the affirmative action conundrum

I support affirmative action on conventional grounds - you give minority applicants a boost in job and college applications as a way to address inequality and as recompense for traditional injustice. Lately though I am confused about how progressive people talk about affirmative action. It's come to be considered offensive to say that affirmative action recipients have enjoyed a material advantage, as doing so delegitimizes their successes and implies that they would not succeed without special consideration.

The question is, if affirmative action programs don't provide a material advantage to minority applicants... what do they do? The entire premise and purpose of affirmative action is to provide a material advantage to minority applicants. What could it mean to say that an affirmative action program does not provide benefits to minority applicants? If they don't do so, they don't exist. This stance is not just self-defeating, it's self-erasing.

It is offensive, and racist, to assume that any individual has received the benefits of affirmative action; to imply that affirmative action outweighs the hindrances of racial inequality; or to suggest that someone's successes are the product of affirmative action and not their talent and work. But to believe that it is wrong to say that programs designed to provide material advantage actually do so is incoherent and, if anything, an argument against those programs.

Perhaps people's time would be better spent defending programs like affirmative action, which help real people solve real problems, then seeking out offense like a bloodhound.