I’m not sure I have an opinion on affirmative action generally, but it strikes me that it will be difficult if not impossible for the two camps to find middle ground on the issue - because ensuring equality of treatment and equity of outcomes are probably mutually exclusive.

Said differently, I can see how you can either truly treat everyone the same, or try to make sure everyone has equality of opportunity/outcome, and to be sure both are individually a reasonable goal on paper.

The problem is, they can’t both be true. Either everyone has the same treatment, which doesn’t solve the problem of some people starting the race far behind the starting line; or the system tries to compensate for disadvantages, which inherently means that not all participants are afforded the same treatment.

Hard to see how to resolve that deadlock.