Life isn't fair by nature unfortunately. If you regard affirmative action as more fair than an admission system based on merit, please tell me in what sense yo

Life isn't fair by nature unfortunately. If you regard affirmative action as more fair than an admission system based on merit, please tell me in what sense you consider it fair that the more qualified person loses out because of their ethnicity? There are literally hundreds of Asian students who completely dedicated their youth to the goal of making it to an elite US university and then you're rejected because your acceptance would violate some quota... that just seems incredibly absurd and cruel to me. Not even speaking of the negative societal repercussions that such actions will have.