I think sometimes people get way to hung up in "scores" or "GPA" and don't stop to think there is more to admissions/hiring/etc than numbers on a piece of paper. It's just my opinion but I think people are coming up with convenient excuses for why they didn't get something over someone else. For instance, with college admissions, unless a school does say they have a strict cutoff, then there's more to the packages than a perfect SAT score. Student A may want to take their perfect 1600 (is that still the high?) SAT and 4.0 GPA to Harvard or Princeton but have nothing else to offer in their package vs Student B who maybe had a 1400 and a 3.7 but was also Class President, captain of the baseball team, and volunteered at the soup kitchen while their single mother was working two jobs. Did Affirmative Action play a role? Maybe, but maybe Harvard also wants what Student B brings to their incoming class more than Student A's perfect scores. I always joke that "I'm a product of AA and proud of it" but I also had a "decent" SAT but a 4.0 and was a high school athlete and class vice president, therefore, I also think I was good enough for just about ANY college. I had a decent MCAT and pretty good GPA (most of you probably would think I shouldn't have gotten into med school) but i went to my home state school and had a high step 1 and graduated top 1/3 or my class. So maybe I was an AA case or maybe I wasn't
This is also a reason why once in med school (at least) affirmative action disappears. If to get an interview in ENT you need a 250 Step 1, then that's going to weed everyone below that out. For the most part colleges don't have cutoffs.
As for "privilege", I think it's been turned into this ugly word, but hell, I would LOVE to be privileged, which I guess as doctor, economically I am and my children will be. That's not a bad thing. That's a blessing for that child. The kid will still have to work, but it won't be that kid's fault that it has advantages over poor kid in the ghetto/trailer park. What needs to be taught is to not "stomp your feet when you don't get what you want" and I think that's where "privilege" gets thrown in people's faces. People need to learn how to take the "loss" and move on. So "rich kid A" didn't get into Harvard because they took "Javier". I'm can make a strong guess that "rich kid A" probably got into Yale and Columbia also. If "rich kid A" got denied from all the Ivys, then maybe "rich kid A" needs to examine their application instead of blaming affirmative action.