Maggie's Farm

Regarding Affirmative Action and related topics, I've come up with a reasonable test - Reverse the Polarity.
That is, if a court says that a Christian student may not mention faith or prayer in a public school graduation ceremony, substitute "agnostic". Would an agnostic student have the right to say that she finds faith bewildering? Certainly. Therefore, the Christian (or Muslim or Sikh) student has every right to speak to spirituality and even to invite the audience to pray with him.
Similarly, if a program seeks to place "black" students in preference to "white", reverse the polarity. Does it seem fair?
Now if you want to help "disadvantaged" students, then you come up with a plan to seek qualified students from schools that have high dropout rates, say. They will almost always be in low-income neighborhoods. You find the poverty-affected geniuses, you use private funds to get them scholarships and appropriate help with academic gaps, and you start graduating geniuses that would otherwise have been missed. How could anyone call that unfair?
And here's the nyuk-nyuk-nyuk part: if you go for qualified disadvantaged students, in a color-blind fashion, you'll wind up with more minority students anyway.

Howdy GWTW
It's a great thing about America that the president cannot, under the law, do what you describe. Abraham Lincoln could not abolish slavery either.
The process you describe should happen, but it has to go through Congress and/or the courts. The president can issue some executive orders and some policy guidance in that direction.