Background info for how this question came up:

I (34m) was having a conversation the other day with a white friend (36m), talking about our experience applying to law school (we are both currently attorneys that graduated from a top 50 law school). He mentioned that he would have gone to a much better law school had he not been white (kind of half jokingly, kind of not), like a top 40 or even 30.

I, as a Chinese American, responded that he had it much easier as a white dude than me, as I could have gone to a better school than he could have, since the affirmative action back then was heavily discriminatory to Asian students: we often had to have significantly better grades than white applicants to go to the same school.

He was so confused. He thought it was a white/non-white thing, and said he could have at least understood that due to white people having more advantages than minorities, but couldn't wrap his head around the exclusion of Asian people in affirmative action, or even giving Asians "dis-affirmative action". He basically pointed out that this is essentially race based minority discrimination and couldn't understand how it was legal.

That was actually a good point, and I mean, I tried to Google some answers, but got a lot of very politically charged and obviously biased answers.

I also see a lot of information saying that race based affirmative action is basically not a thing anymore. If this is true, then it would really have restored some faith in humanity.

So I guess the long and short of my question is: is race based affirmative action still a thing? Are Asians still heavily discriminated against?