And we should give extra points to people who grew up in disadvantaged situations but still had decent grades. A ‘C’ in AP History by someone working a job in high school, is just as good as someone who got an ‘A’ And didn’t have to work.
Merit isn’t just a good GPA. It takes into account all of the things that made it some more difficult for a person. Getting a decent score on an SAT exam when you went to a shit school, should be able to get you into a good college. But the reality is someone who lived in a zip code with better schools is more likely to get into that college purely by where they grew up. And you tend to grow up in a good neighborhood if you’re parents were well off or had a degree themselves.
Purely looking at grades and scores is bad. Unfortunately, people of color tend (not always) be from worse neighborhoods. They tend to have a lot of disadvantages when it comes to getting good grades and good scores. Affirmative action is/was supposed to break the cycle. It’s supposed to help give a little more merit to the situations surrounding grades Ultimately, it’s supposed to diversify the nicer neighborhoods.