>And that's commendable, but what if your brother would not have had time for doing cross country in high school because he had to care for his siblings as your parents were poor and working double shifts? Or so heavily indebted due to a cancer therapy that he couldn't afford running shoes?

That's awful and unfortunate, but he still shouldn't have an extra hour shaved from his half-marathon times over his competitors, because the half-marathon isn't measuring "How fast could you have run this in an alternate universe where you had no disadvantages". It's measuring "How fast can you run this, full stop."

Poor Black kids who had uninvolved parents that didn't help them to learn math better aren't helped by affirmative action because you're just setting them up for failure in the actual college level math classes they end up in (and are woefully unprepared for). The SAT measures how capable you are at math because that's what matters for college, not how capable you might have been in a different reality.

>Curiously, everyone seems to understand the purpose of handicaps in Golf, but it's an outrageously leftist concept in social contexts.

If I try to join the PGA tour, they aren't going to consider my handicap.