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<p>You are deluding yourself.</p>
<p>Do you understand what “affirmative action” means?</p>
<p>As I understand it, AA is not only about actively recruiting URM applications and providing them with more funding opportunities, but also about lowering the academic expectations of URMs. This is done so that more URMs can get in. Departments don’t just want the URMs who could get in even if they were white - they want as many as they can get! Of course, they probably will NOT take the URMs who are doing absolutely horribly. The point is they DO accept URMs who, if they had been non-URMs, would not have gotten in.</p>
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<p>I fail to see how simply because someone has had this particular experience, s/he is better able to describe it than someone who hasn’t. There are literally millions of information sources in this world about graduate school. ProfX seems to represent some subset of these sources. My claim is that if s/he truly does not give a boost to URM applicants, s/he does not accurately represent the average source.</p>