Affirmative action is merely a short cut to fixing generations of discrimination. It's extremely difficult to bring blacks up to white standards because (on average) they lack the same educational and financial background. By allocating some educational opportunities and even jobs to blacks who don't objectively deserve them, we ensure that their kids and grandkids start out on a level playing field. Thus we do in one or two generations what might otherwise take a century or two. (Obviously this still takes decades because only a small number of blacks can benefit from affirmative action each generation.) Sure, it's not fair to those discriminated against (who are mostly Asian, not Caucasian) but life isn't fair. It's also not fair that some kids are born to parents who are poor and uneducated because that was official government policy. Having been denied the right to even apply for a job due to my skin color, I can tell you absolutely that is the side of the equation I want to be on even with that minor setback.
Neither of my parents made it past high school, yet my father retired owning his auto parts store outright and my mother retired as the county financial director. My paternal grandfather started the auto parts store and spent most of his life paying off the rich man who bankrolled him. My maternal grandfather had to drop out and go to work at twelve (oldest of twelve kids when his father died) and he died with a farm valued at near a million dollars. All that was the result of very hard work and long hours, but you know what else they all had in common? None of them were prohibited from attending the "normal" schools, nor prohibited by government from having any jobs they could land, nor seriously discriminated against by society due to their skin color.
With all the inequities inherent in life, affirmative action is one of the most benign. I don't think it's fair to call it racism, it's just racially based discrimination to overturn the effects of government sanctioned racism.