I think you're being downvoted because you draw a false equivalency.
Fountain rules in the Jim Crow era were uniformly applied to all African Americans. The university question is whether or not race should be included in admission consideration given that some races have been historically disadvantaged relative to others.
When a purely rank-ordered 'merit' based approach would yield a heavily homogeneous outcome does it make sense to try use an approach that gets closer to a representative sample of the country?
You can classify people along lots of dimensions including race, ethnicity, gender, religion, wealth, urban vs. rural upbringing, sexual orientation, introvert vs. extrovert, political leaning, and so on.
Your claim of homogenous outcome is based on how many of these dimensions? Just one?
Because of the immigration policies of the United States, people of certain ethnicities tend to be crème de la crème, for example, if you are from Asian countries you have to be in the top 0.1% of your country in order to immigrate to the US. As a result, if you take the top 10% of performers in High School they tend to have more Asians. To limit their advancement based on their race does not just punish them it punishes the nation by depriving the nation of its best brains.
Your own argument is a false equivalency just as much. There are many non-merit based factors you could be looking at that aren't race, that would lift up all poor people, or all people with parents who who have no degrees, etc., And such approaches would help disadvantaged races/people disproportionately more than privileged races/people without ever looking at the applicant's race. That would be fair, and automatically balanced as races become more or less disadvantaged over time. Explicitly using race in decisions is just plain racism.
"I don't like Black people drinking from this fountain because they tend to be dirty." was the White's excuse. "I don't like Asians enrolling because they tend to be smart." is their excuse now.
Oh yeah, let's give benefits to Blacks because color. Just like we gave benefits to Whites because color. Because equality, diversity, history, and else. Oh yeah, Asians were in fact the victims by White slave traders but we don’t care because it’s more cool and hip to promote black victimhood.
What is it with the West and their racism? “Let’s defeat racism and social injustice by racial discrimination”? Now that’s worth a chill down your spine!
Fountain rules in the Jim Crow era were uniformly applied to all African Americans. The university question is whether or not race should be included in admission consideration given that some races have been historically disadvantaged relative to others.
When a purely rank-ordered 'merit' based approach would yield a heavily homogeneous outcome does it make sense to try use an approach that gets closer to a representative sample of the country?