Motley:  We're a long way from that "post racial/post racist" America I mention.  Racial prejudice is, as I noted, "alive and well in America" A quick look at the internet will verify that.  

Institutionalized second-class citizenship for African Americans was over 300 years "in the making."  It has permeated American thought and action. The Civil Rights Act and affirmative action both have and can only address discrimination, the actions manifesting racial prejudice.  We've seen, glaringly so, that racial prejudice persists generation after generation.  As Barry Goldwater said in his anti-Civil Rights Act 1964 campaign for the presidency, "You can't legislate morality."  He was, of course, right.  You can "control" how people act....but not how they think.  

So long as racial prejudice persists to the extent that it does in America today, "affirmative action" will not (to use your phrase) "work."  That doesn't mean it's less needed, it likely means it's more needed.