I've always wondered why admissions people just didn't swap out affirmative action utilizing race and replace it with affirmative action utilizing the applicant's (and their parent's) financial net worth.

The logic of affirmative action in regards to race is that minorities may not have the same educational opportunities as white people in the United States because they live in a crappy neighborhood. They presumably live there because their parents have a crappy job, because they themselves did not get a good education. The cycle they are stuck in is crappy education leading to a crappy job, which leads to a crappy education for the next generation. The idea is that they got stuck in this cycle because of past prejudice leading to reduced financial and educational opportunities.

So instead of introducing new opportunities for disadvantaged people by their race, why not do it by their financial status? It is not that a person needs opportunity because of their race - a person needs additional opportunities because of their current financial situation, regardless of their race...

This seems more fair to me than other attempts to help out people with limited educational opportunities. No racial bias in either direction. The government already helps out poor people with various welfare programs, so preferential treatment of poor people is apparently legal under the Constitution. And if some rich kid doesn't get in to a school, it's not because he was white, but because he was dumber than all the other rich kids. It can't be because he/she was rich, because he had access to resources that a poor applicant did not.