... who don't know what institutional racism looks like. (One requirement would probably be that the discriminated-against group actually ends up with worse outcomes. Compare to say, Black people in the criminal justice system.)
I mean, seriously, even if you oppose affirmative action, do you really want to say that its advocates are morally equivalent to racial oppressors and make you ashamed of humanity? Martin Luther King, Jr. makes you ashamed of humanity?
Martin Luther King Jr preached that since whites had actively harmed blacks through the practice of slavery, they should do something special to fix it. I agree with that. However, the whites who are coming of age at this point in time have done nothing of the sort - why should they have to apologise for the actions of their predecessors? Why should a young white woman be punished for things that happened before she was even born? Is she responsible for the actions of all the whites who have ever lived just because she is also white? Do you really think that MLK was talking about future generations who are disconnected from those actions or the people who were right in front of him and still actively encouraging prejudice and racism back in those days? My personal opinion is that if someone participated in those practices, they should make good on them, say sorry, and help the person up, which includes paying what's owed and making room for them.
I don't think "here's the dictionary definition" is usually a useful argument, but in any case it's hard for me to see affirmative action as "excluding" white people, since it's generally practiced in fields where they remain dominant.
If the issue is that people are suffering prejudice based on their names then a better solution is to mask the names during the initial screening as opposed to making it a point to hire someone based on race. I'm sure that a study exploring the effects of different "white-sounding" names would see differences too.
Also note that the study does not draw any correlation between racism and the judgement of a name. Given people's tendency to be averse to things they are not familiar with, it's possible that it's a problem of someone not being comfortable with a culture they don't understand and not necessarily a problem with skin color.
Do you really think that people are biased with respect to names, but then forget that bias as soon as the person enters the room?
Also, it's unclear to me why it might be better to be prejudiced against African-American names than against African-American skin tones. Your definition of racism appears to (a) include policies that disadvantage the dominant group (white people), even when motivated by a goal of correcting historical injustice and insufficient to undo their/our dominance, but to (b) exclude actions that disadvantage the historically oppressed group (Black people), even when motivated by prejudice, as long as that prejudice isn't explicitly based on skin color. Do you maybe want to reconsider?
Those people probably don't understand how much of a disadvantage minorities face even in this day and age.
I used to be against affirmative action until I realized how many more opportunities were offered to me simply because of my culture and the expectations of my culture for me.
