Racial optics is one thing, but there's evidence that affirmative action is a directly anti-Asian policy. Others have posted this here, but AA leaves white demographics virtually unaffected while using Asians as sacrificial lambs for a vision of "racial progress" in which we aren't fully there. A Princeton 2005 study showed that:

Data for the 1997 entering class indicate that eliminating affirmative action would reduce acceptance rates for African-American and Hispanic applicants by as much as one-half to two-thirds and have an equivalent impact on the proportion of underrepresented minority students in the admitted class. White applicants would benefit very little by removing racial and ethnic preferences; the white acceptance rate would increase by roughly 0.5 percentage points. Asian applicants would gain the most. They would occupy four out of every five seats created by accepting fewer African-American and Hispanic students. The acceptance rate for Asian applicants would rise by one-third from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent." https://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20Admission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20June%202005.pdf

I would love more evidence on this, but it's more than plausible that affirmative action is a tool for whites to appease black activists with only nominal or illusory cost to themselves, and I think we are ignorant as hell to defend it. I am not averse to a purely SES-based admissions standard but for obvious reasons I'm skeptical of its results. A more radical approach would be to provide generous assistance to low SES white applicants, remove the cap from Asians, and let the numbers come from upper to upper-middle class white families instead. I think affirmative example is a great example of why we can't look to white liberal social justice politics or black feminist/antiracist activists to advocate for our own issues.