It could be argued that doing all of that despite being a member of an oppressed group would be more meritorious than not. Swimming a mile is one thing, swimming a mile upstream is another.
Is this really a good faith question? Like all other Hispanics in white dominated environments they face everything from casual racism to outright discrimination.
Yes, being a Hispanic at MIT is soooo tough. After all, when he got a meeting with the president:
"We had our conversation in Spanish, and I think that afforded some candor that would not have been there otherwise."
Being able to talk to the Hispanic President of MIT in his own native language and getting benefits from that is not exactly screaming discrimination, is it.
Imagine if anti-racist activists weren't themselves horribly racist. Their entire creed prizes skin colour above the individual, and treats them as members of groups first, people second.
Hell, a lot of those activists trying to get merit-based admissions out of schools? It's to get schools to be less Asian. San Fran just recalled a bunch of activist types from school boards, and I'd bet money that vote was in good part driven by the Asian population realizing the activist faculty were out to screw them over.
Does "casual racism" include believing that people of specific ethnicities are swimming upstream if they get involved in academics? Are Chinese, Japanese, and Indian academics swimming upstream too?