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Given all the complaints people have made here and in other places, the SAT data etc, I can't disagree that this likely seriously goes against value of the most qualified person getting the job in lots of cases.
However my experience in all highly-selective settings I've personally been in has been that DEI/affirmative action policies in practice didn't actually do this. Specifically, members of the groups that benefited from it were not on average less competent than those that didn't. On particular group of affirmative action beneficiaries, women in math, were actually consistently more competent on average (specifically they were completely absent from the lower tail in competence).
It lined up exactly with the steel-man justification of affirmative action---that it was a necessary corrective to un-meritocratic biases. I can definitely believe that this doesn't hold in less selective settings, but it still makes me skeptical about the true magnitude of its material impact on meritocracy. Actually, I wish people here would talk more about personal experience with anti-meritocratic outcomes of DEI of just focusing on whatever cherry-picked, hot news story happened recently---studies/good statistics > personal experience > media reporting
Conversely, I'm not just focusing on skilled immigration as a hypothetical here. I've had many very competent friends (including two literal IMO medalists!) who have had to leave the country because they couldn't get work visas. The anti-skilled-immigration policies that forced them out seemed to be a direct consequence of the---I'll use a slightly different word here to be more specific---hereditarianism on the right (which they're doubling down on if you saw the end of JD Vance's acceptance speech when he started talking about immigration and national identity). Sure, there are a lot of crazy extreme policy preferences online that don't have a chance of being implemented, but the underlying hereditarian ideals really do cause significant material harm.
Of course neither is good, but we don't get to pick none of the above.
Okay, I find it fairly believable that women who choose to go into math might have a higher floor. My sense is that the cliche that women like people more, men like things more, is, generally speaking, true, and accordingly, at an equivalent level of ability, differences in tastes would produce the effect you describe (under the simplistic model of people going into a field based on how much they like doing the thing combined with how good they are at it). I don't expect this would carry over more broadly, in other fields and with other groups? Surely a lot of the discrimination going on elsewhere is wrong?
I think I don't have a good enough picture of what harms you see affirmative action as repairing.
But let's consider this from a different angle. Instead of what we have been doing—looking at efficiency, or those discriminated against—now consider the social effects upon those in groups which have been favored. Now in their every achievement, their bosses, colleagues, customers—no one is quite sure whether they earned it, or whether they were merely the beneficiary, at least until they show themselves manifestly worthy. (And so racism becomes warranted.) And themselves, even. Should they not themselves hold a touch of skepticism as to whether they are the equals of their colleagues, whether they are there on the merits, until it be proven? Their social accreditation, whether that be degrees, whether that be hiring, whether that be accolades, whether that be promotion—all of this is of less probative value. Why infantilize these people in this way, instead of treating them as your fellow men? Why treat these people as tokens, rather than as equals?
Regarding immigration, I don't think it's quite hereditarianism (in that it's not necessarily racial, but rather in reference to set of American people). It's more nationalism. But point taken, immigration is a big deal.
I'll try to say this as concisely as possible:
In the steelman justification, the harms are putting less competent people in positions of responsibility because of unconscious biases in their favor. Steelman affirmative action aims to counteract these unconscious biases to make sure that the most competent people are chosen instead. To my great surprise, most affirmative action I've personally seen in professional contexts has been very close to this steelman version, though it is definitely plausible that I've been in very non-representative bubbles.
Also, with steelman affirmative action, your third paragraph should never become an issue. The groups may be de jure favored, but this only counteracts de facto disfavor so the net effect is that of a level playing field. Everyone would see that they're just as worthy as any other group.
There are still however very good arguments against even steelman affirmative action Calibrating favoritism to exactly counteract biases is extremely difficult practically and especially politically. Maybe our current institutions are so incapable of fairly trading off welfare between various groups that even attempting it is a bad idea. In some sense, it's also going for "good" ends with "evil" tools---for the sake of achieving meritocracy, you are, at the bottom of it all, judging people in a hereditarian way. This usually has unexpected negative side effects and should always make one nervous.
I'll take your word for it. Thanks for the conversation!
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