Yes this is true, that can and has happened. I don’t think it’s true as rule, but it’s a valid point. Still, the most important question is what is the alternative?

We are closer to ending sexism and racism than we were 70 years ago before any affirmative action existed, right? Who’s to say that all the backfiring and unintended consequences that have happened aren’t better than the parallel universe in which maybe slavery still exists? Would it have happened faster with no quotas or boosts for groups that were historically discriminated against? Maybe yes, that’s possible, but we can’t know. What we do know is that we’ve made forward progress, even if imperfectly.

The thing that tends to be forgotten when people talk about affirmative action being preferential treatment is that the previous ‘in’ group was already getting preferential treatment, and maybe still is. We did not start from a level playing field. The core idea is to try to balance the pre-existing preferential treatment out. Unless you can resolve the cause of that, an easier way to attempt to handle it is to try to artificially make the preferences equal. The idea is not to give preferential treatment as an outcome, it’s to remove preferential treatment. This is related to how discrimination is not racism, and why positive discrimination is different from negative discrimination.