That's not how it worked at all. Affirmative Action actually benefited white women more than any other minority group.

Affirmative Action was never about "lowering treatment for one race vs. another." It was about evening the playing field. That evening is gone and we have no solution as a replacement. It will demonstrably negative for minority groups (that aren't white women, lol) all because white people couldn't stand the idea of not having a leg up in something.

Which, btw, is the reason why your definition of racism is flawed, if not flat out incorrect. There has to be a power imbalance for racism to be real. Me calling someone a cracker doesn't mean anything compared to the structural inequalities I face as a black person. One of the few structural benefits I did have is gone now thanks to mediocre white people seething. Does that make sense?

I understand where you’re coming from since it is literally true, but fails to account for context. Consider a marathon in which half the participants were given 10 pound weights on each leg. Halfway through the race, the judges ruled those participants shouldn’t have weights on. Is the race now fair, since everyone is being treated equally? Of course not - they were immensely disadvantaged from the outset, so the only way to try to approach some level of fairness is to give them advantages to make up for their initial handicap. In theory, AA is meant to be corrective action to restore equity, at which point it can be dropped because it’s no longer necessary. AA isn't perfect and really needed to be replaced with less of a bandaid solution, but it was better than nothing which we now have.

Incidentally, this is also why “race blindness” is considered a bad thing in social justice. In theory it would be ideal that you don’t treat people differently, but in practice it means ignoring their disadvantages.