too much work and had to stop taking new customers. As an old customer he still works on my vehicles, after a month or so on his schedule. So for this one small business I'm a legacy admission.

So say I call him up as a new customer. Scenario 1: Sorry, we can't take new customers, we're full up. Scenario 2: Sorry, we don't accept customers of your race/ethnicity/religion/sexual-orientation.

These scenarios feel very different to me.

If you're going to construct a weird strawman argument you have to at least attempt to reflect what is actually happening. It's easier to knock over when you conveniently fail to mention you and your neighbors are majority white and the mechanic still fits your family members into his schedule. And that most good mechanics in the city have the same situation.