The entire concept of affirmative action is that not everybody has had equal opportunity.
A student from low income parents will probably have gone to a poorly resourced school, they will have never had tutoring, they may have had to start working a job after school, affecting their study. They may not even have access to a computer or the internet outside of school hours (another reason why public libraries are an essential public service). Even the food you eat growing up can have an effect on academic performance. If you're not getting a good breakfast or lunch, there's no way you're going to be able to learn effectively.
A lot of these students are just as smart and capable as students from better off backgrounds. But their school results will be lower. Once they end up in the same environment as their wealthier peers, they tend to catch up quickly. If you look at the pass rates at Harvard by ethnicity [1], you'll see that they're very similar for all ethnicities (with the exception of Native American).
Delineating by race is a very blunt tool for affirmative action, and there are questions as to it's effectiveness, it also means that White people from poor backgrounds get left out, and black or hispanic people from wealthy backgrounds get an unfair leg up. But it's not fair to simply say "if you have good grades, you go to a good university". Equality is not equity.
A student from low income parents will probably have gone to a poorly resourced school, they will have never had tutoring, they may have had to start working a job after school, affecting their study. They may not even have access to a computer or the internet outside of school hours (another reason why public libraries are an essential public service). Even the food you eat growing up can have an effect on academic performance. If you're not getting a good breakfast or lunch, there's no way you're going to be able to learn effectively.
A lot of these students are just as smart and capable as students from better off backgrounds. But their school results will be lower. Once they end up in the same environment as their wealthier peers, they tend to catch up quickly. If you look at the pass rates at Harvard by ethnicity [1], you'll see that they're very similar for all ethnicities (with the exception of Native American).
Delineating by race is a very blunt tool for affirmative action, and there are questions as to it's effectiveness, it also means that White people from poor backgrounds get left out, and black or hispanic people from wealthy backgrounds get an unfair leg up. But it's not fair to simply say "if you have good grades, you go to a good university". Equality is not equity.
[1] https://www.scholarships.com/colleges/harvard-university/gra...