Correction: Affirmative Action *legally* removed giving preferential treatment to white male, but it absolutely did not *effectively* remove it, let alone *completely* remove it.
The law was enacted, but just as the emancipation proclamation did not actually free slaves for years, nor did Brown vs. Board of Education actually integrate schools for years, likewise AA did not make much of an impact, let alone a big inmpact, for more than decades.
I was personally prevented from getting a promotion because I was a woman (how do I know? They told me), and I was personally denied a job for being a woman (how do I know? They were emboldened to just up and say so, because they know that I couldn’t really do anything about it.). This explicit discrimination happened in the 1980s. Less explicit but still very clear violations continued to occur to me in the 90s and 00s such as not getting a project because it would require traveling with men, and I, being a woman, would disrupt the wives.
Which is why Loren’s and Derec’s utterly unfactual and mertiless claims that discrimination is over are a fetid, steaming, pile of uninformed, privileged, horseshit.