As we all know, however, all things are NOT equal. Because of the historical inequities in our society, a higher proportion of African-Americans come from lower-income backgrounds. That means that they may go to poor high schools which don’t offer things like AP courses, honors programs, or higher-level science and math classes. They are more likely not to be able to afford to pay for SAT prep courses. They may not be able to participate in many extracurricular activities for which they might have to pay.

Middle- or upper-class African-Americans may not face these problems, and they often can get into good colleges, but the fact remains that there are fewer of them, proportionally.

The one exception is that there are some public historically black colleges and universities in certain states that are under court orders to desegregate, which means that they actually have affirmative action bonuses for white applicants.